John Varley

John Varley is a bestselling science fiction author best known for his novels on Big Ideas, compelling characters, and plausible science. He wrote his first piece of fiction “Picnic on Nearside,” a short story in 1974 before he published his world-beating debut novel “The Ophiuchi Hotline” in 1977. His “Eight World” series that would become his most popular is about the future in a densely populated solar system, sentient black holes, gigantic themes, fluid genders, mind uploading and more. Varley was brought up in Austin Texas, and spent much of his childhood on a farm where he used to run behind DDT spraying trucks getting bitten by mosquitoes. Varley got out of the hellish humidity of his hometown when he won the National Merit Scholar and went to study Physics at Michigan State University. He soon dropped out of college and spent a year on the road with a friend before ending up in San Francisco. After a failed attempt at becoming a hippie, he went back to crisscrossing the country until he decided to become a science fiction author in 1973.