Young People Read Old SFF

In The Bowl

John Varley

Young People Read Old SFF

10 Mar, 2025

This month’s Nebula finalist is John Varley’s 1975 novelette In the Bowl. First published in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, In The Bowl takes place in Varley’s Eight Worlds setting1, where powerful aliens limited the Earth to stone-age technology. Only the human remnant off-planet retained more sophisticated tool-kits. In the four centuries since the Invasion, that remnant has developed2 an even more powerful technological base. 

The humans need every advantage they can get, because the Solar System where the Eight Worlds is set is not the cuddly, easily habitable Solar System of classic SF but the new, extremely hostile to human life Solar System revealed to us by space probes. Many SF authors reacted to the New Solar System by moving their stories to planets of other stars. Not Varley3.

Counterintuitively, the series was not about a desperate struggle to survive. By the era most of the stories are set, the Eight Worlds are peaceful, stable, and prosperous. What conflicts could drive stories in such a setting? Almost half of the Eight Worlds stories feature holidays. Case in point: In the Bowl, which features Venusian tourism. 

It’s a bold choice on Varley’s4 part to focus on the upper part of Maslow’s Pyramid. What will the Young People make of the result?

1: Or rather, the first iteration of that setting. Excessively lengthy explanation available on request.

2: And acquired thanks to CETI.

3: I don’t recall any Varley stories set in other solar systems. Dark Lightning was set on a starship but I don’t think it had reached its destination by the end of the novel. 

4:I am a bit concerned that Varley does not appear to have updated his blog in three years, especially since many of the last entries featured his health setbacks, and since his wife Lee Emmett died in 2023. 

Kris

First point that needs to be raised: Not enough SF stories have otters in them. That is something that needs to rectified!

It is a bit of an odd tale, as it feels like it is being constructed as a piece of hard science fiction, but it I am pretty sure nothing in here is the tiniest bit realistic.

The whole thing feels like a western but more a revisionist Western. something along the lines of True Grit and Soldier Blue.

However, I couldn’t help but find myself charmed by it. The descriptions are absolutely gorgeous, Ember is a lot of fun and the world-building is great.

Given this is tagged on ISFDB with ​“pedophilia” I was concerned going into it that it would be problematic but I don’t think that is what is happening. Ember does offer herself to Kiku but he refuses and she admits that she didn’t know what she was doing. I think of it as a way to show her desperation to escape but also showing her innocence of the outside world, in spite of her knowledge of mechanics and Venus.

So overall, a surprisingly enjoyable tale, however unexpected its contents is.

Brian:

I had forgotten what Kris had said while I was reading ​“In the Bowl,” so now I don’t feel as insane when I say this reminded of a few space-western anime, especially Cowboy Bebop but also Outlaw Star. Incidentally both of those shows feature precocious child sidekicks, although in those cases the crux of the interpersonal conflict is not whether the adult protagonist will go to bed with said precocious child sidekick (thank God).

I think part of what makes early Varley so awkward to deal with in the present day is that he was so good at what he did, that for example he could develop the relationship between Kiku and Ember and make you really wonder if something might develop between them. And maybe it will. Thankfully the story ends before anything material can come of it, although the implication at the end is that given time Kiku may well pull a Steven Tyler, or at least a Jerry Seinfeld. And yet, for all that discomfort, Ember might be one of Varley’s best-drawn characters. We can picture her, with her head of peacock feathers, maybe like a Mohawk, with her pet otter, and her personality and motivations are made totally understandable to us. Varley at his best can be almost maliciously good with developing characters, in that he gives us a character portrait and something like a tangible conflict, only the conflict is either small in the grand scheme of themes and/or comes along only late in the story. We’re given time to understand these people and their world, and with the old Eight Worlds stories I think this talent of his comes through the strongest. 

The space western was a thing, sort of, in 1975, although Star Wars was still a couple years off; so instead Varley looked to what was probably then the most influential space western, that being John Carter of Mars. Kiku even mentions the Barsoom (Mars) of that series a few times, which makes sense given he himself is a Martian (as in a human living on Mars). I read Varley’s intro to this story in Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories and it seems he was trying to depict a realistic Venus, at least as he understood it in the ​’70s. I would ask him to clarify a few things, but I don’t think he’s on social media and maybe that’s for the best. But I did like ​“In the Bowl” quite a bit, as I expected, although ​“The Phantom of Kansas” and ​“Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” are still my favorite Eight Worlds stories.