I review all three books here (Titan, Wizard and Demon).Ah, Varley, what am I to do with you?First and foremost, this trilogy is highly enjoyable, if quirky and eccentric in some places. Varley has a strong sense of how people work and his wisdom in his understanding of human interaction plays well in building a strong plot, and several subplots that add to the story's attractiveness. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these books when the came out, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them when I found them on Audible.com. They have some language and promiscuity issues, and my prudish mind will never think it is all right to mate with animals, no matter how liberated the person finds him/herself, but if one can handle these side distractions to a very memorable story, then one will be the richer from the experience. Here are quick, probably inadequate one-paragraph summaries of each book:Titan: Scirocco Jones and the Ringmaster (a NASA ship) arrive at the moon Titan and are immediately attacked and swallowed up by...something. Shortly thereafter we find out that Titan is alive and run by a being called Gaea, a mad, god-like creature. After several adventures they meet face-to-face with Gaea and become her employees and all ends well.Wizard: Varley adds Chris and Robin to the cast of human characters. Both have debilitating ilnesses and have come to Titan to seek medical cures. There they find an alcoholic Scirrocco Jones and her faithful sidekick, Gabby, considering the first careful steps toward overthrowing the mad Gaea. We also find that Scirocco has been given an added responsibility: she must approve every Titanide (the name given to the lovely Centaur-like creatures that make Titan their home) pregnancy, which is why she is probably alcoholic. Chris is an unremarkable figure, but Robin is a member of a sect of women who hate men and consider them all sex fiends. Robin consider Christians to be the worst, probably because they (Robin's sect) style themselves as witches and practice magic, and we all know what conservative Christians think about that (disclaimer: I AM a conservative Christian). At any rate, they have several adventures (required by Gaea before she will cure then), in the company of Scirocco and Gabby, Robin has her eyes open to the true nature of males (both bad and good), and something bad happens to Gabby which turns Scirocco into the enemy of Gaea. Robin and Chris are healed and Chris remains on Titan, but wants to be made into a Titanide.Demon: Twenty years or so later, and Earth is in the throes of its fifth nuclear war, a protracted war the we find out has been started and is kept going by the machinations of Gaea. Connall, a weightlifter from Earth immigrates to Titan with the express purpose of killing Scirocco, but instead after a pretty nasty encounter with her, decides to serve her instead. Robin and her daughter Nova show up on Titan with a male child (as in "still in swaddling clothes") after having been kicked out of the coven because Robin had that male baby (which means she must have had intercourse with a man -- a horribly heinous sin in their culture). They both fall from riches to rags overnight and Nova is extremely bitter while Robin (who hasn't had sex with a man since Chris in the previous book) is just perplexed. They meet up with their old friends Scirocco and Chris. Scirocco is no longer a lush, and Chris has begun the slow change from human to Titanide. It is shown in his long floppy ears and horse's tail. Connall becomes Robin's lover while Scirocco decides to take on Gaea, the first step being the cleaning up of the city Bellanzona, a cess pool of human misery. She is successful, though only after draconian steps are taken. She raises an army that marches upon Gaea, who has now descended into such madness that she surrounds herself with the trappings of human movies, watching them continuously almost to the exclusion of everything else. The child Adam may be Scirocco's replacement in the near future if Scirocco doesn't watch herself. Adam is kidnapped, Chris goes along with him to try to counteract the influence of the mad Gaea and a nice little war ensues where we find out that Gaea is not the world, Gaea is just the woman at the controls (to understand, RAFO). Scirocco is successful but only with help from a secret and mysterious friend, who invites her to share godship after Gaea is gone, which she rejects. Scirocco is released to follow her ow path for as long as she wishes, without special protection.So why do I hint at a dislike for this story? Well, a couple of reasons. Now, Varley is compared to Heinlein in many reviews, and I can see why, although I would add that the comparison is apt only if we compare him to the Old Heinlein, not the young Heinlein. One of that earlier author's main signatures is his cynicism for any kind of spirituality. Varley is a bit more subtle but just as vicious as the Old Heinlein (the younger Heinlein had honest places for spiritual men--See THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS to find that one of his characters on the right side is a padre--and that's just one example). In this book are lots of characters such as a resurrected Martin Luther, Pope John, even Gautama Buddha and Sidhartha (forgive the spelling if I do not have it right). They are all evil minions of the deranged self-proclaimed goddess of Gaea, not to mention that they are all, well, ridiculous characters. There is not one single person who says, "Yes I belive in an Other Reality, and by the way, I am also a good person. You can see so by my actions." Not a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or even a plain theist, nada, zip, zero. Varley either makes fun of this part of the human property set, or ignores it all together. Even Frank Herbert recognized that part of humanity and what it might do for us, though he minimized it somewhat. I found that rather objectionable in a story that features so many slurs on my chosen faith. He didn't even recognize that sometimes the spiritual does some good.Second, and finally, he gives me the strong sense that he can find very little good in humans to write home about. More importantly, his alien creatures were far more noble, insightful, kindly, beautiful of spirit than any human being and that made me just a bit angry. Only one human being had the guts to stand up and make the human condition better on Titan and that happened only because the author-god would not have had a story if he hadn't. In concluding, I have tried reading other of Varley's works, and couldn't get past the first twenty pages or so. I suppose he lightened up on this trilogy to make another point or two about human happiness and human love. Nevertheless, until he finds a better balance point between the phenomena and the noumena, between mere physics and metaphysics, he is off my plate for the nonce.
