[Plura-list] On the occasion of John Varley's quadruple bypass

[Cory Doctorow]

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On Tuesday, I'm helping futurist Brian David Johnson launch his new
book, "Future You" at an event hosted by Powell's Books

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5716148038801/WN_psgDGchIRfaUQOJyvLnvzw

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Today's links

* On the occasion of John Varley's quadruple bypass: Raising funds for a
beloved sf giant.

* This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🧑🏼‍🎤 On the occasion of John Varley's quadruple bypass

John Varley a beloved, versatile, funny, and wildly imaginative sf
writer, recently had a quadruple bypass and is recovering well, but this
is America, so he's also in need of financial support through his recovery.

https://varley.net/nonfiction/news/sending-prayers-to-the-cosmos/

You can donate to Varley's recovery fund via Paypal, which will support
the Varley family's new expenditures (Dan Prall already helped them by
buying the recliner chair John's doctors want him to sleep in).

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=dNqKgSRG8uj8nfj-TZur2bpYQeyutZZyDIey5g1um8HnAVjMH41GAkN52HYOdW8_izAW1ELajNfnQX4t&locale.x=US

When I heard Varley had been hospitalized, I felt that cold grue in my
stomach, the dread that has haunted me not merely through the covid
months, but also over the past decade, as the cohort of writers I grew
up on have entered their 60s and 70s.

The news that Varley's surgery was successful came as an incredible
relief - and with it, the realization that I didn't need to wait for an
obit to write an appreciation of the writers whose work I love so dearly.

Varley is hugely influential upon me. I could never have written my 2003
debut novel DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM without stories like his
1976 OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK - a story that prefigured many of
cyberpunk's central tropes.

Varley's short fiction is incredible - not just Hugo winners like THE
PERSISTENCE OF VISION but also perfect gems like THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE
and THE BARBIE MURDERS - but they all add up to even more than the sum
of their parts.

Much of Varley's work has been set in his "Eight Worlds" universe, where
humans have been evicted from Earth by a mysterious alien race called
"The Invaders," with the rump of the species being pushed out to the
Moon, nearby planets, and the asteroid belts.

Varley's stories happily plunder one another for details of this
scenario, lifting characters, technologies, and settings, but they make
no pretense to being a "future history" of internal consistency.

The Eight Worlds stories and novels are only consistent with one another
when it makes the story better - but when it doesn't, they jettison
inter-tale consistency in favor of narrative. For me, the fact that
writers could do this came as a jaw-dropping revelation.

Varley annihilated the pretense that an sf writer is some kind of oracle
who knows the future - a bit of ghastly fatalism in that it implies that
the future is knowable and thus will arrive irrespective of our choices
today.

Instead, Varley treats his stories as entertainments and allegories,
freed from the "Robert A Timeline" constraints, which allows him to
collage his best ideas into new works, a kind of fan-service that is
pure delight, freed from the tedious pretense of consistency.

This revelation led directly to my novel Walkaway, which incorporates
ideas, props and scenarios from DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM,
EASTERN STANDARD TRIBE, and my other novels, without lumbering the story
with the necessity to make it fit in with their continuity.

Varley is an unabashed plunderer, particularly of Heinlein, mashing up
Heinlein tropes with contemporary ideas, progressive politics, and other
delights to make new works that both pick apart and celebrate Heinlein's
work.

This was always lurking in his work, but it became very explicit with
novels like STEEL BEACH (1992), an absolute ROMP of a book that crosses
THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS with the then-ascendant cyberpunk genre
conventions (which Varley helped invent) to outstanding effect.

I just re-read STEEL BEACH and found it every bit as delightful as I had
in the early 90s, when I hand sold hundreds of copies of it as a
bookseller. It's also the direct ancestor of Ian McDonald's MOON IS A
HARSH MISTRESS-riffing trilogy.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/22/ian-mcdonalds-luna-new-moon-the-moon-is-a-much-much-harsher-mistress/

Varley's work embodies the collaborative spirit of sf, as tropes are
ruthlessly plundered and reworked  without apology. It's a process
that's wonderfully described in my mentor Judith Merril's Hugo-winning
memoir, "Better to Have Loved":

https://memex.craphound.com/2003/08/11/science-fiction-prefigured-the-creative-commons/

"Whereas in other literary fields you wouldn’t dare take an idea from
another writer and use it, because that would be considered plagiarism,
science fiction people loved to build on each other’s stories.

