John Varley: His Life and Work
Profiled by Galen Strickland
Posted November 18, 2000, with several later edits
UPDATE, Sad news: John Herbert Varley passed away Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at his home in Beaverton, Oregon.
I had already been thinking of re-reading Varley, and now that idea is even stronger. I will update again when that happens, providing links to specific reviews. At the time this article was first uploaded this type of author profile was what I was mostly writing. I later posted specific book reviews, and for Varley that was for ones published in 2003 and beyond. As for purchase links, all of them will now be for e-books, either for Kindle from Amazon, but also from Bookshop. Any purchases through our links may earn us a commission. Amazon may have a few print copies warehoused somewhere, at this time at least, but I think everything is technically out of print, with any at Bookshop identified as on backorder. If you don't have an e-reader it would be best to check your library, your favorite used bookstore, eBay, bookfinder.com, or however you usually look for older books. The following is mostly what I wrote 25 years ago, with just a few edits, along with the new links.
Varley was perhaps the most significant of the genre writers to have emerged in the mid-1970s. An impressive array of short stories and novellas had many critics hailing him as the heir-apparent to Robert A. Heinlein, whose middle-period work Varley's most closely resembled. It may be true he didn't quite live up to that hype, but he might have been the one most responsible for returning the genre to its more positive scientific roots after many years of the pessimistic New Wave, while at the same time reinvigorating the traditional hard-SF scenarios with a more contemporary and irreverant perspective. Many of his short stories, and several novels, have been set in a common future history, known as the Eight Worlds sequence. Sometime in the near future Earth is occupied by a mysterious alien race, and humanity must survive on the other worlds of the solar system already colonized; Mercury, Venus, the moon, Mars, Pluto, and various moons of Saturn and Neptune. Jupiter and its moons are off-limits however, as the "Invaders" have established a rapport with that systems' native species.
Varley's first publication came in August 1974, with the novelette "Picnic on Nearside" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have seen it identified as chronologically the first of the Eight Worlds stories, although I am not sure of that. A re-read of everything is needed to determine the correct order. Nearside refers to the face of the moon towards Earth. Shortly after the invasion all of the moon's inhabitants relocate to the farside away from Earth, both to be out from under the watchful gaze of the Invaders, but also to symbolize that now man's destiny lay outwards to the other worlds, and eventually out to the stars. His first book collection was 1978's The Persistence of Vision [Bookshop | Amazon], the title story being the winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards. This collection has also been published under the title of one of the other stories included, "In the Hall of the Martian Kings." Another—"Air Raid"—was later expanded into the novel Millennium [Bookshop | Amazon], which in turn was adapted into the 1989 Film which starred Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd. Varley wrote the screenplay himself, although it was also probably re-written. While it does have its good points, due to the wooden acting by the two leads it was not as successful as it should have been. Daniel J. Travanti's character was more interesting. Still another story, "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank," was adapted for a made-for-public-TV video production which starred Raul Julia. The less said about that production the better. The fact that it was one of the films lampooned on Mysery Science Theatre 3000 should tell you a lot.
UPDATE: January 13, 2026: I have re-read and reviewed the collection The Persistence of Vision.
If I'm not mistaken, that collection was the first of his books I read, although I may have encountered some of the stories earlier in "Best of the Year" volumes. If I had begun my subscription to F&SF just a few years earlier than I did (1979) I would have discovered his unique talent that much sooner. Five of the nine stories had first seen print in that periodical, although his first story was not collected until 1980 in The Barbie Murders, which four years later was reissued under the variant title of his first story, Picnic on Nearside [Bookshop | Amazon].
[UPDATE: March 4, 2026. I have re-read and reviewed Picnic on Nearside.]
Another collection came in 1986 with Blue Champagne [Bookshop | Amazon], which included the award winners "PRESS ENTER •" and "The Pusher." Varley took a big chance of alienating many readers with the latter story, as it initially seemed to be about a child molester, but in actuality the title character is a starship voyager who attempts to make contact with girls who will be of a mature age—and thus potential romantic liasons—the next time he visits their planet, due to the paradoxes of the space-time continuum. "Press Enter•" is still an interesting story, but it rapidly became dated from Varley's frequent references to what he assumed at the time to be unfamiliar computer jargon. In its defense it can be noted that the story's first-person narrator, a seizure-prone, ex-Korean War POW, was unfamiliar with computers and their paraphenalia.
Varley's first novel, 1977's The Ophiuchi Hotline [Bookshop | Amazon], is set approximately 500 years into the Eight Worlds sequence. A radio-wave transmission had previously been detected coming from the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. Some messages that had been decoded offered a vast array of new technologies, from cloning and other genetic engineering marvels, to techniques capable of recording a person's total life history direct from their brain. It became commonplace for individuals to have a clone of themselves ready to be animated with their life recording, as an insurance policy against their eventual death, thus ensuring a sort of quasi-immortality. Multiple clones of a person were illegal however, but that does not stop a corrupt Lunar politician who has a nefarious plan to reconquer Earth. One clone of Lilo, the lead character of the novel, dies within the first few pages, but a succession of other clones are caught up in an emergency which could lead to the expulsion of humanity from the solar system.
