John Varley (author)
Encyclopedia
John Herbert Varley is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Biography

Varley grew up in Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...

, moved to Port Arthur
Port Arthur, Texas
-Demographics:As of the 2000 census, there were 57,755 people, 21,839 households, and 14,675 families residing in the city. The population density was 696.5 people per square mile . There were 24,713 housing units at an average density of 298.0 per square mile...

 in 1957, and graduated from Nederland High School
Nederland, Texas
Nederland is a city in Jefferson County, Texas, United States. The population was 17,547 at the 2010 census.The city is adjacent to the Southeast Texas Regional Airport in Port Arthur, which serves the nearby cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur. It is part of the Beaumont–Port Arthur...

. He went to Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...

 on a National Merit Scholarship because, of the schools that he could afford, it was the farthest from Texas. He started as a physics major, switched to English, then left school before his 20th birthday and arrived in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

's Haight-Ashbury just in time for the "Summer of Love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...

" in 1967. There he worked at various unskilled jobs, depended on St. Anthony's Mission for meals, and panhandled outside the Cala Market on Stanyan Street (since closed) before deciding that writing had to be a better way to make a living. He was serendipitously present at Woodstock in 1969 when his car ran out of gas a half-mile away. He also has lived at various times in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

 and Eugene, Oregon
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...

, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 again, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.

He has written several novels (his first attempt, Gas Giant, was, he admits, "pretty bad") and numerous short stories, many of them in a future history
Future history
A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors in the subgenre of speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction...

 ("The Eight Worlds"
Eight Worlds
Eight Worlds refers to a series of novels and short stories by John Varley, in which the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing an alien invasion of the Earth. Earth and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but Earth's moon and the other worlds and moons of the solar system have...

) These stories are set a century or two after a race of mysterious and omnipotent aliens have almost completely eradicated humans from the Earth (they regard whale
Whale
Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...

s and dolphin
Dolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...

s to be the superior Terran lifeforms and humans as only an infestation). But humans have inhabited virtually every other corner of the solar system, often through the use of wild biological modifications learned, in part, by eavesdropping
Eavesdropping
Eavesdropping is the act of secretly listening to the private conversation of others without their consent, as defined by Black's Law Dictionary...

 on alien communications. His detailed speculations on the ways humans might use advances in biological science were revelatory in the 1970s when his story collection The Persistence of Vision was released. The title story in that collection won the Hugo
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...

 and Nebula
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...

 awards, and it has been suggested that "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank", which was adapted and televised for PBS in 1983
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was a 1983 television movie. It was produced by Canada’s RSL Productions in Toronto. Financing was provided by WNET/PBS New Jersey, which had hoped to create an entire science fiction series adapting famous works, but due to lack of funding this was the last of three...

, may have inspired some portions of the film Total Recall
Total Recall
Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox & Mel Johnson, Jr.. It is based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”...

 (although the primary inspiration was clearly the credited source, the Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...

 story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is a novelette by Philip K. Dick first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. It features a classic meshing of reality, false memory and real memory...

"). In addition, two of his short stories ("Options" and "Blue Champagne") were adapted into episodes of the short-lived 1998 Sci-Fi Channel TV series Welcome to Paradox.

Varley spent some years in Hollywood but the only tangible result of this stint was the film Millennium
Millennium (film)
Millennium is a 1989 film directed by Michael Anderson and starring Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, Robert Joy, Brent Carver, Al Waxman and Daniel J. Travanti. The original music score was composed by Eric N. Robertson...

. Of his Millennium experience Varley said:
"We had the first meeting on Millennium in 1979. I ended up writing it six times. There were four different directors, and each time a new director came in I went over the whole thing with him and rewrote it. Each new director had his own ideas, and sometimes you'd gain something from that, but each time something's always lost in the process, so that by the time it went in front of the cameras, a lot of the vision was lost."


Varley is often compared to Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...

. In addition to a similarly descriptive writing style, similarities include free societies
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

 and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...

. Two of his connected novels, Steel Beach
Steel Beach
Steel Beach is a novel by John Varley, a science fiction writer who has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards multiple times. Steel Beach is set in the same continuity as The Golden Globe, but takes place much earlier, and was published in 1993....

 and The Golden Globe
The Golden Globe
The Golden Globe is a Locus nominated novel by John Varley, a science fiction writer who has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards multiple times...

, posit a sub-society of Heinleiners. The Golden Globe
The Golden Globe
The Golden Globe is a Locus nominated novel by John Varley, a science fiction writer who has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards multiple times...

 also contains a society evolved from a prison colony on Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

 and a second society evolved from it on Pluto's moon, Charon
Charon (moon)
Charon is the largest satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto. It was discovered in 1978 at the United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station. Following the 2005 discovery of two other natural satellites of Pluto , Charon may also be referred to as Pluto I...

—a situation most notably found in Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a lunar colony's revolt against rule from Earth....

