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VarleyLog

We Bought a Tesla!

Here’s what happened. Lee came across what looked like a tiny, yellowing IOU at the bottom of some ancient records. It was from the Tooth Fairy, and she said she was a little short of cash and would pay me a dime the next night. It was dated May 8, 1954. I was seven! She’s still in business, you know, the Tooth Fairy, so Lee tracked her down and demanded payment. The old biddy was not ...

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Looking Back

Hollywood Diary – Part 2

“Another day” turned out to be only two days later. When Lee read about all the places I’d gone and the things I’d seen, nothing would do but we re-trace my steps so she could snap a lot of pics to go with this diary entry.

The Metro: Part Two

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Novels

The Ophiuchi Hotline

Varley’s first novel. Cover by Boris Vallejo.

After the effortless capture of Earth by vastly superior aliens, humanity is forced to fight for existence on the Moon and other lumps of airless rock. The invention of the Hotline–a constant stream of data from a star in the constellation Ophiuchus–facilitates survival and enables the ...

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Movie Reviews

Moscow on the Hudson

I wonder if it will ever stop being painful to watch Robin Williams perform? Everybody dies, of course, and we have lost a lot of irreplaceable talents who died prematurely in my lifetime, but seldom one so shockingly unexpected. It is sad when someone ODs, but we’re sort of used to it. Suicide? Unthinkable! He was so funny!

Well, anyway, this is one of ...

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Collections

The Persistence of Vision

This is Varley’s first story collection — a multiple award winner. It won the Locus Award and the Prix Apollo for Best Single Author Collection. The title story also won a Locus Award and a Hugo and a Nebula. Five other stories were near awards.

PBS turned “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” into a 3-(out of ...

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Short Fiction

Good Intentions

Politics makes for strange bedfellows. The devil is in the details.

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Titan: An Overview

A Short Overview of Titan

Here's a very short but quite impressive video made by Jean-Paul Verne, a fly-through of Gaea from my trilogy. M. Verne wants to be involved if a movie ever gets made. Over the years many, many people have written to me wishing these books would be made into a movie. Naturally, I'd like that, too. Let's hope this is not as close as we'll ever get.

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Accidental Hippies

Accidental Hippies

Sometime not long after my high school graduation I was studying at Michigan State University when my long-time girlfriend dumped me. I entered such a state of depression that I could not continue in college. So I dropped out and decided to hit the road with Chris Kingsley, my best friend in the world. Chris had much more experience of life on the road than I did, had actually hitched to ...

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