Conference noted::sf

I'd like a discussion of John Varley, and this seems a good place to put it,
if no-one objects. Personally, I think he's an extrodinary writer, with a
fine talent for close examination of the human aspects of a specific tech-
nical subject. (e.g., "The Pusher", which I think won a Hugo, examines a
particular aspect of "time dialation from lightspeed travel" with a lot
more sensativity than I have read before.) On the other hand, he can write
startlingly coarse or nausiating descriptions with a sense of reality that
I find really gut-wrenching. (In fact, "Air Raid" was the first Varley I
read, and I didn't like it, nor the expanded version, "Millenium").

Many people seem to hate his stuff. I can see some reasons, but for pure
imagination he seems one of the best. I suspect many will disagree with
this.

Many more have never heard of him. This is interesting, because he's won
two Hugo's and a Nebula, and he hasn't been around very long.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to "Demon", also. Titan and its inhabitants
are really fun, and Varley has set up an "anything goes" locale for the
series...

John O.

I agree, I like his stuff too.  I thouroughly enjoyed Millenium (I think
the off-beat humor added to it), and I await a paper back version of
"Demon" (I haven't found one yet.  If anyone else has, let me know).

I think Varley is one of the best to come along in quite awhile.  "Titan"
and "Wizard" were both very good -- I look forward to "Demon."  But you
really should see his short stuff for an example of pyrotechnic imagination.
"The Persistence of Vision" and "The Barbie Murders" are both very good
anthologies of his short stories.

Re .2: The edition I saw was paperbound, but in the larger size; sells
for 6.95. It was at the Paperback Booksmith, or whatever that is,
up at the Mall of New Hampshire.

-b

I also understand that there is a small print run of hardcover copies
of DEMON for libraries.

I am a bit of a Varley fanatic. I haven't read the Gaea series yet (I hate
reading trilogies a piece at a time), but I've liked almost everything else
I've read by him. I think he works better in the short story format than
the novel.

--- jerry

The Paperback Booksmith has nothing by Varley other than Titan and
Wizard.  Argh.  I have just discovered this stuff, and want to
read lots more.  The inhabitants and structure of Gaea are the
most sweeping creative effort I have ever come across - better
than Ringworld by far.  And his characters have a lot of depth.
He really makes you care about them.  (Just finished Wizard last
night at 1:30 am)

   Well, Paul if you come through Greenville, The Open Book in Loehmann's 
Plaza has Demon in Trade paperback.

tee hee
in a helpful mood today,
tlh

I bought and finished "Demon" in three long nights of reading. It's a BIG
story! Yes, it pretty well concludes the trilogy, although there are certainly
openings for further stories. I can't say much about it without a lot of
**** spoiler **** warnings, so I won't.

Just this: it's as grand in sweep and scale, and as sensitive in its human
scale, as "Titan" and "Wizard" are. Maybe more so- it's been a while since
I finished "Wizard". Some 400+ pages of little type on big pages and every
word is a new bit of magic. Well, almost. Slam-bang ending, too. Varley's
recent exposure to the movie biz shows heavily, but he doesn't take it
seriously. One of the Sam Goldwyn quotes in the book describes the book
in pretty good metaphor:

      "We want a story that starts with an earthquake
      and then works up to a climax."

To which Varley might have simply said,

       "Oh, I can do better than that...".

John O.

I just started reading "Millenium", and was immediately caught up in
it. Varley has a marvelous talent for talking about the weirdest
things in such a way as to make them comprehensible without actually
explaining anything. Well, not explaining MUCH. Part of the fun of
"Millenium" is that the first couple of chapters are blatant parallels
between the 20th-century rum-soaked air-accident investigator and the
45th-century "snatch team" leader, right down to the casual remarks
about the Mr. Coffee vs. the revitalizer.

(I will confess, too, that I enjoyed the twist that the story puts on
major catastrophes - and before you thing I'm getting even more ghoulish
than usual, read the book! No wonder they never found the wreckage of
the "Titanic"...)

There are plenty of holes in the story - anything dealing with time travel
tends to be that way. Varley has done a great job of rationalizing many of
the larger questions, and the rest are hand-waved very well; at least, I
found myself simply enjoying things and not worrying about how possible
it all was. (This might be a great candidate for the SF vs. F debate, too;
it's ostensibly SF, because of all the technical jargon from the futuristic
people, but if you look closely you'll find that most of their best stuff
is explained away as "Well, we don't know where it came from; some long-
lost civilization left it here millenia ago," which smacks of fantasy to
me. But it feels like SF, and that's what I'd call it.)