. Unlike Heinlein's lunar society, Varley's convict society is a cross between the mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 and the yakuza
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...

, only more so.

Varley is noteworthy for the frequent prominence of female characters, unusual in science fiction, and especially so among male authors of hard science fiction
Hard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...

. This prominence is visible not only in his Eight Worlds history where sex changes are routine, but in his other works as well. The idea of routine sex changes is also an example of the sexual themes
Sex in science fiction
Sexuality in science fiction refers to the incorporation of sexual themes into science fiction or related genres. Such elements may include depictions of realistic sexual interactions in a science fictional setting, a character with an alternative sexuality as the protagonist, or exploration of the...

 that color his works without dominating them.

John Varley has also written a trilogy
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...

 of novels set in a sentient hollow world reminiscent in structure to a very large Stanford torus
Stanford torus
The Stanford torus is a proposed design for a space habitat capable of housing 10,000 to 140,000 permanent residents.The Stanford Torus was proposed during the 1975 NASA Summer Study, conducted at Stanford University, with the purpose of speculating on designs for future space colonies...

 space habitat
Space habitat
A space habitat is a space station intended as a permanent settlement rather than as a simple waystation or other specialized facility...

, but with a distinctly different personality. The three volumes are titled Titan
Titan (John Varley)
Titan is a Locus Award winning 1979 science fiction novel by John Varley. It is the first book in his Gaea Trilogy. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1979, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1980.-Plot summary:...

, Wizard
Wizard (novel)
Wizard is a 1980 science fiction novel by John Varley. It is the second book in his Gaea Trilogy. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1981.- Plot summary :...

, and Demon
Demon (novel)
Demon is a Locus nominated 1984 science fiction novel by John Varley. It is the third and final book in his Gaea Trilogy.- Plot summary :Demon takes place in the years 2113 through 2121, thirteen to twenty-one years after the events of Wizard...

.

Novels

  • Eight Worlds
    Eight Worlds
    Eight Worlds refers to a series of novels and short stories by John Varley, in which the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing an alien invasion of the Earth. Earth and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but Earth's moon and the other worlds and moons of the solar system have...

    :
    • The Ophiuchi Hotline
      The Ophiuchi Hotline
      The Ophiuchi Hotline is a Locus nominated 1977 science fiction novel by John Varley. It opens in the year 2618.-Background to the author's work:...

       (1977) - Locus SF Award nominee, 1978
    • Steel Beach
      Steel Beach
      Steel Beach is a novel by John Varley, a science fiction writer who has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards multiple times. Steel Beach is set in the same continuity as The Golden Globe, but takes place much earlier, and was published in 1993....

       (1992) - Hugo and Locus SF Award nominee, 1993
    • The Golden Globe
      The Golden Globe
      The Golden Globe is a Locus nominated novel by John Varley, a science fiction writer who has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards multiple times...

       (1998) Prometheus Award
      Prometheus Award
      The Prometheus Award is an award for libertarian science fiction novels given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society, which also publishes a quarterly journal Prometheus. L. Neil Smith established the award in 1979, but it was not awarded regularly until the newly founded Libertarian Futurist...

       winner, 1999; Locus SF Award nominee, 1999
  • Gaea Trilogy
    Gaea trilogy
    The Gaea Trilogy consists of three science fiction novels by John Varley. The stories tell of humanity's encounter with a living being in the shape of a 1,300 km diameter space habitat, inhabited by many different species, most notably Titanides, in orbit around the planet Saturn.The novels...

    :
    • Titan
      Titan (John Varley)
      Titan is a Locus Award winning 1979 science fiction novel by John Varley. It is the first book in his Gaea Trilogy. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1979, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1980.-Plot summary:...

       (1979) - Nebula Award nominee, 1979; Locus SF Award winner and Hugo nominee, 1980
    • Wizard
      Wizard (novel)
      Wizard is a 1980 science fiction novel by John Varley. It is the second book in his Gaea Trilogy. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1981.- Plot summary :...

       (1980) - Hugo and Locus SF Awards nominee, 1981
    • Demon
      Demon (novel)
      Demon is a Locus nominated 1984 science fiction novel by John Varley. It is the third and final book in his Gaea Trilogy.- Plot summary :Demon takes place in the years 2113 through 2121, thirteen to twenty-one years after the events of Wizard...

       (1984) - Locus SF Award nominee, 1985
  • Millennium
    Millennium (novel)
    Millennium is a 1983 science fiction novel by John Varley. Varley later turned this novel into the script for the 1989 film Millennium, both of which are based on Varley's short story "Air Raid", which was published in 1977. It was nominated for the Philip K...

     (1983) - Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 1983; Hugo and Locus Awards nominee, 1984
  • Thunder and Lightning
    Thunder and Lightning
    Thunder and Lightning is the twelfth and final studio album by heavy-rock band Thin Lizzy, released in 1983. Guitarist John Sykes was hired to replace Snowy White after 1981's Renegade, and Sykes helped to provide a heavier sound and guitar tone than Thin Lizzy had used on previous albums...

