The Persistence of Vision
by John Varley
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted January 13, 2026
Buy an e-book of Persistence from Bookshop or Amazon A purchase through our links may earn us a commission.
Even before the sad news of his recent passing I had been thinking of re-reading Varley. I have, and have previously read all of his novels, plus four story collections, with one other not needed since all the stories were duplicates of what I already had. The Persistence of Vision is not the first of Varley's books to be published, but being a story collection it contains earlier work that preceded his first novel. One short story, six novelettes, and two novellas, originally published in various periodicals from 1975-78. Five were in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, three in Galaxy, with the short story "Air Raid" in Asimov's. I did not read the latter this time, or at least not yet, since it was later expanded into the novel Millennium, so I will get to it before that novel. Being around fifty years since they were first published, I cannot recall when I first read Varley, or which story it was, or where, but maybe in a "Best of Year" anthology edited by Donald Wollheim or Terry Carr. I didn't subscribe to F&SF until 1979. In the profile article I wrote on Varley's career (click link on his name above) I mentioned that many of his stories, along with several novels, are set in a shared world, dubbed the "Eight Worlds" sequence. I'm not sure why but his first published story, which fits into that sequence, is not included here, but it is in his second collection which I will re-read soon. At least three of these stories are part of "Eight Worlds" since there are mentions of the alien Invaders and the Occupation of Earth, and one name-drops the Ophiuchi Hotline, the title of his first novel. Three others probably fit too, based on technologies shown.
I did not read in the order of the Table of Contents this time, but rather the original publication order. Due to variables of lead times and acceptance times for the magazines, that doesn't necessarily reflect the actual order in which they were written, but perhaps close enough. I have always preferred to experience an author from their beginnings when possible, and in sequential order. I started with "Retrograde Summer" (F&SF, February 1975), which comes third in the book. Set on Mercury, one of the Eight Worlds humans now inhabit, having been exiled from Earth by the Invaders, even though that is not mentioned. Mulitple medical advancements, as well as altered social mores are already evident, which would be expanded upon in later stories and novels. The main characters are Timothy and his "mother" Dorothy, along with Jubilant, the "sibling" Timothy was cloned from. Medical/mechanical innovations include automatic enviromental suits powered through neural or spinal implants, with similar technology providing domes surrounding a residence. Walk through the membrane of a dome and your exo-suit retracts; walk back outside and the suit automatically encompasses you again.
I haven't taken the time to research something that is featured in many of the stories. I'm not sure when it was first mentioned in science fiction, maybe even before Heinlein's "—All You Zombies—." It is something I am aware of that has occurred in real life at least since the early 1950s, but probably before. Many people undergo sex change operations multiple times throughout their life. Timothy had been born female, but Dorothy authorized a switch to male while he was an infant, which he was not aware of until he meets his "sister." Jubilant was born female, to her mother Gleam, her father being known as Glitter at that time, but afterwards Glitter changed to female, taking the name Dorothy. Jubilant grew up on Mars with Gleam, then later emancipated herself. It is not until she comes to Mercury that Timothy is apprised of the fact the woman he knows of as his mother Dorothy is actually his father. Something else in the Eight Worlds culture is that it was common for children to live with their mother, and hardly anyone knew, or cared, who their father was, since almost all were anonymous sperm donors. A husband and wife living together was considered the height of decadence, as was living your whole life as the same gender.
I'm not sure where "The Black Hole Passes" (F&SF, June '75) is set. Perhaps the asteroid belt, or further out toward Saturn or Neptune. Definitely not in orbit of Jupiter, since the Invaders had made that off limits to humans, due to the aliens' rapport with native species there. [EDIT: After reading a few more stories, I think it likely they are somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto.] Jordan Moon is alone in his own craft, his job being to monitor the Ophiuchi Hotline, a radio signal coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the constellation of Ophiuchus. It was the source of most of the scientific and medical advancements man now enjoyed. Treemonisha was another such observer, and she and Jordan had developed a strictly radio/video relationship. Both often talked of wanting to finally get together in person. That chance comes sooner than expected, when a tiny black hole comes close and plays havoc with their navigation and radio communications, but one is able to rescue the other. "In the Bowl" (F&SF, Dec. '75) takes place on Venus. Kiku, a tourist from Mars, comes to the second planet from the sun to prospect for "blast jewels." They make the acquaintance of Ember, a 10-year-old girl (almost thirteen in Earth years), far advanced for her age, in intellect as well as social consciousness. She lives in a remote location, making most of her money as an amateur medico, repairing implants and other mechanical devices. She essentially forces herself on Kiku to be their guide for finding blast jewels. What she actually wants is to be adopted by someone in order to emigrate off Venus. I use the impersonal pronoun for Kiku, since I am sure their gender was never mentioned. Besides, since they are older than Ember, they may have had several sex changes, and even if not, same-sex relationships were also common.
