Demon [Mass Market Paperback]

John Varley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1985

The satellite-sized alien Gaea has gone completely insane. She has transformed her love of old movies into monstrous realities. She is Marilyn Monroe. She is King Kong. And now she must be destroyed.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Varley is the author of the Gaean Trilogy (Titan, Wizard, and Demon), Steel Beach, The Golden Globe, Red Thunder, and Mammoth. He has won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his work.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Berkley (November 1, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425082717
• ISBN-13: 978-0425082713
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,623,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An astonishing climax to a magnificent trilogy, November 29, 2000

By 

Beau Yarbrough (Hesperia, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Demon (Gaea) (Mass Market Paperback)

"Demon" is one of those books that seems to have its own soundtrack, as your mind fills with a swirl of dramatic music repeatedly through this book, which is the cinematic equivalent of a great science fiction adventure movie.

Of course, it's not a movie you're likely to see any time soon: Leaving aside the pop culture obsessed alien goddess' obsession with old movies (including something that the owners of the "King Kong" copyright surely wouldn't want shown on the big screen), there's nudity, budget-busting settings and aliens and, the biggest killer of all for adventure movies, lots of smarts in "Demon."

John Varley is clearly having a ball in this third story of the Gaia trilogy, following up "Titan" and "Wizard." Each slowly built in tempo, until in "Demon" it's almost wall-to-wall war with an alien entity INSIDE the same alien entity.

We get believable flawed heroes battling against impossible odds with intelligence and wit and a mind-bending assortment of memorable alien species.

And while the whole trilogy has discussed the thematic issue, it's in "Demon" that the relationship between man and God is really looked at. Some reviewers have thought that Varley's examination of matters of faith in previous novels was the sign of an unreligious or anti-religious author. Apparently, more than two millenia of theological discussions are somehow anti-God for these people. I find Varley's examination of faith in this trilogy, "Steel Beach" and "Millennium" to be bracing and, if anything, to turn my thoughts Heavenward much more than any sappy "Touched by an Angel" story could do. (Of course, I also like Morrow's "Towing Jehovah," so maybe I'm already damned from the get-go.)

I've read far more books over the years than I care to count, but every few years, I dig out my old Science Fiction Book Club copies of Varley's classic trilogy, including the hardback version of "Demon" with the giant naked Marilyn Monroe (!) on the cover and revisit Gaia.

The trilogy is a masterpiece of characterization, setting, plot and theme, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Herbert's "Dune," in my opinion.

A must-read series for fans of science fiction and science fantasy. (And not a bad read for lovers of pop culture, either.)

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bizzarre yet deeply satisfying conclusion., March 13, 2002

By 

"dieselbreeze" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Demon (Gaea) (Mass Market Paperback)

Strange in the extreme is the conclusion of John Varley's Gaea trilogy. You had better read the other books first or you will probably be too bewildered to get beyond the opening scenes!
The story is worth every page, and Cirrocco Jones is one of my favorite heroes in any fiction. She is flawed but commanding and capable, exceedingly determined, charismatic, inspiring and frightening all at the same time. Very much like Ripley from the Alien movies.
Hordes of familiar characters return, having grown and changed in surprising ways from their last appearance in Wizard or Titan. You will marvel at their differences!
Conflict is the operative word in Demon, as this book finishes the saga in a blaze of glory. Although Gaea has lost some of her charm as a virgin territory, having been overrun with refugees from Earth, Titanides still sing and this time Cirrocco's made them into a force to be reckoned with.
Oh, and Gaea's got a new makeover and an entourage that will send you into paroxysms of laughter. Pandaemonium is brilliant!
Please do yourself a favor, and read all of these books. Demon is just the diamond cap on the golden pyramid.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A satisfying conclusion to this imaginative trilogy, June 2, 2002

By 

Rob Shimmin (Urbana, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Demon (Gaea) (Mass Market Paperback)

Demon, the conclusion of the Gaean trilogy, is in my opinion the most satisfying of the three. In the first two books, I frequently got the feeling that Varley had bitten off more than he could chew, character-wise, and so filled in the gap with gratuitous sex scenes and fetishistically detailed descriptions of alien genitalia and reproductive modes. In constrast, Demon confines itself to being an epic adventure and does very well in this role.

Demon is more "stylistic" than the others. It is set up as a triple feature from the pre-cineplex days of motion pictures, broken into pieces like "Newsreel," "Short Subjects," "Feature One," etc... This affectation works well given Demon's subject matter. Gaea's godhood has finally driven her completely insane, and she has decided that all the world should be a film of her devising, that she is the arch-villain, and that it can only end with a hero coming to kill her.

In his descriptions of the insane deity, Varley uses all his considerable resources of imagination and humor. She has taken the incarnate form of a fifty-foot tall Marilyn Monroe and constructed an enormous movie studio / theatre / theme park called Pandemonium, where she and her lieutenants, mostly undead reconstructions of humanity's major religious figures (Martin Luther, Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard), await the coming of a hero and commit various atrocities.

Varley spares none of his imagination in constructing Cirocco's allies for this final conflict, either. The best-constructed of these is Snitch, a small reptilian imp surgically extracted from Cirocco's own brain and a direct link to the mind of Gaea. Many of the characters from the first two novels also return, although in a changed form. For example, Gaby has become a ghost in Gaea's brain, Chris is in the process of turning into a Titanide, and Nasu the anaconda has grown to several kilometers in length.

In short, in the long tradition of epic heroism, Demon places an array of unlikely characters against a self-proclaimed Pure Evil, and in the end, they triumph. It stretches a bit long in places, and many of the inter-character interactions are more than a little thin, but that isn't the point. This is a book about being a hero, and a fairly good one at that.