Customer Reviews

The Barbie Murders

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

"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.

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.

When in God's name is this collection coming back into print? No wonder sf readers often have no sense of history when good, relatively recent stuff like this is unavailable. For shame.

According to the start of this book, it has also been called the Barbie Murders. Yet more of Varley's high quality burst of short fiction collected. No particular standouts, just overall above average to good work for the whole book, with nothing remotely in the ordinary range.

Some of the stories again are in settings used before, The Barbie Murders, etc.

A 3.67 average here, so rather good.

Picnic on Nearside : BAGATELLE - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : THE FUNHOUSE EFFECT - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : THE BARBIE MURDERS - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : EQUINOCTIAL - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : MANIKINS - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : BEATNIK BAYOU - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : GOOD-BYE ROBINSON CRUSOE - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : LOLLIPOP AND THE TAR BABY - John Varley
Picnic on Nearside : PICNIC ON NEARSIDE - John Varley

An expert and the police have a cyborg turned into a nuclear bomb by terrorists to deal with.

4 out of 5


Hell's Snowball last trip Free-Birth hijack.

3.5 out of 5


Standard lookalikes hard to investigate.

4 out of 5


Engineer birth hunt Parameter Symbiote ennui Ringer alternative.

4 out of 5


Male parasite paranoia phantom pregnancy.

3.5 out of 5


Age specific education and punishment.

3.5 out of 5


Transplant Disneyland ghost shark shag shot cash fightback.

3.5 out of 5


Mother love hunt black hole sneaky convo.

3.5 out of 5


No change celibate old bloke chat conkout.

3.5 out of 5




4.5 out of 5