The next three stories in publication order were in Galaxy. Two for sure, maybe all three, are in the Eight Worlds series. "The Phantom of Kansas" appeared in the February 1976 issue. It may have been the first of his stories I read, or at least one that made a very strong impression the first time. It is set on the moon, with "Kansas" being one of the many disneylands created deep below the surface. Others are mentioned briefly, including where the next story is set. Everyone frequently has a memory recording made as an insurance against death, as well as germ plasm stored to be used for a clone replacement. Someone steals and/or destroys most of the recording cubes, which the police suspect is a precursor to murder. Fox is an environmental artist, composing weather symphonies to be displayed in the various disneylands. She is rich enough to have multiple recordings stored in other banks. She awakens after what she thought was one of her routine memory recordings, only to find she had previously died, multiple times, with each new clone grown for her only able to receive a memory recording from many years before. Thus she has no memories of the other resurrections, or how she died, or who was responsible. The police are sure it is the same culprit each time, someone with a massive grudge against her. The only saving grace was that her stolen three-year-old recording had not been destroyed. Her nemesis had something else in mind for it.
"Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" from May '76 starts at the medico station in the Kenya disneyland. Fingal has a temporary memory recording made, which will then be used by the computer system as his experiences are within the mind of a live lioness in the disneyland. Something goes wrong, his body is misplaced, and his temporary memory cube spends what seems to him to be more than a year inside the computer, while they try to find his body. "Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance" (July '76) is probably an Eight Worlds story, but I'm not positive. It is set in and around the rings of Saturn. It is never revealed what job Barnum and Bailey do while in the rings, but the nature of the rings inspires them to compose music, even if they don't know its forms, not even the names for notes and chords. Barnum is human, Bailey is a symbiont that encompasses Barnum's body, both of them feeding off of, and in turn feeding the other, Bailey's essence being derived from plants. They leave the rings and land on the moon Janus, where they seek the services of "Tympani & Ragtime, TinPanAlleyCats" to transcribe the music they hear in their heads. It takes Tympani several days to get it all down on sheet music, and she and Ragtime are certain it will be a big seller. They will take the majority of the royalties, but that is okay with Barnum and Bailey, since they mostly want to go back to the rings for more inspiration.
To repeat, I read in original publication order. None of the last three of that order are part of Eight Worlds, or at least I am very sure "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" (F&SF, Feb. '77) is not. If it is, it is many years before the alien's arrival. The focus is on the first crewed Mars expedition, which experiences a tragedy that kills the majority of the landing crew, leaving only two men and three women, none of them capable of flying the landing craft, Podkayne, to reunite with the main ship in orbit, the Edgar Rice Burroughs. In some ways this could be considered as much fantasy as science fiction, due to the unique things that crop up around the landing site, which seem to be as much mechanical as organic. They respond to the needs of the humans, allowing them to survive much longer than anyone expected. The Burroughs had returned to Earth, with a war and other disasters delaying the next mission for more than fifteen years. That crew expected only to be able to return the remains of the first crew back to Earth. Instead they find a thriving community, including quite a few children. None want to return to Earth. I'll skip over "Air Raid" for now, which brings us to the longest story, the last in the order, both original publication, and in this collection.
