Consequently, I learned American Sign Language, Signed English and enough hand-to-hand method to be able to speak to deaf-blind persons. I dated and eventually wed a hometown girl who was going deaf when I met her and had become completely deaf by the time of our marriage. Established when the protagonist arrives, his entry into the community is facilitated by the fact that their children, the eldest of whom is now thirteen, are hearing and sighted. Granted money by the government after a series of law suits initiated after they reach their majority, they are able to hire professional help and acquire the land and equipment they need for a self-sustaining community. On land leased from the Navaho, this community was set up by several dozen deaf-blind persons who had grown up institutionally together after a fictional rubella outbreak. The story is about a vagabound moving from one countercultural community to the next in the southwest, then ending up to stay quite a while with one qualitatively different than the rest. While "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" is good, "The Persistence of Vision" is extraordinarily good.Īlthough set in the near future, "Persistence" has no other science fiction elements. It's probably easier to find the 2004 reprint collection, "The John Varley Reader" TOC. This and "Blue Champagne" have the core of the classic Varley shorts. But you should read it, and decide for yourself. Finally! Not reread, and I've never much liked it. Good story, though not as good as I remembered. Barnum & Bailey, a symb pair from the Rings, stop in the studio to record their music. I think I'll let you read James Nicoll's comments on this one (link in Comment 3). So much better than "The Martian"! This might be my favorite Varley standalone. This is a *wonderful* story, starting with a tragedy, which leads to a great discovery, and evolves, seemingly by accident, into the first successful Human colony on Mars. I used to like this one, but it hasn't aged well. Romance at a distance, between two observers on the Ophiuchi Hotline, out beyond Pluto. I used to like this one, but the Suck Fairy has come by. Clone sisters visit the quicksilver grotto. Not reread, but it's a unique & very cool story. How do you keep the two separate?"Īll this plus a great, teary, romantic ending. The Kansas disneyland has two million head of buffalo and I envisioned up to twenty-five twisters at one time. It was the way the real Kansas looked now under the rule of the Invaders, who had ripped up the barbed wire, smoothed over the furrows, dismantled the cities and railroads and let the buffalo roam once more. I walked through the Kansas autumn, the brown, rolling, featureless prairie before the red or white man came. "I felt thirty meters tall with lightning in my hair and a crown of shimmering frost. Varley writes about his unsold screenplay here. Fox-4 is determined to survive, and is writing her masterwork. Fox, a composer of weather symphonies, is being stalked by a serial killer - of herself. He writes, regarding forewords and afterwords, “A story that needs to have words said about it, is a story that does not contain all its own right words." Introduction (The Persistence of Vision).Overall, not quite as good as I remembered them - but both "The Phantom of Kansas" (free copy online) and "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" are wonderful: 5+ stars! Collection overall, 3.5-ish stars. The Jim Burns cover art is for "Retrograde Summer," on Mercury. 6 of the 8 stories are from his "Eight Worlds" universe. Varley's first collection, when he was writing stories at white heat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |