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Summary: Science fiction's Peter Singer
Review: There are two main ways to degrade humanity. First, you can compare humans to animals. Second, you can tear away human pretensions to the divine. Varley consistently does both throughout all his books, but never more so than here, "Demon" being the possible exception. Is the book still agood? Yeah, sure it is. Varley's imagination is fantastic, and he struts it like a peacock. But as a humanist, a REAL humanist, I find his view of humanity (as ordinary, even puny in the cosmic sense, helpless, vapid, dirty, animalistic) to be a constant depressant.I'm not saying we should join hands and sing "Kumbaya" together; no not at all. But the idea of God or devil-like aliens kicking our [rears] for all eternity is depressing, I think you'd agree. It's ironic. Varley hates (hates!) religion, yet he sets the Jovians/dolphin hugging aliens up as gods of sorts. At least in "Demon" humans were sort of able to get a fair shot in at God. Read William Christopher's "White Mountains" trilogy if you want some real action and real enjoyment in seeing humanity, with all its flaws, at its finest.
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Summary: The title novella is the best SF ever written
Review: This collection of short stories, and one novella, is wonderful; by far the best work of one of the best SF writers. His ability to convey spectacular alien environments in a few words is unparalleled. 'The Phantom of Kansas', the first story in the book, sets the tone...wild imagination, brilliant plot twists, wonderful conclusion. The Persistence of Vision, the last story in the book, though, is on another level entirely. It is so good that when I couldn't find a copy of the book to give to a friend, I typed it in to give it to her. The 40 hours of typing let me enjoy his work (that I had reread many times) on a whole new level; by having to concentrate on every word, every bit of punctuation, I was astonished again at his skill as a wordsmith -- not just as a spectacular storyteller. This is my favorite book.
Rating:
Summary: The title novella is the best SF ever written
Review: This collection of short stories, and one novella, is wonderful; by far the best work of one of the best SF writers. His ability to convey spectacular alien environments in a few words is unparalleled. 'The Phantom of Kansas', the first story in the book, sets the tone...wild imagination, brilliant plot twists, wonderful conclusion. The Persistence of Vision, the last story in the book, though, is on another level entirely. It is so good that when I couldn't find a copy of the book to give to a friend, I typed it in to give it to her. The 40 hours of typing let me enjoy his work (that I had reread many times) on a whole new level; by having to concentrate on every word, every bit of punctuation, I was astonished again at his skill as a wordsmith -- not just as a spectacular storyteller. This is my favorite book.
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Summary: A great start for a major writer . . .
Review: This is another of those books that I read shortly after it first appeared and have re-read every decade or so since. Though Varley had already made a reputation with a number of exceptional short stories, this was his first novel, and in many ways it laid the groundwork for most of his subsequent lengthier work: A future in which "The Invaders," an extrasolar species so very alien, humanity has little chance of ever understanding it, has stopped off on Earth to liberate the various cetacean races . . . which it regards as superior to humans and fungi. Ninety-nine percent of the human race died of starvation, leaving only the colonists in the Moon and the outer planets to carry the torch. A couple of centuries have now passed and Luna is carrying on business as usual. Lilo, a genetic engineer-entrepreneur, is in deep trouble for experimenting with human clones and has been sentenced to permanent death, but Boss Tweed, the out-of-office head of the Free Earthers (who dream of reclaiming the home planet), has other plans for her. Before long, there are several cloned versions of Lilo banging around the solar system, interacting with several other multiply-cloned persons, all of them illegal. Meanwhile, the beam-cast of technical information from a star in the constellation Ophiuchus has been interrupted by what seems to be a demand for payment for service. Varley has been called the successor to Heinlein, and he certainly has a knack for creative characterization and for casually spinning off startling and intriguing ideas.
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Summary: Wow
Review: This is the first book that I've read twice in several years. John Varley is a true master, and spins stories like no one else
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Summary: A chalenging technological book
Review: Varly has many intresting notions about the future of thechnology, politics and genetical engineering. I recomend it.
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Summary: Nifty read
Review: Well, I wonder how many letters are in a thousand words... at any rate, I rather liked this book. Similar to umm... Eye of the Whirlwind? Something akin to that. I'll have to look it up. At any rate it is a kinda neat read. 4+ stars!
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Summary: SF at its best.
Review: What a book! What a book! What are you waiting for? Track it down and read it.
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Summary: Excellent, excellent, excellent!!!!!!!!!
Review: Wow! Reading this book was a blast. It's pretty complex, what with all of the converging/diverging plotlines, but that makes it all the more fun. There are so many different ways to give a summary of this book - every one I've seen, from this website, to the book cover, to discussion groups, has an interpretation which, when taken collectively, doesn't sound like the same book. All I'll say is that it involves humanity learning of its standing in the universe, but on the way to the answer, you get to read about cloning, genetic manipulation, alien invasion, time-space travel, transmissions from deep space, etc. I admire John Varley's ability to fit SO MUCH plot into a 200-page book. The man has a fantastic imagination. Final note - "Javelin" has to be the most interesting and original character I've read of in years.
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