"The Persistence of Vision" (F&SF, March '78) spans several years in the late 20th, then early 21st Centuries. Various recessions and depressions, anarchy in the cities, uncertainty in rural areas, are mentioned. The first person narrator loses his job in Chicago, setting out for California in a round-about way, since there are quarantined areas in the midwest due to a nuclear plant meltdown. Several refugee camps, dubbed Geigertowns, stand between him and where he wants to go. He heads south to Little Rock, then west through Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. He stays for different lengths of time at communes in northern New Mexico, until he finds a very unique place. Most of what he tells about it he learned later. The story builds off a real life incident, the rubella outbreak in the early-to-mid 1960s, wherein thousands of pregnant women were infected, resulting in many stillbirths, and a few thousand infant survivors who were deaf and blind. Governmental subsidies provided their upkeep, but one among them was very intelligent, although it took a while for that to be apparent. Janet Reilly learned to read Braille, studying legal and economic issues. Hiring a lawyer, she set about creating a community for others of her group.
The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, encounters the group at their compound in New Mexico, which is surrounded by a brick wall, unlike any other place he had seen. He finds an open gate, where he sees narrow rail tracks entering the property. After nearly being run over by a small electric train, the driver makes it clear by hand gestures that he should go over the fence into the pasture. He wanders around, sees a woman walking on a concrete path, which he notices has variable textures and designs worked into the concrete. She is barefoot, and he correctly surmises the various textures help her to know where she is, which other path she needs to take to get where she wants to go. Then he sees a young girl, whom he later learns is thirteen. She is sitting on top of a fence, naked. When he touches her on the shoulder she jumps down, passing her hands all over his body and face. She realizes he is frustrated in not knowing what her gestures mean, not knowing how to gesture back, so she says, "I guess you need the practice, but if it's all the same to you, could we talk mouthtalk for now?" Pink, as real a name as she has ever had, was the group's firstborn child. Most, if not all the children are not deaf and blind, so that helps him learn more about them. It is possible, but he is not sure if he ever met Janet Reilly. After the community was established she did not want to be the leader, and he never learns the names of any of them. Pink got that name simply because her parents thought that all babies were pink.
Those that are deaf-blind cannot use sign-language in the normal way, other than touching others hands and body. They have developed the Touch, which the narrator is sure he could never learn completely. Pink is not even able to tell him what certain touch language means, most particularly how the deaf-blind use it in a group setting. The ultimate touch is only referred to in print as ***ing, but the asterisks are not a stand-in for a word that begins with f, even if sexual contact is part of Touch. Pink eventually says she cannot talk to him again, he must learn Touch, which he tries, but he is sure he could never master it. He leaves the group, all of them knowing he was going to even before he made the final decision. He makes it to California, but things are still in chaos. He misses the community he had named Keller. He eventually goes back, but I won't tell you what he finds. "The Persistence of Vision," the novella, won Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Prix Apollo awards, and the collection won a Locus, and was a finalist for the American Book Award. In total, the stories and collection garnered twenty-three nominations, with six wins. Very impressive for just a four year span early in a writer's career.
John Varley came along after New Wave SF had diminsihed, a literary movement that hardly anyone can adequately define. For the most part, it was considered to be more interested in inner space rather than outer space, the soft sciences of psychology and sociology, rather than physics or engineering. It is evident Varley was well read in the genre, including the Golden Age of Campbell's Astounding, as well as the more experimental fiction from the '50s Galaxy, Worlds of IF, and F&SF, and probably the New Wave too. He took all of that influence, including quite a bit from Heinlein (who didn't in those years?), to build what I consider a renaissance of Hard SF, while also utilizing a more liberal approach to characterization and social hierarchies. Many of his stories are populated with strong, intelligent women, but then again, some of them may have started life as men. Sexual freedom is quite evident, in some cases admirably so, but some things I would hesitate to champion, especially in the current atmosphere of groomers, pedophiles, and rapists. Many early teens, even pre-teens, may mature earlier than I did, and if their actions are truly of their own volition, perhaps acceptable. Keep that in mind if you ever read these stories, as well as any ideas concerning what future trends will bring. In spite of those caveats, I recommend Varley. I'll follow up next month with his first novel.
Related Links:
Index to my other Varley articles, which I will be adding to soon.
His bibliography at ISFDb (with a very old picture).
His blog Varley.net (Not sure how long that will be available.)
We would appreciate your support for this site with your purchases from Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, and ReAnimusPress.
