John Varley

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Varley

John Herbert Varley (born August 9, 1947 in Austin , Texas ) is an American science fiction writer. He also published under the pseudonym Herb Boehm .

life and work

Varley attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, traveled the country for a few years, and in 1973 decided to become a full-time writer . His first published short story was Picnic on Nearside , published in August 1974 in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction . He has written several novels and short stories , many of them set in the fictional world of Eight Worlds , in which a race of mysterious and overpowering aliens has driven the earth's inhabitants from their planet. In the meantime, however, humans have colonized almost the entire solar system , often with considerable physiological adaptations. They have acquired the technological fundamentals by listening to alien communication channels.

Varley's detailed speculations about how humans could take advantage of biological science were revolutionary in the 1970s when his first collection of short stories, The Persistence of Vision , was published. In Great Britain it was published in the same year under the title In the Hall of the Martian Kings by Futura. With a foreword by Algis Budrys , nine stories were gathered here that had appeared between February 1975 and March 1978 in the magazines Galaxy , Asimov's Science Fiction and above all in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction . The Persistence of Vision won the Locus Award 1979, the Prix ​​Apollo in the French translation in 1980 and the Premio Gigamesh in the Spanish translation in 1985 . The collection's cover story won the Hugo Award and Nebula Award . The German translation of the short story collection has been divided into three volumes by Goldmann Verlag .

It is believed that his narrative Overdrawn at the Memory Bank may have influenced some parts of the motion picture Total Recall (although the primary inspiration, of course, was the cited source, the history of memories in bulk by Philip K. Dick ).

Varley took a 10 year break from writing novels and short stories in Hollywood and tried his hand at screenwriting, but the only concrete result of that was the movie Millennium . Varley said about it:

“We had the first Millennium meeting in 1979 . It ended up with me writing it six times. There were four different directors and every time a new one came along I would go over the whole thing with him and rewrite it. Every new director had his own ideas, and sometimes you gain something from them, but each time something was lost in the process, so that by the time the cameras were rolling, a lot of the vision had been lost. "

He returned as a full-time writer in the 1990s.

Varley is often compared to Robert Heinlein . In addition to a similar, descriptive writing style, they also have in common an advocacy of free societies and free love .

Varley is also worth noting for the frequent prominence of female actors in his novels, as this is uncommon in science fiction, especially among Hard SF male writers . This prominence is not only recognizable in his Eight Worlds setting, where sex reassignments are routine interventions, but also in his other works. The idea of ​​routine sex reassignments is also an example of sexual issues that permeate his work without dominating it.

John Varley also wrote a trilogy on Gäa , a gigantic intelligent creature that corresponds in shape to a very large, wheel-shaped Stanford torus space habitat and is populated by unusual, artificially created life forms.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of his first short story, John Varley published a new collection of short stories. The John Varley Reader contains 18 short stories, each with a preface and bibliography. Five of these short stories had not yet been published in a Varley short story collection.

Awards

Hugo Award
  • 1979 for the story The Persistence of Vision
  • 1982 for the short story The Pusher
  • 1985 for the short story Press Enter

He was nominated twelve more times for the Hugo Award.

Nebula Award
  • 1978 for The Persistence of Vision
  • 1985 for the short story Press Enter

He was nominated seven more times for the Nebula Award.

Locus Award
  • 1976 a Special Locus Award for four stories in the top 10 ( Bagatelle , Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance , Overdrawn at the Memory Bank , The Phantom of Kansas )
  • 1979 for the story The Persistence of Vision
  • 1979 for the novella The Barbie Murders
  • 1979 for the collection The Persistence of Vision
  • 1980 for the SF novel Titan
  • 1981 for the story The Barbie Murders
  • 1982 for the story Blue Champagne
  • 1982 for the short story The Pusher
  • 1985 for the short story Press Enter
  • 1987 for the Blue Champagne Collection
  • 2005 for The John Varley Reader collection
Further awards

bibliography

If only the title and year are given as the source for short stories, the complete information can be found in the corresponding collective edition.

Series

The series are arranged according to the year of publication of the first part.

