I met John Varley once, quite by chance, years ago. He and his partner Lee Emmett were holding a rummage sale, and I just happened to see their ad in the Portland Oregonian in time to make it down the hill.

It was a rather sad occasion—they had just lost the lease on their apartment, a gigantic, ramshackle abode that took up the whole upper floor of a two-story building with a beautiful view across the Willamette River to downtown. Beneath them was an old Italian restaurant called the Monte Carlo More...

A terrifying apocalyptic story!

My Take
Wow. Just, wow. It starts out like an action suspense with black ops swarming, but soon disintegrates into a terrifying nightmare. Varley caught hold of my imagination so well that I actually was outside in the "real" world running errands---and I realized I was wary about being out in the open. I was worrying that someone might leap out and attack!

I mean, duh, it was just a story. And one that affected my thinking in real life. The effect only lasted a few More...

I'm a big Varley fan. The whole Titan-Wizard-Demon series was amazing and I must confess to having read them more than once. This book, however, was a disappointment. Way too much ink was ejaculated on the cartography associated with Los Angles and I just turned the pages when he spent time talking about the street layouts and neighborhood characteristics. It seemed egotistical and flatulent at the same time, I did not enjoy it, either way.

The basic story is that a Hollywood writer has insight More...

Note: Spoilers!
I visit John Varley's website so I knew going in that this was not a science fiction book. I also knew better than to start reading in the late evening, but I did it anyway because it's a new John Varley book! I finally finished the book after the sun came up the next morning, and I have no regrets.

The scenario seems entirely plausible to me, and utterly frightening. I've seen complaints about excessive detail on LA's geography, but that didn't bother me at all even though I have More...

I've read a number of books in the curious genre of science fiction that attempts to describe a vision of the future after some apocalyptic event such as nuclear war, peak oil, viral plague, or electromagnetic pulse. (Earth Abides, World Made by Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Alas Babylon, Down to a Sunless Sea, One Second After).These books follow a basic formula where there is 1) a horrific event that destroys or seriously damages large parts of the globe, 2) survivors divided up into good guys an More...

For a book to merit five stars, it has to be one that I finish in a few days. If I putter along with it for two or three weeks chances are it was decent, but didn't quite pull me in and along. SLOW APOCALYPSE had me engaged and turning pages with abandon. It's not a flashy YA dystopian-world's-end fashion statement. It's more than that.

It also doesn't foist on the reader multiple perspectives that many disaster books favor. You know the ones where the characters are geographically, socially and More...

This is quite a good post apocalyptic thriller. Although there in lies the rub. It's not a thriller. Not at all. It's a slow build (as the title would imply!), and a little on the anti-climactic side. It just feels like there should have been more. But, the ideas are great, the character building is amazing, and you can feel the angst of the character's decisions.

Also, if you plan on visiting the Greater Los Angeles area, you could take this as a guide book. Never have I read so much geographic More...

Growing up I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. Two of my all time favorite authors are from these genres, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. Bradbury led me too Charles De lint and the probably to my current infatuation with the new series style urban fantasy. Heinlein led me directly to four authors that seemed to do his "future history" style related stories, Joe Haldeman, John Scalzi, Orson Scott Card, and my favorite,current science fiction writer, John Varley. One of the things I re More...

Great Book. 4.5/5 easily bumped to a 5 despite a few nitpics...and really, they are minor. Overall, the story is basically similiar to some others I've read...The Shell Game (Lack of Oil being an issue) & Super Volcano (Apocolpytical happenings happening in real time) but it handles the topics better than both. This story is about a biological agent that attacks petrolium in the group and causes a lot of issues...which lead to more...and more...which lead to the de-evolution of society as we More...

I've loved John Varley's books for the past 30 years or so, and it's good to see he's still producing highly readable, involving stories. But it is strange to see him moving so decidedly from science fiction into something that's about halfway between a Michael Crichton thriller and an agitprop doc. SLOW APOCALYPSE offers a brief explanation of a chemical-warfare-induced meltdown of the world's oil, and then the rest of the novel largely just tracks how society would fall apart after that, parti More...

I've just 2 words for Varley's effort to join the ecofiction/apocalypse club: derivative and contrived. It this really the same author that wrote the Gaean Trilogy?

I've been reading such works for decades and a few stand out. The earliest I recall is When Worlds Collide from 1934 to the massive The Stand. Works by such authors as Margaret Atwood and the young Turk Paolo Bacigalupi and even Stephen Baxter come to mind. I am familiar with the subgenre in books and films (The Road Warrior is more w More...

Someone has sabotaged all the oil fields in the world with bacteria and panic build slowly as rationing begins. Disaster hits LA and suddenly the characters find themselves trapped with millions of others as food and water quickly disappear. A string of natural and unnatural disasters follow.

Some strengths were the claustrophobic feeling of the world narrowing down to your city, then your neighborhood, then your immediate surroundings. And having recently been to the LA area and the subject of t More...

Three and a half stars out of five. It's been a while since I last read read anything by Varley, the last time being the early to mid nineties and the Book was Steel Beach. I'm familiar mainly with his "Eight Worlds" stories which include Steel Beach, The Ophiuchi Hotline and The Barbie Murders. This is the first book I have read by him set outside of that universe.

I want to quickly address what I didn't like about the book and get that out of the way, because there are some redeeming things to More...

I had never read anything by this author and was very pleased with the first shot I gave him at sitting on my shelves. This is an interesting lets go green book. A supposed chemical plague is released into the oil wells of the Middle East and spreads quickly to oil wells across the globe. Herein lies the tale of one Los Angeles families plight as the world quickly turns into one big turd ball. And of course with the loss of all of our petroleum products things are going to snowball real quickly. More...

