Rating: 
Summary: Air Raid is worth the read (and skip the movie)
Review: Having seen the movie based on Millennium, I expected to dislike Boehm/Varley's short story Air Raid, written in the mid 1970s--and was pleasantly surprised at how well it hung together. Told in first person by Mandy (not Elfreda Baltimore-Louisville, a tangential character in this story), Air Raid captures the urgency of the "snatch" mission and the admittedly long-shot hope that New Earth represents for humanity. Read the short story for all the emotion and action and don't bother with the movie unless you want to laugh.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Characters and Plot + Surprise Ending
Review: I became a hard-core sci-fi fan in the 1950s. Since then, my reading has become more discriminating. This book meets my much higher standards for a good read for several reasons. First, I liked the character of Louise Baltimore. Second, I liked Varley's telling of this tale through alternating points-of-view in alternating chapters. I liked the plot, and finally I liked the last chapter, where a final character emerges to tie it all together by revealing the things not seen in the characters povs.
Rating: 
Summary: post millenial
Review: I disagree with the other writers. I have read a lot of Varley and think this is just about his best. The Titan series was very enjoyable but also very adolescent (nothing against teen agers, mind you, I find the T & A in Titan tiresome). Anyway, Millenium is an interesting, well thought out, time travel book, with some very original premises. It seems sort of goofy at first, but ties together very well by the end. The characters are real people (even sherman, the robot!), and they act in beleivable ways. The plot is well thought out, moves along at a good clip, doesn't get too bogged down in the complexities of time travel, and has a reasonably fulfilling ending. What more could you want? Ophiuchi Hotline was my 2nd favorite of Varley's. Steel Beach was a real disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Varley's weakest novel
Review: It's a clever enough conceit -- bodies in a plane crash are "lost" to their time, and are thus available, one way or another, to time travellers in need -- but there's little to this novel beyond that, other than yet another chance for Varley to contemplate the relationship between man and God.Normally, a clever idea and a big theme are all Varley needs to get rolling, with fascinating bits of invention, realer-than-real characters and a compelling plot almost falling over each other in a rush to get onto the page. Not here. Compared to the Gaea Trilogy or "Steel Beach," "Millennium" feels anemic, as though this were a Varley short story stretched to short novel length by another writer. Still, it's better than the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Don't watch a movie before reading the book very often
Review: It's not normal practice for me to watch a film prior to reading the book it's based on, but when I do, watching the film can lead me to some very good books. Such was the case with Millennium by John Varley. I had seen the film with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd a number of times but had been frustrated in my efforts to obtain a copy of "Air Raid", the original short story the film was credited as being based on, until one day when the book almost literally fell into my lap. I gotta tell you, Millennium was one of those books I could not put down. From the first page, I found myself absolutely enraptured by the characters of both Louise Baltimore and Bill Smith. Varley's Smith is actually very close to the character that Kris Kristofferson portrayed in the movie, but his Louise Baltimore is a very tough, take-charge kind of gal that's unlike the one played by Cheryl Ladd in the film. That Louise always seemed to be looking to her personal robot, Sherman, for advice, whereas the Louise of Varley's book might have depended on Sherman for emotional support at times, but generally kept her own counsel and scoffed at the very notion that Sherman's ideas could be taken seriously in a critical mission such as the one she was running to Smith's time in order to get her lost "stunner". The funny thing was, in the end it was the Big Computer who was running everything, and not Louise or Bill or even Sherman. I am currently on my 6th copy of this excellent time-travel novel (the other 5 have worn out due to repeated readings), and I hope that all of you who are sci-fi enthusiasts will take the time to pick up a copy and read it, if you haven't read it already. It's a definite page-turner.
Rating:
Summary: Don't watch a movie before reading the book very often
Review: It's not normal practice for me to watch a film prior to reading the book it's based on, but when I do, watching the film can lead me to some very good books. Such was the case with Millennium by John Varley. I had seen the film with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd a number of times but had been frustrated in my efforts to obtain a copy of "Air Raid", the original short story the film was credited as being based on, until one day when the book almost literally fell into my lap. I gotta tell you, Millennium was one of those books I could not put down. From the first page, I found myself absolutely enraptured by the characters of both Louise Baltimore and Bill Smith. Varley's Smith is actually very close to the character that Kris Kristofferson portrayed in the movie, but his Louise Baltimore is a very tough, take-charge kind of gal that's unlike the one played by Cheryl Ladd in the film. That Louise always seemed to be looking to her personal robot, Sherman, for advice, whereas the Louise of Varley's book might have depended on Sherman for emotional support at times, but generally kept her own counsel and scoffed at the very notion that Sherman's ideas could be taken seriously in a critical mission such as the one she was running to Smith's time in order to get her lost "stunner". The funny thing was, in the end it was the Big Computer who was running everything, and not Louise or Bill or even Sherman. I am currently on my 6th copy of this excellent time-travel novel (the other 5 have worn out due to repeated readings), and I hope that all of you who are sci-fi enthusiasts will take the time to pick up a copy and read it, if you haven't read it already. It's a definite page-turner.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Premise in Time Travel
Review: Louise Baltimore. Woman from a dark, decadent, and dying future. The solution? Abduct victims of airplane crashes before the crash. Take them to the future to re-populate the earth 1000 years into Louise's future. Facinating take on the pitfalls of time travel as the dangers of paradoxes are created. That is, what would happen if one of the victims you are going to take before the plan crash was suppose to survive? How does that effect your future?Unfortunately it turns into something deadlier than humanity ever imagined. Save the future by harvesting the past? A book well done, and a must read for sci-fi fan.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it, keep it, read it every couple of years
Review: Millennium is one of my "keepers" and the one I lend out to get my friends hooked on science fiction. This is the kind of book tou take to the beach in the morning and end up going home only because it's getting too dark to read. The two person; 1st person viewpoints (burnedout, middle-aged NTSB crash investigator/Type A-personnality girl from the umpteen century)is a neat way to tell a story and makes this a fast and enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it, keep it, read it every couple of years
Review: Millennium is one of my "keepers" and the one I lend out to get my friends hooked on science fiction. This is the kind of book tou take to the beach in the morning and end up going home only because it's getting too dark to read. The two person; 1st person viewpoints (burnedout, middle-aged NTSB crash investigator/Type A-personnality girl from the umpteen century)is a neat way to tell a story and makes this a fast and enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Varley when Varley was writing his best
Review: Not to complain, but I found that all the stuff Varley wrote before I discovered him (in Titan) is ever so much better than the stuff SINCE I discovered him. This book is dynamite and a great read. It was a fair movie (with some laughable sfx) but the book delivers. John, if you're out there...go back to Gaea. Get back on the airplane. Go to Jupiter and kick those mysterious thingies butts! Quit messing with reporters and faux-shakesperean actors.
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