UPDATE: February 13, 2026: A more detailed review of The Ophiuchi Hotline.
Varley took a break from this future history for his next series of novels, known collectively as the Gaea Trilogy. The first book of the set, 1979's Titan [Bookshop | Amazon], revolves around an expedition to Saturn's largest satellite, and of the startling discovery that what at first is believed to be a previously unknown moon of the planet is actually a living, sentient being—Gaea—which contains within itself a multitude of trapped individuals and species. The NASA mission commander, Cirocco Jones, becomes Gaea's agent for its negotiations with Earth. The series continued with 1980's Wizard [Bookshop | Amazon], and concluded with Demon [Bookshop | Amazon] in 1984. In my opinion, this is an example of a good and intriguing premise drawn out to an exhausting and frustrating conclusion, and if memory serves correctly I might not have finished the third volume. It seemed to me Varley was hard pressed to come up with more and more outrageous species and situations for his protagonist to deal with. The ordeal may have been more than Varley himself could deal with, and it may have been a contributing factor to his not producing another novel—with the exception of the expanded "Air Raid" story, Millennium—until 1992. I will be re-reading all of his books as soon as possible, and I may even have a different opinion of the Gaea series the next time.
1992's Steel Beach [Bookshop | Amazon] saw Varley's return to the Eight Worlds sequence, and a return to his earlier successes as well. Set on the moon about 200 years after the exile when humanity has resigned itself to its fate of losing Earth, the Central Computer system has regulated life to the point of near utopia. Disease is a thing of the past, life-recording and cloning assure everyone of practically living forever, and the climate is regulated to perfection. If one becomes bored with their existence, a quick and painless sex-change can give them an entirely new perspective on life. In fact, to remain the same sex for too long is considered to be the height of decadence. So why in this paradise does Hildy Johnson, a reporter for Luna's leading tabloid journal, feel suicidal? And why does the Central Computer confirm his suspicions that others share this despair? Tightly plotted and ingeniously inventive, this novel reconfirmed Varley as a leading exponent of hard-SF. On top of that, it begins with what has to be the most outrageously bizarre sentence of any novel I have ever read—"In five years, the penis will be obsolete," the salesman said.—And it only gets better from there.
Another novel in the sequence came in 1998. The Golden Globe [Bookshop | Amazon] recounts the exploits of Sparky Valentine, a member of a traveling troupe of actors, as he plys his trade among the outer planets and the asteroid belt, where collections of space junk have been welded together to form artificial satellites. Valentine has availed himself of all of the advanced technologies man now possesses in order to transform himself into the ultimate actor, able at a moment's notice to change from fat to thin, short to tall, young to old, man to woman. He does not limit his trade to the stage however, since he learned at an early age that an actor's livelihood is often uncertain, and that con games could be very lucrative. Unfortunately he finds there is a price on his head for a much more serious offense - murder. Desperately eager to escape to the outer fringes of the solar system, instead he finds himself being driven inwards to Luna, closer to the scene of the crime and perhaps to his ultimate justice. It was another twenty years before Varley returned to Eight Worlds with his final novel, Irontown Blues [Bookshop | Amazon], which some sources also identify as the third in the "Metal Trilogy" following Steel Beach and The Golden Globe.
I did start reviewing Varley with 2003's Red Thunder [Bookshop | Amazon], along with its three sequels, plus two others. Instead of listing them here, I direct you to an index page I created for all Varley related pages. I will eventually re-read all of those too, and will likely edit the individual reviews at that time, plus adding titles as I go. Not sure why I didn't do it the first time around, but I may combine all of the Thunder & Lightning series on one page. Considering the quality of the majority of his work, it is unfortunate that all of Varley's novels and short story collections are currently out of print. Based on many online comments I have seen the past few days, I am hoping there will be a renewed interest in his work. Of course there is a chance they could be found online or in used bookstores, but is it any wonder that a lot of current readers of SF are unaware of the genre's vast and varied history when even relatively recent works such as these are allowed to go out of print? Book publishing is a business of course, and unless books sell they won't be on store shelves long. Please note, after originally writing this article toward the end of 2000, several books did come back into print, but now again are not available (other than used) except as e-books, and that includes the comprehensive collection, The John Varley Reader [Bookshop | Amazon].
Related links:
My Varley Index page.
The author's Blog, although I don't know how long that might be available.
The Varley article at the Science Fiction Encyclopedia.
An old interview at XeroMag.
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