You Varley fans have probably read this long since, as it's been out since
'83, but those of you who haven't discovered him yet may want to take a
look. It's a fascinating time-travel story, combined with some good old
drama, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

-b
  

	As an aside...  The wreckage of the Titanic is known and has been
	dived on..  It's in about 385 feet of VERY cold water gently resting
	on its port side if I remember correctly...

							mike

I'm another Varley fan.  I strongly recommend _The Persistence of Vision_.
I really like Millenium, more so than Wizard, ehich I gave up on, though
I liked  Titan.  I'm surprised nobody's mentioned _The Ophiuchi Hotline_,
which I like best of all.

Re .10:

No, no, no - that's the "Andrea Doria". (Or is that the one resting in
90-odd feet of rather warm water...)

At any rate, as far as I've heard - and "Gory Details" Ravan tries her
best to follow the news about shipwrecks, believe me - there have been lots
of expeditions (well, two or three, anyway) trying to locate the "Titanic",
but with no definitive success. The most recent report I read on the matter
(published, I confess, about two years ago) is that they found a number of
possible sonar/metal-detector/whatever-they-were-using hits, none of which
was sufficiently clear to be positively identified as a ship at all, much
less the "Titanic" - and then they ran out of both money and time and had
to quit. Furthermore, all of the images they found indicated severe
fragmentation, so if they did point to sunken ships the ships involved were
broken up.

[If somebody DID find the "Titanic" and didn't tell ME about it, boy am
I going to be pissed!]

-b

re:.10

I have to side with Beth. I don't recall hearing that the TITANIC was
found, and even so, it's a hell of a lot farther down than 300+ feet.
Which, apropos of nothing (at least, not of the subject of this note)
leads me to recommend the book RAISE THE TITANIC! by Clive Cussler.
Cussler is an underwater salvage expert (most of his novels deal with
salvage in one form or another), and the novel provides an interesting
view of the problems such an operation would entail. And it's science
fiction, so it's not even outside the scope of this notesfile!

But back to Varley...

re:.11

I liked THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE except for the end, which I thought weak.
I also was upset by his giving an explanation for why the Invaders took
over Earth. It was certainly ingenious, but I felt that it was one of
those things that should remain a mystery.

The interesting thing about MILLENIUM --- actually, I blush to confess
that I haven't read the novel, but I have read a few times the short story,
"Air Raid" that it's expanded from --- is that the basic concept of using
a time gate to rescue people from doomed planes, ships, etc. is one that
I had in my head for a number of years, but I couldn't come up with a
story to use it in. Imagine my surprise when I read "Air Raid" by Herb
Boehm (a pseudonym Varley used for the story) in the first issue of ASIMOV'S
SF MAGAZINE and not only saw my idea turned into a story, but a well-done
story at that!

--- jerry

	Sorry about that one guys.. I was caught between two Cussler
	novels and mixed up some depths...  (embarrassed grin)  I'm a 
	big fan of the Dirk Pitt novels... I'm re-reading Vixen 03 right
	now.. (maybe that's where I got sidetracked...)
                                                            
	I stand corrected...
							mike

re:.-1

Yeah for Mike! Another Dirk Pitt fan. I haven't gotten around to reading
the latest one, DEEP SIX, yet, but I've loved all of Cussler's other novels.

--- jerry

	I read it last month.. Not bad from what I can remember... I'll look
	at it again to re-fresh my memory.. :-)  (Getting old.. :-) :-))

	Do you really think this is sci-fi Jerry?  Maybe Technology-Fiction?
	Great books though!! I reccomend them!
                                                            
	I wonder who played Dirk in "Raised the Titanic" at the movies? I'll
	have to check the video shop and see if they have that one..

							mike

Well, yes, RAISE THE TITANIC is science fiction. Remember, the reason the
government wanted to raise her was because they thought it contained the
only large amount of the radioactive element they needed to power a force
field device. Besides, it took place in 1989 (the book was published in 1977).

As for who played Pitt in the movie, it was Richard Jordan, who I've seen
only two other times that I can recall: he played the nephew in THE YAKUZA,
and Duncan Idaho in DUNE. The movie has been unmercifully castigated since
it first came out, but when I finally saw it a couple of years ago, I didn't
think it was all that bad. Certainly not the greatest piece of cinematic
achievement, but not dreck, either. And it had one of my favorite movie lines
(quoted not verbatim, unfortunately):

Pitt: "Where is the escort ship going?"

Navy Man: "We received a distress call. They have to help out."