Eight Worlds (short stories)
  • Picnic on Nearside (1974)
    • English: Picnic with a view of the earth. In: Peter Wilfert (Ed.): Pilgrims through space and time. Goldmann Science Fiction # 23401, 1982, ISBN 3-442-23401-8 .
  • Retrograde Summer (1975)
    • German: retrograde summer. In: Even more foresight. 1981.
  • The Black Hole Passes (1975)
    • German: love trip to the black hole. In: Foresight. 1981.
  • In the Bowl (1975)
    • German: In the bowl. In: Manfred Kluge (ed.): Catapult to the stars. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3623, 1978, ISBN 3-453-30533-7 . Also in: More foresight. 1981.
  • The Phantom of Kansas (1976)
    • English: The Phantom of Kansas. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Heyne Science Fiction Annual Volume 1980. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3729, 1980, ISBN 3-453-30633-3 . Also in: Even more foresight. 1981.
  • Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (1976)
    • English: A lion in the memory bank. Translated by Tony Westermayr. In: More foresight. 1981. Also as: Saved. Translated by Marcel Bieger. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Heyne Science Fiction annual volume for the anniversary year 1988. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4477, 1988, ISBN 3-453-01007-8 .
  • Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance (1976)
    • German: Triade. Translated by HJ Alpers. In: HJ Alpers (ed.): Countdown. Droemer Knaur (Knaur Science Fiction & Fantasy # 5711), 1979, ISBN 3-426-05711-5 . Also in: More foresight. 1981. Also as: I have to sing, I have to dance. Translated by Rose Aichele. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Heyne Science Fiction Annual Volume 1985. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4183, 1985, ISBN 3-453-31160-4 .
  • The Funhouse Effect (1976)
  • Good-bye, Robinson Crusoe (1977)
    • German: Farewell, Robinson Crusoe !. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Science Fiction Story Reader 11. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3627, 1979, ISBN 3-453-30538-8 .
  • The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977, novel)
    • English: The hot line to Ophiuchi. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3852, 1981, ISBN 3-453-30781-X .
  • Lollipop and the Tar Baby (1977)
  • Equinoctial (1977)
  • Options (1979)
    • German: Options. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Science Fiction Story Reader 16. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3818, 1981, ISBN 3-453-30720-8 .
  • Beatnik Bayou (1980)
    • German: In the swamp. In: Terry Carr (ed.): The most beautiful science fiction stories of the year: Volume 1. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4021, 1983, ISBN 3-453-30928-6 .
  • Her Girl Friday (1992, short story)
Eight Worlds: Anna-Louise Bach (short stories)
  • Bagatelle (1976)
  • The Barbie Murders (1978)
  • Blue Champagne (1981)
  • Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo (1986)
  • The Bellman (2003)
Gaean / Gäa (novel trilogy )
  • 1 titanium (1979)
  • 2 Wizard (1980)
  • 3 Demon (1984)
Eight Worlds: Metal Trilogy
  • 1 Steel Beach (1992)
    • German: Stahl-Paradies. Bastei Lübbe Science Fiction Special # 24184, 1994, ISBN 3-404-24184-3 .
  • 2 The Golden Globe (1998)
  • 3 Irontown Blues (2018)
Thunder and Lightning
  • 1 Red Thunder (2003)
  • 2 Red Lightning (2006)
  • 3 Rolling Thunder (2008)
  • 4 Dark Lightning (2014)

Novels

  • Millennium (1983)
    • German: Millenium: a millennium love. Bastei Lübbe Science Fiction Special # 24065, 1985, ISBN 3-404-24065-0 .
  • Mammoth (2005)
  • Slow Apocalypse (2012)

Collections

  • The Persistence of Vision (1978, also as In the Hall of the Martian Kings ). German translations:
  • The Barbie Murders (1980, also as Picnic on Nearside , 1984)
  • Vaarwel, Robinson [Dutch] (1983)
  • Blue Champagne (1986)
  • The John Varley Reader (2004)
  • Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories (2013)

Short stories

  • Scoreboard (1974)
  • A Choice of Enemies (1975)
  • In the Hall of the Martian Kings (1976)
    • English: In the audience hall of the Martian kings. In: Manfred Kluge (Hrsg.): The Cinderella machine. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3605, 1978, ISBN 3-453-30512-4 . Also in: Even more foresight. 1981.
  • Manikins (1976)
  • The M&M Seen as a Low-Yield Thermonuclear Device (1976)
  • Air Raid (1977, also as Herb Boehm)
  • The Persistence of Vision (1978)
    • German: The sluggishness of the eye. In: Manfred Kluge (ed.): The inertia of the eye. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3659, 1979, ISBN 3-453-30574-4 . Also in: Foresight. 1981.
  • The Pusher (1981)
  • The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged) (1984)
  • Press Enter ▮ (1984)
    • German: press input. Translated by Inge Holm. In: Friedel Wahren (Ed.): Isaac Asimovs Science Fiction Magazin 25th episode. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4222, 1985, ISBN 3-453-31201-5 . Also as: Press Enter. Translated by Inge Holm. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Fernes Licht. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 2100, 2000, ISBN 3-453-17117-9 .
  • The Unprocessed Word (1986)
  • Just Another Perfect Day (1989)
  • Good Intentions (1992)
  • Truth, Justice and the Politically Correct Socialist Path (1995)
  • The Flying Dutchman (1998)
  • A Christmas Story (2003)
  • In Fading Suns and Dying Moons (2003)

anthology

  • Superheroes (1995, with Ricia Mainhardt)

Filmography

  • 1983: American Playhouse (TV series, episode Overdrawn at the Memory Bank )
  • 1989: Millennium - The 4th Dimension (script, based on the short story Air Raid )
  • 1998: Welcome to Paradox (TV series, script for one episode, another episode based on the story Options )
  • The Phantom Of Kansas (writer)
  • Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (script, based on the novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein ; not yet made into a film)
  • Galaxy (screenplay, not yet filmed)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Interview in St. Louis Post-Dispatch Monday. July 20, 1992
personal data
SURNAME Varley, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Varley, John Herbert (full name); Boehm, Herb (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Austin (Texas)