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What's Varley reading?
Hemingway's chair
by
Michael Palin
...
before that
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My
new collection of old stories, Good-bye, Robinson Crusoe,
is now available for sale from
Subterranean Press. It
contains almost all my stories that have not been available in a
book for many years, those that we didn’t have room to include in
The John Varley Reader. Each story has a brief introduction by me.
It is
a limited and numbered edition, so if you are interested you should
act now, because when they’re gone, they are gone. The book is a bit
pricey at $45, but that is the nature of quality, boutique books
like this. You can get it at Amazon.com for $30. There is no Kindle
edition at this time. Get your copy now, and I hope you enjoy this
trip down memory lane.
From
Locus: “Here
the Nifty Skiffy technologies—nullfield vacuum suits, symbiotes,
sex-changes, and the colonization of insanely hostile
environments—compete for our attention with equally revolutionary
and transformative changes in social, psychological, and moral
realms… The shelf life of much SF can be surprisingly short, but the
freshness and vividness of these stories after nearly four decades
suggests that Varley’s work belongs in the permanent canon.”
~Russell Letson

Slow Apocalypse
is NOT like anything I've written before.
I am so pleased to see my old friend George RR Martin raking in the
dough; this is my attempt to reach a larger audience, like he has,
beyond all you lovely people. It is my hope that my long-time
readers will enjoy it, too.
The paperback edition comes out June 25th
“It is very strange walking streets and highways that I’ve actually
been down ... through an author’s eyes ... before and after a
cataclysm. A Southern California without water and power. You have
food. Your neighbors don’t. Humanity at its worst, and at its best.
Imagine. Varley puts the reader there, and through the wringer.
Awesome, and terrifying.”
Patrick’s Picks
at
Mysterious Galaxy
More VarleyNews and Updates |
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4/21/13
-
This website was started, oh, many years ago now, by
our friend Geordie Young. Later it was redesigned by
Lee Emmett, who for all these years has been
updating it every day with jokes, quotes, movie
reviews, and various other stuff if and when I wrote
it. We needed change, a new look!
That's when our LA friends Jonathan Mersel and
Marion Peters offered to fund a redo, and we
enlisted the help of web designer and old friend
Paul Novitski of
Juniper
Webcraft to give us a look that brings us into
the 21st century.
Soon we will be putting a final stake through the
heart of this ancient beast (in Internet terms, five
years is prehistoric) and bringing out the spanking
new baby, which we all hope you will like. There
will be no more postings until the new site is up
and running, and we don’t have a firm date on that.
So if you want to see it, keep coming back for a
while. Or you can get on the Varley Mailing List and
we’ll let you know.
Latest
Movie Reviews:
Stanley Kubrick Films
*
Top of the Lake
*
Frankenstein
*
Carrie (2002)
*
Hitchcock *
A Little Romance
Peace/Shalom/Salaam
John |
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1/7/13
We were sorry to hear that
Huell
Howser died yesterday. During our years in California,
he was a constant companion on videotapes we checked out of
the library or on PBS. We loved his genuine enthusiasm for
the smallest and most obscure subject, and we learned more
about California from him than we could have learned
anywhere else. He's not to everyone's taste ... but we loved
watching his folksy stories.
Huell Howser:
Lord of
the Flies
1/4/13
I was raised not to toot my own horn, but everybody else
does, so why shouldn't I?
There was a recent LOCUS poll of the best short fiction of
the 20th and 21st centuries. In the 20th list, take a look
at the #5 and #17 novellas, and the #25 short story. I'm
pretty proud of this.
All-Time Short Fiction Results, 2012
12/29/12
Here’s a list of my books that are available
on Kindle and the Nook, and
those that are not:
The Ophiuchi Hotline: YES
Titan: YES
Wizard: YES
Mammoth: YES
Red Lightning: YES
Rolling Thunder: YES
The John Varley Reader: YES
Slow Apocalypse: YES
The Persistence of Vision: NO
Demon: NO (Ain’t that smart? The last volume of a
trilogy?)
Steel Beach: NO
The Golden Globe: NO … (but it is available in
Spanish!)
Millennium: NO
Blue Champagne: NO
Red Thunder: NO, the FIRST volume of a tetrology, and
tell me how THAT makes sense?
Dark Lightning: NO … well, I’m still writing that
one.
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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.
A short
overview of Titan |
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FAN SITES
VARLEY.NET now available in Pig Latin, Jive, Redneck, and
several other languages! Just came across
The Dialectizer.
Just type in www.varley.net and select your language. |
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Cirocco
September 7, 1999.