Pitt: "*Distress* call? Here we are in the middle of the ocean, with a major
	storm headed this way, and standing on a ship that never learned to
	do anything but sink. *That's* distress!

--- jerry

Maybe Cussler deserves a note of his own - then again, changing subjects
in mid-stream is a time-honored tradition.

I enjoyed "Raise the Titanic," both book and movie. The high point of
the film, of course, was the sequence in which the ship was actually
raised; I just *love* that kind of mighty-machinery stuff, and this
was relatively well done. There's something extremely powerful in the
image of the long-sunken ship wrenching itself off the bottom and
speeding ever faster towards the surface. It's things like that that
make me almost hope they never find the real ship, as it is very unlikely
that, even if it's still intact, it could really be raised in such a
spectacular and successful fashion.

-b

re: Raise the Titanic.

Being raised in the nautical tradition, the touch of the book that I liked
the best was the reception of the Titanic in New York harbour... the salute
from the other ships because of the completion of the maiden voyage (albeit
an interrupted maiden voyage) was one of the few scenes in any book that
brought (cliche) "a lump to my throat".

I guess I'm an incurable romantic in some areas.

Nigel

	Hmmm....  I'm still not sure it's science fiction but I'll go 
	along with it for the sake of arguement.. :-) Does this mean I
	can start a note on Cusslers novels in here?  I'll try and we'll
	see how far we get.. :-)
                                                    
	Nigel, I never thought of you as the incurable romantic type.. :-)

						mike

    back to Varley,
    as i think we all know now, the TITANIC has been found and quietly
    resting on the bottom of the Atlantic.
    I don't think this diminishes the story line of MILLENIUM at all.
    
    all you varley fans, did you know that "overdrawn at the memory
    bank" was made into a PBS episode of AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE? It was
    on last year on WGBH in Boston, and was pretty faithful to the story,
    but the ending was a little different. Personally I liked the story
    better, but the dramatization was very good.
    
    sm

    I wouldn't say it was very faithful to the story at all. The
    very basic concept was still there, but that's about it. I
    enjoyed the PBS "thing" more than most people did, but it was
    still a bastardization of the original, which is my favorite
    Varley story (well, maybe second favorite).
    
    --- jerry

    
      Was his short story, "Air Raid" ever made into a movie?  I read
    that the film rights were sold.
    
    
                      PC

    No, it wasn't. Problems of one sort or another kept cropping up.
    The novel MILLENIUM was intended to serve as a novelization of
    the movie, and when the movie project died, Varley went ahead and
    had the book published anyway.
    
    --- jerry

    	I heard Varley  talk about this at the Atlanta Fantasy Fair
    at the end os August this year.  
    
    	There has been a revival of interest in the movie just recently.
    He's not holding his breath but it might make it to the screen yet.
    
    	Interestingly ewnough, he said he was contacted to write a script
    for "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" (by Heinlein) for a movie.  The
    move fell through when the studio head changed but who knows!
    
    tlh
    

    The movie MILLENIUM is on again. It's now (or Real Soon Now) in
    production in North Carolina. I heard this from a reliable
    source. A friend of mine who does freelance assignments for
    STARLOG is supposed to do an article on the MILLENIUM production.
    
    --- jerry

    re:.27
    
    --- jerry

Anyone know what's happened to Mr. Varley? Has he gotten lost in Hollywood,
hit by a bus, or what? I'm getting tired of re-reading all of his old
stuff.

b

    Mr. Varley is alive and well in Eugene, OR. He's been very involved in
    the production of MILLENIUM (a project which died in Hollywood and
    was reborn with a Canadian production company and should be released
    Real Soon Now). Varley reportedly likes to stay focused on one thing
    at a time rather than juggling a number of projects at once, which
    may explain why we haven't seen anything from him in recent years
    except the BLUE CHAMPAGNE collection. He also reportedly was treated
    terribly in Hollywood -- not an uncommon experience for a 
    writer -- and it's taken awhile for him to recover from the experience.
    
    Fred

    
    
    	MILLENIUM???? Please more detail.
    
    Charlie

    Sorry I really don't have much more info than I mentioned in .30,
    and what has already been said in this topic from replies .23 on.
    I talked to Varley briefly at Nolacon, but our discussion of
    the movie didn't go into much more detail than .30. I also know some
    people who went over to Varley's house for a Christmas party las
    year, and they said they had lots of fun playing with props from the 
    movie. :-)
    
    Fred      

What puzzled me about Varley's whereabouts was that fact that he had several
years of high productivity (novels, short stories in everyone's "Best 
Stories of 19xx" anthologies), but has been "inactive" for quite a while.

