John Varley (author)


John Herbert Varley was an American science fiction writer who won Hugo and Nebula awards for novellas including The Persistence of Vision and PRESS ENTER ■.

Life and career

Varley was born in Austin, Texas, on August 9, 1947. He grew up in Fort Worth, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, graduated from Nederland High School—all in Texas—and went to Michigan State University on a National Merit Scholarship. He started as a physics major, switched to English, then left school before his 20th birthday and arrived in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco just in time for the "Summer of Love" in 1967. There he worked at various unskilled jobs, depended on St. Anthony's Mission for meals, and panhandled outside the Cala Market on Stanyan Street before deciding that writing had to be a better way to make a living. He was serendipitously present at Woodstock in 1969 when his car ran out of gas a half-mile away. He also lived at various times in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, New York City, San Francisco again, Berkeley, and Los Angeles.
He wrote several novels and numerous short stories, many of them in a future history, "The Eight Worlds". These stories are set a century or two after a race of mysterious and omnipotent aliens, the Invaders, have almost completely eradicated humans from the Earth. But humans have inhabited virtually every other corner of the Solar System, often through the use of biological modifications learned, in part, by eavesdropping on alien communications.
Varley's "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" was adapted and televised for PBS in 1983. In addition, two of his short stories were adapted into episodes of the short-lived 1998 Sci-Fi Channel TV series Welcome to Paradox.
Varley spent some years in Hollywood but the only tangible result of this stint was the film Millennium. Of his Millennium experience Varley said:
Varley's work was compared to that of Robert A. Heinlein by the Canadian SF critic, editor, and author John Clute.
In 2021, Varley announced a series of health problems including a quadruple bypass, COVID-19, and bacterial pneumonia. Colleagues organized a crowdfunding campaign to pay his expenses while he was unable to write. At that time he described himself as living near Vancouver, Washington.
Varley died in Beaverton, Oregon, on December 10, 2025, at the age of 78.

Novels

Short story collections

Varley won the Hugo Award three times:
  • 1979: Novella—"The Persistence of Vision"
  • 1982: Short Story—"The Pusher"
  • 1985: Novella—"Press Enter■"
He was nominated a further twelve times.
Varley won the Nebula Award twice:
  • 1979: Novella—" The Persistence of Vision"
  • 1985: Novella—"Press Enter■"
He was nominated a further six times.
Varley won the Locus Award ten times:
  • 1976: Special Locus Award—four novelettes in Top 10
  • 1979: Novelette—"The Barbie Murders"
  • 1979: Novella—"The Persistence of Vision"
  • 1979: Single Author Collection—The Persistence of Vision
  • 1980: SF Novel—Titan
  • 1981: Single Author Collection—The Barbie Murders
  • 1982: Novella—"Blue Champagne"
  • 1982: Short Story—"The Pusher"
  • 1985: Novella—"Press Enter■"
  • 1987: Collection—Blue Champagne
He also won the Jupiter Award, the Prix Tour-Apollo Award, several Seiun Awards, Endeavour Award, 2009 Robert A. Heinlein Award, and others.