#john varley

[3liza]

rip John Varley, the most gender guy of the 1970s New Wave of science fiction

i was always expecting him to have a late in life transition like Jeffrey Catherine Jones but i never heard about him doing so. i hope he was pleased and content whatever he decided to do in his last years. much of his work was obsessively interested in the possibility of easy gender transition for humans, and of neogenders, and alien genders and intersexes. the protagonist of his largest series, the Eight Worlds novels, is a hard boiled detective who is male in some of the books and female in others. he envisions many futures in his work where gender transition is simply a daily public reality and constant possibility.

he wrote a shitload of excellent stuff, but people unfamiliar with himself would know him from his being the author, unfortunately, of the (excellent) short story that the MST3k classic Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was based on

his short story Air Raid which was published in 1977 is one of the all time great speculative fiction shorts, you can read it online here

[frothlad]

Sources are reporting that John Varley has died.

He's one of the bigs for me.

His Titan (1979) was the first I'd seen, and I was 12, and it was among the first novels that I read that did not shy away from sex. And it was not vanilla hetero cis sex. It's entirely possible that my general sex positivity has a deep root in this book.

Its sequel, Wizard (1980), has a frontispiece detailing the many, many different ways its centaurs could parent offspring (each centaur has human-similar male or female organs in front, a horse-like male organ in the middle, and a horse-like female organ in the back, and you have to fertilize in front to get an egg and in back to get a fetus from the egg).

His original Eight Worlds chronology, mostly in short stories I read later, was remarkable in applying SF to sex. (His setting, of humanity being exiled from Earth by incomprehensible aliens, and this not being the narrative focus of the stories, was distinctive but not quite as remarkable.)

His later revisit to the setting, Steel Beach (1992), was notable for having a primary character have sex changes on a nearly casual basis, and for considering what sexual preference means when you can change bodies nearly casually -- are you hetero regardless of body and therefore switch preference when you switch bodies, or are you female-preferring regardless of which body you're in, etc. Obviously, real human sexual preference is more nuanced and variable than Varley had in mind, but at least he was trying, bless his heart.

Toward the later end of his career, he embarked on a number of consciously Heinleinian pastiches, led by Red Thunder (2003). The later books in the same line ended up in a Heinleinian creepy place, but at least the first one is, as one would say, a rollicking romp through old school SF, complete with a novel technology that solves all personal and systematic problems.

Overall: He wrote well, taking new perspectives on old questions and tackling new questions. He's not perfect, but he exceeds the expectations for his generation.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

John Varley - The Phantom of Kansas - published in Galaxy, UPD, Feb. 1976 (illustration by Stephen Fabian)

[t-underneaththeradardancing]

recent trick of light reality - the persistence of vision - a movie we know we saw and cant quite remember - a heart in winter

now

another morning - colder - another day...

older and thinking of memories of other winters and whiskers on kittens - a good and always...

its early - still dark been up a while trynna commence w the usualusual witch includes checking on the markets - a different kind of illusion

the dread spell of fuckery

outside to feel the air and breathe - still dark and murder sleeping - gray and chilly almost sunrise

left right good we foot as best can keepin on

anyway

hallelujah

[dadsinsuits]

John Varley

[disabled-dippy]

I read “The Persistence of Vision” last night and it was a surprisingly decent commentary on disability despite its age. Unfortunately it is extremely pedophilic (because the author is a pedophile) so I can’t really say I recommend it 😭

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank | 1983

[oldsardens]

John Varley - On the River Thames at Millbank, London