"The business of giving away ideas and promoting other people’s work was
a part of the community at large. The Futurians did this to an amazing
extent. For example, every Futurian had a pen name that included the
family name Conway. A good number of the stories that appeared in
science fiction magazines at the time were written by someone-or-other
Conway."

In other words, amateurs plagiarize, artists steal.

Think of the way that Varley's symbiotic alien spacesuits were
beautfully plundered by Spider and Jeanne Robinson for their own
Hugo-winning STARDANCE.

http://spiderrobinson.com/books.html

I found so many revelations in Varley's work: just the proliferation of
"disneylands" on the Moon was an wonderfully economical bit of
storytelling, an entire implied history of a notoriously bullying
corporation in tatters after an invasion, all in a single, lower-case "d."

And then there's the RED THUNDER books, wherein Varley took apart and
reassmbled Heinlein's "juvies" as parables about the paranoid, post-9/11
America, a country that occupied Iraq, Afghanistan and itself:

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/04/17/the-novel-heinlein-would-have-written-about-gw-bushs-america/

I don't think I'd have written LITTLE BROTHER - a book I thought of as
an anti-authoritarian riff on HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL - if I hadn't
read RED THUNDER.

Varley's work is worth aspiring to: a perfect mix of wildly imaginative
and just plain *fun*. His most recent novel, IRONTOWN BLUES, is an Eight
Worlds hard boiled noir novel starring an uplifted dog detective.

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/08/29/john-varleys-irontown-blues-noir-doggy-science-fiction-from-one-of-the-fields-all-time-greats/

Varley runs a shop for signed copies of his books, though shipping is
slow ("We are strictly a kitchen-table operation. Your book will be
carefully selected from our shelves, lovingly hand-wrapped, and
decorated with real US Postage stamps").

https://varley.net/shop/

If you're looking for a title to order from the shop, may I recommend
2004's "The John Varley Reader: 30 Years of Short Fiction."

https://varley.net/collection/the-john-varley-reader/


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🧑🏼‍🎤 This day in history

#15yrsago Help Peter Beagle sue the film-house that made “The Last
Unicorn”
https://web.archive.org/web/20060205040112/http://www.conlanpress.com/youcanhelp/

#5yrsago Deathless: Cat Valente’s beautiful fantasy of Stalinist Russia
and the Siege of Leningrad
https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/28/deathless-cat-valentes-beautiful-fantasy-of-stalinist-russia-and-the-siege-of-leningrad/

#10yrsago RIP, Diana Wynne Jones
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary

#5yrsago Saudi embassy hired mafiosi to smuggle Turkish PM Erdoğan’s son
out of Italy ahead of money laundering charges
https://web.archive.org/web/20160311095055/http://awdnews.com/top-news/rome%E2%80%99s-police-spokesman-saudi-embassy-helped-erdo%C4%9Fan%E2%80%99s-son-to-escape-the-police-custody-using-a-forged-saudi-passport-and-disguised-as-an-arab-diplomat

#5yrsago The “American College of Pediatricians” is a hate group with
fewer than 200
membershttps://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/03/28/speaking-of-bad-science-never-trust-the-american-college-of-pediatricians

#5yrsago Cop Cabs: The NYPD has at least three fake taxis on NYC’s
streets https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/mar/28/nypd-taxicabs/

#1yrago Boris Johnson has coronavirus
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/27/just-asking-questions/#bojo

#1yrago "Civility" and the Confederate playbook
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/27/just-asking-questions/#just-asking-questions

#1yrago Plutes cash in on stimulus
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/27/just-asking-questions/#stimulus-scam

#1yrago The US is now the epicenter of the pandemic
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/27/just-asking-questions/#suicide-cults

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🧑🏼‍🎤 Colophon

Today's top sources: Damien Sweet.

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Friday's progress: 536 words (121016 total).

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." Yesterday's
progress: 1083 words (42578 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Free Markets
https://craphound.com/podcast/2021/03/22/free-markets/

Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for Brian David Johnson's Future You (Powell's Books), Mar 30,
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5716148038801/WN_psgDGchIRfaUQOJyvLnvzw

* All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing, Apr 13,
https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing

* Interop: Self-Determination vs Dystopia (FITC), Apr 19-21,
https://fitc.ca/presentation/interop/

Recent appearances:

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, and Solarpunk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosdDCrL-4

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

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