I recall reading some notes attached to one of his works which related
that he had been treated poorly by one of his publishers. It occurred to me
that he might have become so upset that he quit writing completely. That, to 
me and probably a few other of his faithful fans, would be a tragedy.

Fred, thanks for confirming that he's at least still alive and working on 
something. I look forward to the film version of "Millenium".

bob

    As usually happens, when I say I don't have more info, more info
    comes a-callin' the next day. This is from LOCUS (March 1989) ...
    
    "Probably the most awaited picture of the season by real science fiction
    buffs is MILLENIUM, starring Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, and
    Daniel J. Travanti (the "Captain" in TV's "Hill Street Blues").
    John Varley adapted from his own book, while Michael Anderson ("Logan's
    Run," "Around the World in 80 Days") directs. A possible heavy hitter."
    
    Fred

  Questionable cast? Okay I think Travanti was good in Hillstreet and
    he had good review for some other work but...
    
    Kris Kristopherson - lousy singer , lousy actor
    Cheryl Ladd - Charlie's Angels , need I say more.
    
    						- John
    

    
    	Kris Kristopherson will probably play the robot, so he should be
    OK!
    
    		Ian G.

    Re .36:
    
    Sorry, but I have seen some stills from the movie and it looks like
    Kristopherson is playing the lead.  Which, considering what I think
    of the book, is about right.

Saw (actually heard) an ad for Millenium on TV last night. All I heard
was a list of plane crashes, "... - no survivors." Opens Friday at a 
theater near you.

                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /

    I saw the preview for it the other night. It looks very exciting.
    I don't know how it's going to play, though.

    Did anybody actually see Millenium before it crashed?  The reviews
    were pretty abysmal.
    
    len.
    

    I saw it and you didn't miss anything, Len. The book was probably TOO
    faithful to the movie; the story's jumping from this time period to
    that one to this one in between to... was probably much too confusing
    for anyone who hadn't read the book. For example, Cheryl Ladd, the
    woman from the future, smokes continuously because she's evolved to a
    highly polluted envirnoment and can't breathe our air. There was no
    explanation of this in the movie, so far as I can recall, just tons of
    smoking.
    
    Cheryl Ladd was fine, as was the Hill Street guy, but Kristopherson was 
    bad enough to kill the move. The view of the distant future was well done,
    although not as horrible as in Varley's book. I liked the robot; he was
    MUCH more human than Kris. The movie couldn't deliver the metaphysical
    punchline in the book, though.
    
    My REAL question is: Is there more Varley coming? I'm tired of finding
    the V's and discovering nothing new.
    
    - Hoyt

    A bit late to reply, but...
    
    We rented the video. My wife and I are both SF fans, my 16 year old
    daughter isn't. I had read the book.
    
    The movie stuck pretty closely to the book in many ways, but left out
    some key pieces, notably the message sent by the Cheryl Ladd character
    to herself, and the final twist in the book where "all is revealed".
    
    My daughter enjoyed some of it, but likes to kid me about stories of
    the future where "blue paraplegics" are in charge of things, and people
    have plastic faces. If I could find the book, maybe she'd understand
    what was weak in the movie.
    
    The ending was just too Hollywood. The time storm is ripping the place
    to shreds, there are lots of sparks, and the aircraft passengers walk
    into the time gate, or whatever it is called, like a bunch of zombies.
    It really just dribbled off at the end.
    
    - Richard

I finished it fairly recently.  I think we discussed this in another 
note, but right now I can't think of which one.  My early impression
was that it was a good read, but it didn't seem to be going anyplace.
But soon after that it got to the can't put down stage and my overall
impression is to recommend it highly.  It at first seemed to be
a series of interesting vignettes, but lacking in cohesion.  Eventually
it did get tied together and I really enjoyed it.  Perhaps it is my
style of reading these days (sneaking what time I can between work/kids/chores)
that colored my early impressions.  If something doesn't appeal to me
quickly, I may not finish it.  As an example, I've currently put aside
C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station (which I have in paperback) in favor of
David Brin's "Glory Season" (which was due last weekend at the library!).
I suspect I will pickup Downbelow again, but I've read a lot of Brin,
and little of Cherryh, and while I can see and appreciate the craft
of her writing, things are a little too dark and terse for that
must finish feeling.

PeterT

    I just started to read "Steel Beach".