What if you could talk to god, and ask one thing? What would you ask of him or her?John Varley played with this concept in this trilogy together with ideas of cultural variations, religion and psychological developments. It was exciting, novel and conspicuously distinctive from most science-fiction works of today.The book was written in 1979, and in 1980, it was listed as the first official winner of the Locus Award in Science-Fiction. But considering that time frame, all the books in the series are an easy read and arguably a page turner. If I recall correctly, I labeled the books as currently reading months earlier but in actual time consumption, I finished all three in less than a week. I liked how in Varley’s world building, he presented numerous interesting ideas on cultural development and religion. The idea of the self-sustaining alien environment is appealing and just like the mysteries carried in Rendezvous with Rama and 2001: A Space Odyssey, the idea of a more advance entity gracing us is riveting. But what made me rate the books from the average three to a measly two is as conspicuous as the books’ appeal. I did not like any of his characters. They were designed with weak foundations and even weaker developments. Simply put, they were not enthralling. In the later parts of the trilogy, I still failed to neither identify nor maintain a veritable connection with the crew. The further reason is that Varley’s books can be abridged in two simple story arcs. The first is the discovery to the overthrow of the god and second the sex, yes you read that right, sex. Let me set this straight that outright, there is no fundamental issue between these two topics, the problem lies in the story itself. You see, when John Varley first presented Titan, the process of reproduction between the Aliens was nothing but interesting. I admit it was unique and well thought out. In the later parts of the trilogy however, when the process have been deconstructed and it has worn out its appeal and novelty, the science and the beauty of the process was relegated to nothing but mere physical intercourse (including humans of course). So what happens is that the whole story is actually an intercourse (no pun intended) between these two pieces of the puzzle, something like this, sex-discovery-sex-plotting-sex-conspiring-sex-overthrow, so you see the problem, or is it a problem at all? Would I recommend this trilogy? Perhaps not. I actually engaged in finishing the three books because I could not literally bear leaving something hanging, even if that means plodding through another two books. As for me, if I could ask a god, I would, in his infinite capacity inquire, when George R.R. Martin would actually come around finishing his GoT series.
Do You like book Demon (1987)?
While not the best book that I have ever read, it was also not the worst. I really enjoyed Titan, I thought that was a great book from start to finish. The second book, Wizard, was slow at first but built to a great and fast-paced finish. As the third book, and how Wizard ended, I was really looking forward to this one. However, I just didn't really like this one. I didn't care for the characters, the plot was boring, and I thought the ending was ridiculous. I also felt that the book was written for the sole purpose of finishing the trilogy. It just felt like it was written just because Mr. Varley had started it, and now we have come this far, it might as well end. Like I said it wasn't the worst book I've read, but I was disappointed in it.
—Chris
I found this the best book of Varley’s Gaea trilogy, not because it is a better story – they are all pretty good stories – not because the characters are better developed – he always does a pretty good job at developing his characters, but because he reined in his tendency to speculate – very badly in my opinion – on future outrageous social trends that he seemed to take so much pleasure in in the previous two books. I’m not against SF speculating on social trends – that’s virtually the main raison d’etre of SF – but Varley seemed to have ideas about future social trends that were quite frankly ridiculous at the time of writing and are still so now. I have no complaints about his technology speculations; just his social ones. I have already grumbled about this in my reviews of those earlier books and I’m very pleased to say that he largely dropped that stuff in this book and focused on the intriguing world he has created in Gaea.And that story is once again a good well-paced adventure set in a fascinating world. There’s plenty going on and the previous characters continue to fill out consistently and the new characters in this story are well-rounded and believable. My only real complaint is that one of the characters, Gaby, is pretty much one complete deus ex machina. She does stuff that is to all intents and purposes magic and we never get an explanation. The nearest to it is “…and you’ll just have to take my word for it. Because I can’t explain to you what that red line is like. There aren’t any human concepts for so much of it.” And that’s his excuse to have a character that can do virtually anything he wants them to; deus ex machina.That aside, this is a good book and there is no doubt Varley is a strong storyteller.
—Mike Franklin
I read the first two books of John Varley’s magnificent Gaean trilogy, Titan and Wizard, when I was in high school, back in the mid eighties and I really enjoyed them. Somehow, inexplicably, I never read the third, Demon. When I began reading again in 2008 (after graduating from law school) and then especially when I connected with Goodreads in 2011, I remembered the trilogy and decided to finish what was started.Demon was first published in 1984 and completes the trilogy of humanity's encounter with a living being in the shape of a 1,300 km diameter Stanford torus, inhabited by many different species such as the centaur-like Titanides, living blimps, iron masters, and the god-like, insane entity known as Gaea in orbit around Saturn. The protagonist of the trilogy is Cirocco Jones, a charismatic but complex super-hero who displays a dramatic counter figure to the deliberate antagonist of Gaea. The real quality of the trilogy is Varley’s wonderfully imaginative, uniquely original world building. In contrast with the Tolkien inspired sub-genre of fantasy series, this is a decidedly American fantasy.
—Lyn
