The Barbie Murders [Paperback]

John Varley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (September 1, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425045803
• ISBN-13: 978-0425045800
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,377,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not his best, but very good anyway, April 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Barbie Murders (Paperback)

I find Varley's short stories are generally better than his novels. The stories in The Barbie Murders are not quite his best (look for "The Persistance of Vision" -- also out of print) but still worth the time. Favorites: title story, Equinoctals, Picnic on Nearside.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reviewing From Memory, September 16, 2010

By 

Mark "Sorokahdeen" (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Barbie Murders (Paperback)

"I am a bomb, said the bomb..."

Those are the opening words of "Bagatelle" the first of the stories in John Varley's, The Barbie Murders, which impressed me very much when I was a kid. I don't own a copy of it and I haven't reread it in many, many years, but the impressions that remain to me are of a truly wonderful book of short science fiction.

Varley is an articulate and very human science fiction writer. In a sense, he can be thought of as one of those writers who is `in between' by which I mean he is far enough back in time to write prose that is worth reading, while being close enough to the present to avoid the hackneyed storytelling and chiseled-jawed space opera of the Golden Age (if you don't know what I'm talking about, find and read any of E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" series).

As a writer whose best-known works appeared in the Seventies and Eighties, his concern with gender and gender roles (the Gaea Trilogy, the Barbie Murders), and technology (the Barbie Murders, the Ophiuchi hotline) are natural and well-handled. His speculative forays into implanted technologies, biological modification and other science-fiction technological themes are well integrated into stories that can often offer the reader subtle, intelligent subtexts (e.g., does religion itself create the possibility of sin?) and his work creates a natural background for the nihilistic science fiction that was to be written by the young, ambitious science-fiction authors of the eighty's cyberpunk genre like William Gibson, John Shirley and Bruce Sterling.

As I wrote before, I am reviewing from memory, but my memory tells me that the Barbie Murders is an excellent collection. Perhaps dated some thirty years after its first publication, but one with a characteristic that is too often lacking in a world where so much science fiction is so readily available: it has real staying power.

The Barbie Murders has writing and ideas that stick in the mind long after you've finished reading it and that is enough to make it special.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but more variety would be nice, March 10, 2000

By 

Babytoxie (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Barbie Murders (Paperback)

The stories in this collection are very enjoyable, and if you've read The Ophiuchi Hotline, some of them provide excellent background for that novel's characters and events, especially a great story featuring Parameter-Solstice. I would have liked more variety between the stories, though. They're all set in Varley's "occupied Earth" universe, and while they have do have interesting plots, they contain the same themes in the background: sexual ambiguity, body manipulation, etc. I'd like to see Varley move away from this general setting and try something different.

I agree that this book should be put back in print, along with Ophiuchi Hotline, Persistence of Vision, and a mass-market edition of Millennium. It's hard to understand why Varley's best work is either out of print or in expensive trade editions, while his worst work (Steel Beach, Titan) is still available.