The persistence of vision
Introduction * Algis Budrys * in The Phantom of Kansas * nv Galaxy Feb '76 Air Raid [as by Herb Boehm] * ss IASFM Spr '77 Retrograde Summer * nv F&SF Feb '75 The Black Hole Passes * nv F&SF Jun '75 In the Hall of the Martian Kings * na F&SF Feb '77 In the Bowl * nv F&SF Dec '75 Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance * nv Galaxy Jul '76 Overdrawn at the Memory Bank * nv Galaxy May '76 The Persistence of Vision * na F&SF Mar '78
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
2people
2016–2025years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This is one of the things I like most about his writing. In the scifi-whodunnit The Barbie Murders the concept of changing your body without too much trouble is used by a cult of people who all look exactly the same — lack of genitalia (i.e., 'Barbie'-like) included.
Varley wrote very much like Heinlein, but with the edgier parts of libertarianism shaved off.
Anyone looking for recommendations for reading Varley would do well to pick up some short story collections like The Persistence of Vision, The Barbie Murders, or Blue Champagne.
For a solid trilogy I can recommend the Gaea Trilogy (Titan, Wizard, and Demon), but that includes a lot of (fun!) cultural references which may be a tad harder on readers under 40.
His Eight Worlds books are great fun to read too. Pick up The Ophiuchi Hotline and see what you think to get a feel for those. These can be read independently of each other.
For young adults and anyone looking to read some scifi not quite as heavy and more reminiscent of Heinlein's juveniles, the Thunder and Lightning four book series is quite entertaining. One prescient social development he predicted there is that for an event you weren't present at to be believable (like something shown in a news broadcast or viral video) you would want a friend or a friend-of-a-friend to confirm it. If nobody was actually there, it was probably fake.
- His stories "Equinoctal", "The Phantom of Kansas" [0] are big hits at scifi reading groups. And "The Persistence of Vision" is a well-known classic.
[0] https://varley.net/excerpt/the-phantom-of-kansas-full-text/
- I always liked John Varley's take on those topics — in some of his short stories in particular (collected in The Persistence of Vision, The Barbie Murders, and Blue Champagne, amongst others).
- I've read all six novels of David Brin's Uplift trilogies this past year. If you enjoy sci-fi written with a sound grasp of ecological issues and an intriguing take on galactic society, have a look at these books.
Also, dolphins in space.
If you are unfamiliar with this author, you may remember him from his essay on a particular persistent trope in sci-fi writing linked on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13040930
I enjoyed the Uplift series (written in the eighties and nineties) a lot, and was pleasantly surprised to learn of a short story bundle that came out just this year. It includes a novelette that takes place in the Uplift universe, wrapping up some loose ends.
The story bundle is named Insistence of Vision, named for the opening story. The name is indubitably a nod to John Varley's (sublime!) short story The Persistence of Vision (also the name of the story bundle it is collected in, recommended for any sci-fi fan). I always find short sci-fi stories refreshing in that they provide a chance to explore more radical ideas and settings that would be hard to facilitate in longer works. Brin is one of those authors who succeeds in titillating the reader's imagination with interesting what-ifs and extrapolations without feeling contrived. Recommended.