Good after-the-day book - a heck of a lot better than the current Revolution TV series. Kind of petered out a little bit early but was good while it lasted. Probably even better if I knew and appreciated LA and the surrounding countryside. Mostly I had to be satisfied with the various non-fiction stuff I had read set in the Laurel Canyon area - but this book in general rang true. The characters typically did reasonable stuff - not super smart - but far from dumb. I didn't spend this book yelling More...

I must agree with other reviewers. This book started off interesting, but it didn't take too long to get annoyed at the specific details regarding the geography of LA. Although you do need some knowledge about the areas where the story takes place, this author went into so much geographical detail that it really detracted from the story. I also didn't particularly find any of the main characters to be sympathetic. I wanted to root for someone and I think that I ended up rooting for Ranger the ho More...

I've read all of John Varley's books. I've read the Gaia trilogy more than once.

He's a great SF writer and if you haven't read his work, then get on it.

I wouldn't start with this one, however. I'd say it's weaker than just about any of his previous books. Start with Gaia trilogy or Ophiuchi Hotline or Red Thunder. I'd give all them 6 stars.

I'd recommend finding a detailed map of the greater Los Angeles area before you start. If you're only vaguely familiar with it (like me), it's easy to get l More...

Hard to defend this on a purely literary level. The book's blurbed by both Tom Clancy and Cory Doctrow, no small feat, but the writing is hardly better than either, though Varley's political orientation leans heavily towards the latter. What made this so fascinating was the clear-headed approach Varley takes towards the end of the world. Despite some far-fetched contrivances in the set-up, once the story moves past the apocalyptic tipping point, everything feels plausible. The characters are may More...

I really enjoyed this book. The one thing that bothered me is that California has a huge amount of installed wind power, and is first in the nation in installed PV. It seems to me that any engineer worth his salt wold take that into account and rig a bunch of solar panels onto the roof of the panel truck they set up, and would have at least one electric scooter, as well as an onboard power inverter/charger and battery bank.

This lack of research on Varley's part, when coupled with the incredibly More...

An apocalypse book - right up my alley.

Dave Marshall is a TV writer when he gets early word on an approaching apocalypse. He shares his questionable news with a few friends. Will the early warning be enough to get a leg up on surviving the mass of displaced and hungry people in Los Angeles or will the level destruction overcome all? The 438 page novel takes its time letting us know.

Why I picked it up: On the Sci-Fi shelf of my local library and I wondered why it was a slow apocalypse.

Why I could More...

I picked up this novel from the library thanks to Little Nemo's recco over at the SDMB as well as being a fan of the author.

However, this felt like a bit of a departure for Varley - the only SF element was a bioengineered bacterium that converts crude oil into an unusable sludge. The protagonist, a TV writer living in LA with a semi-estranged wife and daughter, fortuitously learns of the impending disaster and prepares accordingly.

I'm not sure the title is quite applicable, as natural disaster More...

This took effort to finish. Perhaps if you are an LA native you might enjoy the pages and pages of detailed descriptions of specific landmarks and neighborhoods, but it was just endless filler for me. Worse, many of the protagonist's actions appeared to be chosen specifically to allow such descriptions. I have a strong suspicion that the book is filled with cameos from the authors friends though my only evidence is their appearances always reminded me of "special guest star" episodes of sitcoms. More...

I really liked this book. It was one of those books that intrudes into reality. When I was in the first hundred pages or so I would catch a bit of news on TV or hear someone taking about gas prices and I would begin to interject something about the new oil crisis from the plot of the book. And then I would realize in my mind that what I was about to say hadn't actually happened. (And I would always add, further back in my mind, "...Yet.") It just felt so real. I've never cared much for the globa More...

Varley weaves a tale that sounds much more plausible than concerns about zombies eating our brains: What happens when the oil that has fueled the modern economy literally dries up? Let me tell you, it ain't pretty. The author adds some extra disaster by setting the novel in southern California. It's quite appropriate, because perhaps no other city in America exemplifies the car culture, the lack of natural resources in most metropolises, and class divisions. We follow our protagonist, a down-on- More...

Great beginning, depressing middle, pat ending. Somehow though I really got caught up in these characters and could not put this book down. Varley really makes you empathize with his protagonists, to the point where I was actually clenching my teeth in time of conflict or turmoil. And the geography lesson he gives on Southern California. If you've never heard of the Watts Towers, look them up. Fascinating. Three stars for plot, five for characters. This is a strong four star read.

Although I liked John Varley’s Slow Apocalypse I found it a very slow read. Varley does a great job with describing what living conditions might be if something like this were to actually happen. He does a good job depicting the fear and violence that may overtake the world under such dire circumstances. My big complaint is that I had a hard time with the geography. I wish the book had included a map or two to help me, since most of the book is Dave or the family trying to get to one location or More...

http://www.themaineedge.com/buzz/an-a...

When we think about the end of the world, we tend to think of it happening in a single moment. One minute here, next minute gone. But what if it wasn’t like that? What if society held together long enough for us to actually bear witness to each phase of its ultimate deterioration?

We might see the world of Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author John Varley’s “Slow Apocalypse." It’s a story about what might happen if the world as we know it ended not in one gi More...

I'd like to give this 3 and a half stars. Usually my 3's are "Meh, I have no objections, but it wasn't spectacular" and 4 is "Heck yeah!". This was somewhere in between. The premise is great, and I am glad that he confronts some of the moral dilemmas inherent in an apocalyptic scenario. As a survival manual it's probably somewhat useful. But the action sequences and general plot direction was pretty standard for this type of book. In that way it's good if you're a fan of the apocalypse genre and More...