The Persistance of Vision - John Varley (1977)[ENG][DjVu|scan|OCR]{Kaefer}

These nine stories show the best work of the decade’s most exciting new writer of science fiction. His Quantum novel The Ophiuchi Hotline established the “Eight Worlds” setting of many of these tales—a bizarre future in which genetic engineering, sex changes, and arcane pleasures and trades are commonplace.
Take, for instance, the plight of the hero of “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.” All he wanted was a relaxed weekend as a lion; but a meddlesome kid switched a circuit, and his psyche was trapped inside a computer…
And what creative spirit wouldn’t envy the artist in “The Phantom of Kansas” who composes storms?
Most of us feel pretty negatively about sky-jackers, but “Air Raid” shows an unexpected rationale for it; “Retrograde Summer,” “The Black Hole Passes,” and “In the Bowl” are (among other strange things) unique and confusing love stories; “In the Hall of the Martian Kings” is a new and enthralling twist on the planetary castaways theme; and “Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance” shows what a Tin Pan Alley of the centuries to come might be like.
The title story, nominated this year for a Nebula award by the Science Fiction Writers of America, is a haunting treatment of communication beyond our normal senses, an unusually enriching and absorbing work. Wide-ranging imagination, fascination with human and parahuman potential, and an unsurpassed talent for rendering what the future might feel like characterize John Varley stories—and are nowhere better displayed than in this first collection of his short fiction.