    The premise:
      It is 200 years this humans lost the planet earth to aliens
    protecting the dolphins and the whales. The humans on earth were
    killed unless they left the planet and went to the moon. 
       The moon has reached a sophisticated cyberpunk society. Pure
    humans do not exist. Every human has been modified to a varying
    degree. Death by age or injury is unknown. Death by suicide is 
    the only form of death. Our hero is 100 years old and a reporter.
    His boss wants him to write a column reporting the differences 
    between how things are now and how they used to be. He is assigned
    a 17 year old assistent who only knows now and a 200+ year old 
    fighter/ex-reporter whow was born and raised on earth. They start
    writing articles about how things were on earth 200 years ago compared 
    to now.
        Little side notes:  The 17 year old assitant is young, inocent child 
    of her time, slightly modified by choice and heavily modified by lack of 
    gravity. She is also hopelessly in love with our hero. The 
    fighter/ex-reporter is an expert on martial arts and a wise man in an 
    earth gruff way. Man has lost most interest in the ecology and wildlife. 
    People live in the most pecular ways just to add interest to life. The 
    search for pleasure and experience dominate people's lives. Sex plays a 
    big portion in this search but so does various form of self destruction. 
    One of our hero's favorite games is to commit suicide but not declare it 
    so he is revived.
               
    
    
             I will tell you more After I have finished the book.
                   Jeff peters

Ever the see the Front Page_ with Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and
Raplh Bellamy?  Rosalind Russell played the character of Hildy Johnson.  

I think Steel Beach is my favorite Varley novel.  I think he does short
stories better ...

    
    I started it, got about halfway through and then stopped in favor of
    Jack Vance's Ecce and Old Earth, which got interrupted in favor of
    Asimov's final Foundation book (Forward the Foundation?), which I read
    straight through.  It sent me all the way back to The Currents of
    Space, which I just finished.  I can't find my copies of Pebble in the
    Sky and Caves of Steel, or I'd be reading them now. 
    
    I generally like Varley, but even as far into Steel Beach as I am, it
    still doesn't seem to be going anywhere.  I'll probably finish the
    Vance first, and then resume Steel Beach, but there's a new Gibson out
    there (Virtual Light), and I believe the successor to Ecce and Old Earth
    is now out (Throy).
    
    len.
    

I found Steel Beach to be a quicker read than Ecce and Old Earth, which
I also enjoyed.  Things really start to pick up during the bicentennial
clelbration of the invasion.  That sort of gives a marker without revealing
anything.  Of course that is 1/2 to 2/3rd's into the book, but it's
still enjoyable, if seemingly disconnected reading up till then.

Hmmm, Ecce and Old Earth seemed complete at the end, but I guess I could
still see some loose ends untied.

PeterT

    I finished Steel Beach a couple of months ago. I liked it. 
    
    Possible spoiler follows...
    
    The most memorable scene is the dog, Winston, in his little space suit
    trying to take a leak on the Lunar surface. I just about hurt myself
    laughing so hard. 
    
    - Russ. 

re: .46

And it was remade (perhaps under a different title) with Jack Lemmon
and Walter Mathau.  Of course, they left out the romantic aspects 
(but consider if Varley had done the remake).

   Gary

    
    re .49 - I just got to the chapter were the bicentennial celebration
    occurs.  This is actually almost 3/4s of the way through the book.  A
    long time to wait (>300 pps) for things to pick up and sort out.
    
    I don't know if Ecce and Old Earth needs a sequel (I'm nowhere near far
    enough into it to make a judgement), but I'm pretty sure I've seen a
    Vance hardcover titled Throy, which would place it in the Araminta
    Station universe, along with Ecce and Old Earth.
    
    len.
    

re: Steel Beach 

** Spoiler **



I enjoyed the book up until the last 30 pages or so.  When Hildy had the baby,
I knew I was looking at the Varley equivalent of a Star Trek 'red shirt' and 
it really pissed me off.  Killing off the kid (SIDS, no less) served no purpose
other than to bum out the reader.

-- Tony

    Having just read "Steel Beach", the problem that I had with the book,
    apart from those already noted regarding disjointedness and the time it
    takes for the book to get focussed, is that the eponymous metaphor is
    left completely unresolved i.e. man is left flapping on the beach with
    barely a hint of how we metaphorically deal with this. I didn't expect a
    riding off into the sunset ending but I wanted some kind of direction.
    
    Is it that Varley plans a sequel?
    
    A little more discussion follows FF.
    
    The Heinleiners are raised as a plausible direction from which the next
    step will come although they are working the problem in all directions
    at once and may be decades from an answer. With the demise of the CC
    and the rethinking that will occur as a result of the Big Glitch the rest
    of the Lunar society doesn't look like contributing much for a while.