    :
    • Red Thunder
      Red Thunder (novel)
      Red Thunder is a 2003 science fiction novel written by John Varley. The novel is an homage to the juvenile science fiction novels written by Robert A. Heinlein.In 2004, Red Thunder won the Endeavour Award and was nominated for the Campbell Award....

       (2003) - Endeavour Award
      Endeavour Award
      The Endeavour Award, announced annually at OryCon in Portland, Oregon, is awarded to a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author or authors and published in the previous year....

       winner, 2004; Campbell Award nominee, 2004
    • Red Lightning (2006)
    • Rolling Thunder (2008)
    • Dark Lightning (forthcoming)
  • Mammoth
    Mammoth (John Varley)
    This book centers around the concept of Time Travel, and gives quite a bit of discussion to the concept that there may be limits to science.-Synopsis:...

     (2005)
  • Slow Apocalypse (forthcoming)

Short story collections

  • The Persistence of Vision
    The Persistence of Vision
    The Persistence of Vision is an award-winning 1978 anthology of science fiction stories by John Varley.The anthology was also published in the U.K...

     (1978)
  • The Barbie Murders
    The Barbie Murders
    The Barbie Murders is a science fiction short story by John Varley. It was first published in IASFM in January/February 1978-Plot summary:Lt. Anna-Louise Bach and her partner Jorge Weil are police officers in New Dresden, a domed city on the Moon...

     (1980) (republished as Picnic on Nearside, 1984)
  • Blue Champagne (1986)
  • Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
    Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
    Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was a 1983 television movie. It was produced by Canada’s RSL Productions in Toronto. Financing was provided by WNET/PBS New Jersey, which had hoped to create an entire science fiction series adapting famous works, but due to lack of funding this was the last of three...

     (1976)
  • The John Varley Reader: Thirty Years of Short Fiction
    The John Varley Reader
    The John Varley Reader is a collection of 18 science fiction short stories by John Varley, first published in paperback in September 2004. It features 5 new stories...

     (2004)

Other

  • Millennium
    Millennium (film)
    Millennium is a 1989 film directed by Michael Anderson and starring Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, Robert Joy, Brent Carver, Al Waxman and Daniel J. Travanti. The original music score was composed by Eric N. Robertson...

     - screenplay (1989) based on the short story "Air Raid" (as was the novel Millennium
    Millennium (novel)
    Millennium is a 1983 science fiction novel by John Varley. Varley later turned this novel into the script for the 1989 film Millennium, both of which are based on Varley's short story "Air Raid", which was published in 1977. It was nominated for the Philip K...

    )

Awards

Varley has won the Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...

 three times:
  • 1979 - Novella–"The Persistence of Vision"
  • 1982 - Short Story–"The Pusher"
  • 1985 - Novella–"Press Enter■"

and has been nominated a further twelve times.

He has won the Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...

 twice:
  • 1979 - Novella–"The Persistence of Vision"
  • 1985 - Novella - "Press Enter■"

and has been nominated a further six times.

He has won the Locus Award
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...

 ten times:
  • 1976 - Special Locus Award–four novelettes in Top 10 ("Bagatelle", "Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance", "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank", "The Phantom of Kansas")
  • 1979 - Novella–"The Persistence of Vision"
  • 1979 - Novelette–"The Barbie Murders"
  • 1979 - Single Author Collection–The Persistence of Vision
  • 1980 - SF Novel–Titan
  • 1981 - Single Author Collection–The Barbie Murders
  • 1982 - Novella–"Blue Champagne"
  • 1982 - Short Story–"The Pusher"
  • 1985 - Novella - "Press Enter■"
  • 1987 - Collection–Blue Champagne


Varley has also won the Jupiter Award
Jupiter Award
The Jupiters were an annual award presented to science fiction writing infrequently between 1974 and 1978. The awards for the best novel, novella, novelette and short story were presented by the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education.- Winners :...

, the Prix Tour-Apollo Award
Prix Tour-Apollo Award
The Prix Tour-Apollo was an annual French award given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year. Awards were given in 1972-1990, inclusive, and usually went to a work first published in English in the US or UK.-Winners:...

, several Seiun Award
Seiun Award
The is a Japanese science fiction award for the best science fiction published in Japan during the preceding year, as voted by attendees of the Japan Science Fiction Convention. "Seiun" is the Japanese word for "nebula", but the award is not related to the American Nebula Award. It was named after...

s, Endeavour Award
Endeavour Award
The Endeavour Award, announced annually at OryCon in Portland, Oregon, is awarded to a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author or authors and published in the previous year....

, 2009 Robert A. Heinlein Award
Robert A. Heinlein Award
The Robert A. Heinlein Award was established by the Heinlein Society in 2003 "for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space." It is named for prolific science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and is administered by the Baltimore...

 and others.

External links

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