Today at 2:45 PM we took our beloved dog, Cirocco, to the vet, where she
was given a lethal injection. She died in our arms and seemed to feel no
pain. I wish it was the same for myself.
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THE gaean
trilogy

FIND OUT WHY
|
Varley's Next to the Last Novel |

“...
this Podkayne's story is not a Shavian-Voltairean
satire but a nicely traditional combination of
bildungsroman, alien contact, planetary adventure,
and disaster scenario featuring a smart, mouthy
young person as narrator and stirrer-up-of-plotpoints. ”
Russell Letson,
Locus
Buy It
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VarleyNews &
Updates
October 31, 2012.
Difficult decisions living with breast cancer.
Terri
da Silva is Spider Robinson's daughter. I don't pray, but there's
nothing wrong with sending good vibes her way. This is a difficult
time for the da Silva family. Terri's blog:
Graceful Woman
Warrior
September 7, 2012. John signed Slow Apocalypse
at
The Book Bin in
Salem, Oregon, 450 Court Street, 7:00 P.M.
May 24, 2012: So
much of what you see and hear these days is bullshit. Viral emails
and videos are the worst new offenders, but the bovine poop is
everywhere. That's why I treasure my very short list of websites to
go to and people to read and see to find the real stuff. These
include:
The Straight Dope . Cecil
Adams (who no one seems to have ever actually SEEN) has been writing
this column for almost 40 years, and you can count on him to answer
the most difficult and/or (sometimes) stupid questions. He pulls no
punches. If your question is stupid, he will tell you so. I have a
special affection for him because he once mentioned my name in one
of his columns:
What is a merkin?
Mythbusters .
These guys verify or lay to rest the stuff "everybody knows" to be
true, and most of the time, ain't.
Snopes.com. Best source to see if that amazing email you just got,
along with 100,000 other of your closest friends, is true.
Penn &
Teller . Their Showtime TV show is called BULLSHIT. They take
on broad topics, as trivial as designer water or as monumental as
(gulp) religion. [Lee calls BULLSHIT on Penn.
According to Wiki, Penn Jillette is "an
adherent to Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy..."]
I'm
now adding
Cracked.com. What an odd
story it is. CRACKED magazine was started in 1958 as a second-rate
knock-off of MAD. It thrived for a while, then died an extremely
slow death, finally folding in 2007. But then it was reincarnated as
a website, and it's amazingly good! They specialize in short lists
of things, some just for fun ... well, it's ALL just for fun, but
some are more concerned with "facts" than others. It is very
media-oriented, and the writing is very funny. Check it out. Here's
a sample list, showing why almost everything you see in a modern
action/thriller movie is bullshit:
6 Deadly Injuries You Think You'd Survive (Thanks to Movies)
If
you have any other sources that specialize in getting to the truth
behind the bullshit, I'd like to hear about them. Exception:
political fact-checkers. I pretty much assume these days that it's
ALL bullshit.
February 11, 2012:
Cover update:
We got so many responses
to the recent cover posting that I was unable to answer them all
personally, as I usually do. But I thought you'd like to know that
about 80% of you liked the cover, and of the rest, only a very few
actively disliked it. Most of you agreed with me that the "paint
chips" looked more like dead leaves or peeling bark. I passed this
information along to my long-time editor, Susan Allison. Three or
four of you suggested that, since it was supposed to be paint
peeling from a car door, that something be added to show that's what
it was. Something like a door handle. Susan liked it, passed it on
to the art director, and the new cover here is the result. Nothing
is perfect--looking at the handle, I wonder where the bottom edge of
the window is--but I like it better. So, for the first time in my
38-year career as a writer, I have actually had some input on a
cover for one of my books, and you, the readers, are the reason why.
Thanks to all of you who wrote.
 February
2, 2012:
This
novel is my attempt to reach a larger audience, which I will never
do with hard science fiction like my Gaea Trilogy or the Thunder and
Lightning series. As such, the book begins with a more-or-less
science fiction premise in a more-or-less present-day setting, and
proceeds from there.
SLOW APOCALYPSE follows the story of a family in Los Angeles
as they attempt to deal with an energy crisis of unprecedented
proportions. What if, virtually overnight, all the crude oil in the
world suddenly became unusable? Hint: It would mean a lot more than
just having to walk to work in the morning ...
This is
what my editor called a "comp of the art director's take on the dust
jacket." It will be tinkered with, I'm sure, but this is the basic
concept. The idea is that this is paint peeling from the rusting
body of a car. I thought it looked more like dead leaves, but it's
just a first draft. It will also be jazzed up with "matte with spot
gloss and embossing," which sounds pretty cool to me. What do you
think?
