August 9, today as I write this, is the birhtday of John Varley (1947-2025). We lost him last December.

Varley was never really prolific, but over the course of about half a century, he wrote quite a bit of groundbreaking science fiction. His series about the Eight Worlds and about Anna-Louise Bach are favorites. (BTW, Varley has gone ofn record saying the two series are separate, although they have a lot of similarities.)

I first became aware of Varley when someone left a copy of the January 1979 issue of Analog in my homeroom class. The teacher let me have  it. It contained the first installment of the serialized version of Titan.It was more than a few years before I got my hands on the complete novel.

In the author profile, Varley said his two favorite science fiction writers were Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert. That made an impression on seventh grade me. I looked for books by those two authors.

If I can fit it, I’ll try to read one of the Anna-Louise bach stories later tonight.