John Varley
Born
in Austin, Texas, The United States
August 09, 1947
Website
Genre
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Titan (Gaea, #1)
50 editions
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published
1979
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Wizard (Gaea, #2)
50 editions
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published
1980
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Demon (Gaea, #3)
35 editions
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published
1984
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The Ophiuchi Hotline
7 editions
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published
1977
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Steel Beach
39 editions
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published
1992
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Millennium
38 editions
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published
1983
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Red Thunder (Thunder and Lightning, #1)
15 editions
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published
2003
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The Persistence of Vision
22 editions
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published
1977
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Mammoth
15 editions
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published
2005
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The Golden Globe
15 editions
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published
1998
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“We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn't, why would there be so many of them? There's something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive. All those other folks will die. That's what after-the-bomb stories are all about.”
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“When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.)”
― The John Varley Reader
― The John Varley Reader
“The public had an endless appetite for stories like that. Subconsciously, I think they think the gods of luck will favor them when the tromp of doom starts to thump. As for survivor interviews, I find them very boring, but I'm apparently in the minority. At least half of them had this to say: "God was watching over me." Most of those people didn't even believe in a god. This is the deity-as-hit-man view of theology. What I always thought was, if God was looking out for you, he must have had a real hard-on for all those folks he belted into the etheric like so many rubbery javelins.”
― Steel Beach
― Steel Beach
Polls
Topics Mentioning This Author
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Queereaders: LGBTQ Science Fiction | 34 | 71 | Sep 20, 2010 10:36AM | |
Book Haven: Mawgojzeta's 100 in 2010 Challenge COMPLETED | 19 | 87 | Jan 03, 2011 06:49AM | |
The Seasonal Read...:
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2589 | 1086 | Feb 28, 2011 09:05PM | |
Reading with Style:
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715 | 504 | Mar 01, 2011 09:19AM |
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