October
27, 2011:
The results are in, and they are … inconclusive. About half
of you liked SLOW APOCALYPSE as the title for my upcoming book, and
half preferred ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT. That’s those of you who had a
preference. Some of you didn’t like either of them. A few thought
either one was okay.
There were a few dozen suggestions for alternatives. Some of
them were quite good, but none stood out as something I just HAD to
use. That’s the way it goes with titles sometimes. Most of the time
I KNOW what the title should be. There’s just no question in my
mind. But every once in a while nothing really satisfies, and we go
to press with something that I will never be happy with. That looks
to be the case here.
I have a policy of answering all my email, except for
those very infrequent rants from cranks and idiots. This time the
volume of mail was such that I’d end up using most of the day
writing emails, and I hope you would prefer me to spend that time
continuing work on my next novel, DARK LIGHTNING, the fourth and
final book in the THUNDER AND LIGHTNING series. So please forgive
me, and accept this group mailing along with my thanks for your
responses.
October 21, 2011:
You Heard It Here First!!!!
Earlier this year I finished a novel that I titled ONE MINUTE TO
MIDNIGHT. I withheld announcing that here on the website because my
editor had some concerns and said she might need some re-writes. And
there was also the matter of the title. She didn’t like it, and to
be frank, I wasn’t wild about it, either. It was just the best of a
dozen unsatisfactory titles I came up with.
Today I was informed that she wants to call it SLOW APOCALYPSE. This
makes sense, as the reason I wrote it is that she wanted a
post-apocalyptic novel, a non-SF story (though all post-apocalyptic
novels, by their nature, have SF elements) that she could push
harder than the typical SF novel gets pushed. That sounded like a
good idea to me, so I wrote a story about the development of a
bacterium that turns crude oil into a useless, gooey mass. It gets
loose, and suddenly we are faced overnight with the situation we all
know is coming sooner or later: The end of the world’s oil supplies.
How would this affect the world? Pretty badly, and pretty quickly, I
felt. So, though the disaster is slow compared to an earthquake or a
tsunami, it’s rapid enough to disrupt and then damn near destroy our
accustomed way of life in months, not years. I hope you, my readers
will buy it and enjoy it.
Publication will be in October … of next year. It takes time to plan
the sort of roll-out and ad campaign I hope to see for this book. So
please be patient. When I have an exact date, I will let you know
here. You can also come here for a first look at the cover, when I
get a copy. We’ll let you know.
So, purely to satisfy my curiosity, what do you think of the two
titles? Love them both, but one slightly more? Love one, hate the
other? Hate them both? Any suggestions? I warn you that suggestions
are unlikely to be considered unless they are SO good they might
propel me to the top of the bestseller lists. But I’d still like to
see them.
... before that |
Movie
Reviews
April,
2013:
Blotto
*
Be
Big!
*
The Day They Robbed the Bank of England
*
Up in Arms *
The Court Jester *
Moby Dick
*
Into the Abyss
*
Quo Vadis
*
Jindabyne
*
Bon Cop, Bad Cop *
Easy Rider
*
Carnal Knowledge
*
Walk on Water
*
Brats
*
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World *
Juliet of the Spirits
*
Strictly Dishonorable
*
Thunder Afloat
*
Ted
*
Monte Walsh *
I
Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
*
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
*
Armored Car Robbery
*
Short Cuts
*
Hit and Run *
Attenborough's Life Stories
*
Two for the Seesaw
*
John Dies at the End
*
Dr. T and the Women
*
Argo
*
ParaNorman
*
Flight
*
They Came to Rob Las Vegas
*
The Man With the Golden Arm
*
Hotel Transylvania *
Billy Liar
*
The Window
*
Min and Bill
*
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
*
Mister Roberts *
Seven Psychopaths
*
We Need to Talk About Kevin
*
Grand Prix
*
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
*
Pennies From Heaven *
Heights
*
The Last Detail
*
Taken 2
*
The Fallen Idol
*
Robot and Frank *
Imitation of Life
*
That Hamilton Woman
*
End of Watch
*
Far From the Madding Crowd
*
A Hole in the Head *
The Master
*
Germany, Year Zero
*
Split Second
*
Tension
*
Susan Slept Here *
Skyfall *
Oz the Great and Powerful
