We have just learned that legendary science fiction writer John Varley has passed away in his home in Beaverton, Oregon on December 10, 2025 from complications due to COPD and diabetes. He was 78.
Born John Herbert Varley on August 9, 1947 in Austin TX, ee attended Michigan State University. His first novelette, Picnic on Nearside, released in 1974, established Eight Worlds universe. He would go on to publish roughly 20 more Eight Worlds works, including his first novel The Opiuchi Hotline (1977), the Anna-Louise Bach detective stories, and the Metal Trilogy.
He also penned the Gaean trilogy, including Titan (1979), Wizard (1980), and Demon (1984), and the four-book Thunder and Lightning series, including Red Thunder (2003), Red Lightning (2006), Rolling Thunder (2008), and Dark Lightning (2014).
His standalone novels include Millenium (1983), Mammoth (2005), and Slow Apocalypse (2012). He was a prolific writer of shorter works as well, and was featured in such magazines as Analog, F&SF, and Asimov’s, and in other texts such as New Voices III: The Campbell Award Nominees (1980), Year’s Best SF 9 (2004), and The John Varley Reader: Thirty Years of Short Fiction (2004). Titles include In the Hall of the Martian Kings (1976), Air Raid (1977), Beatnik Bayou (1980), A Christmas Story (2003), and In Fading Suns and Dying Moons” (2003). Much of his work has been translated into other languages.
Varley was afforded recognition by the science fiction community on dozens of occasions. This included 15 Hugo nominations, 9 Nebula nominations, and 40 Locus award nominations. His short story The Pusher (1981) won Hugo and Locus Awards, and novellas The Persistence of Vision (1978) and PRESS ENTER[] (1984) each won the trifecta of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. His books Titan (1979), The Barbie Murders (1980), Blue Champagne (1981), the antology Blue Champagne (1986), and The John Varley Reader all received Locus Awards.
His additional awards included Endeavour, Prometheus, Jupiter and Prix Apollo Awards, two Seiun Awards, and a host of others. He received the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2009.
John Varley will be greatly missed. His unique voice helped define a generation of science fiction storytelling. His health conditions placed such a burden on him that his literary voice fell silent in 2018.
[from a piece presented in Locus Magazine]
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