*
Rome, Open City
*
A Night in Casablanca
*
Cookie's Fortune *
The Sessions *
The Intouchables
*
Zero Dark Thirty
*
Sealed Cargo
*
Torrid Zone *
Anna Karenina (2012) *
The Hard Way
*
The Quatermass Xperiment
*
The Impossible
*
Wreck-It Ralph *
The Anniversary Party *
The Spy in Black
*
Lincoln
*
Priceless
*
Sunrise at Campobello *
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story *
Mr. Lucky
*
Bonnie and Clyde
*
A Late Quartet
*
Green Mansions *
Father of
Invention *
Life of Pi
*
Roxie Hart
*
The Busy Body
*
Phantom of the Paradise *
Stanley Kubrick Films:
March,
2013:
Martha Marcy May Marlene *
Howl's Moving Castle *
Charade *
A Cry in the Dark (Evil Angels) *
Saps at Sea *
The Hunger Games *
A Chump at Oxford *
The Beast With Five Fingers *
Swiss Miss *
Panic in Year Zero! *
Harry and
Tonto *
Throw Momma from the Train *
The Letter *
Julia Misbehaves *
Tower Heist *
Dark City *
Bellman and True *
Fuzz *
The Ox-Bow Incident *
Backbeat *
Good Neighbor Sam *
Bernie *
Safe House *
Cleaner *
Friends With Money *
The Awful Truth *
The Apartment *
A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin)
*
Theodora Goes Wild *
The Dictator *
The Red Shoes *
To Have and Have Not *
Dark Passage
*
On the Riviera *
School of Rock
*
Snow White and the Huntsman *
Call Northside 777 *
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
*
Le
Havre *
Masked and Anonymous *
Mirage *
The Birdman of Alcatraz *
Hysteria
*
Lord Love a Duck *
Monty Python and the Holy Grail *
The
Bat *
John Carter *
The Last Angry Man
*
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation
*
Looper *
Island of
Love *
The Murder Man
*
A Patch of Blue
*
Dante's Inferno *
Robinson Crusoe *
Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune
*
The Bourne Legacy
*
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford
*
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel *
Defending Your Life *
The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito)
*
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse)
*
Crisis
*
Sitting Pretty *
Barney's Version *
Village of the Damned
*
Witness to Murder
*
20 Million Miles to Earth
*
Murder on the Orient Express *
First Men in the Moon
*
The Big Lift
*
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
*
The Avengers
*
Stranger on the Third Floor *
Safety Not Guaranteed *
7 Faces of Dr. Lao
*
Species
*
Dinner at Eight
*
Virginia City *
Ship of Fools *
Alien
*
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
*
Prohibition
*
The Unsinkable Molly Brown *
The Cabin in the Woods
*
Double Wedding
*
Take Shelter
*
Brave
*
The Dust Bowl *
Heartbreakers *
Ruby Sparks
*
Green for Danger
*
2046
*
The McKenzie Break *
The Prisoner of Zenda *
Carnage
*
Le pacte du silence (The Pact of Silence)
*
Eyes on the Prize
*
The Heat Is On: The Making of Miss Saigon *
Five Came Back *
Brute Force
*
Butter
*
Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter)
*
The Wagons Roll at Night *
I’m
Not Scared (Io non ho paura)
*
The Bed Sitting Room
*
The Secret World of Arrietty
*
Premium Rush
*
The Dam Busters *
Haunted *
Slam Dance
*
Angel Face
*
The Life of Emile Zola
*
Arbitrage *
Madame Curie *
Savages
*
Babes in
Toyland (AKA: March of the Wooden Soldiers)
*
Bunny Lake Is Missing
*
Arabesque *
My Afternoons With Margueritte (La tête en friche) *
Beasts of the Southern Wild
*
The Beautiful Country
*
A Matter of Life and Death
*
Made For Each Other *
I Could Go on Singing *
It Came From Outer Space
*
Platinum Blonde
*
Trouble With the Curve
*
Carol For Another Christmas *
Bob le flambeur *
5
Against the House
*
Blossoms in the Dust
*
The Whistleblower
*
They Drive by Night *
Skidoo *
Moonrise
Kingdom
*
Cheyenne Autumn
*
The Pilgrim
*
The Boogie Man Will Get You *
Walkabout *
The
League of Gentlemen
*
Bound
*
2012 Tropfest New York
*
Malta Story *
Chickens Come Home
February,
2013:
Carrie (1976) *
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas *
Blazing Saddles *
Albert Nobbs *
Conflict *
The Prince and the Showgirl
*
My
Week With Marilyn
*
Young Adult *
Winchester
'73 *
The
Spiral Staircase *
Chronicle *
The Far Country *
Still of the Night *
Prometheus *
The Killing (Season Two) *
The Ides of March *
The King of Marvin Gardens *
The
Seven Year Itch *
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen *
Red Tails *
Naqoyqatsi: Life as War
*
Curse of the Demon
*
The Man With Two Brains
*
Thunder Birds (Soldiers of the Air) *
All of Me
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