Wizard Author:John Varley God was the world, the world was a wheel, and the wheel was Gaea. — Welcome to Gaea, the alien that is itself a world as varied, as magnificent, as surprising as our own. Hundreds of thousands of readers have pronounced John Varley's last novel, Titan, one of the most remarkabl... more »e books of the 1970s.
Former Captain Cirocco "Rocky" Jones is the Wizard. Seventy-five years after the events of Titan, Rocky has an odd, almost symbiotic relationship with the planet-sized alien she calls home. But Gaea is three-million-years old, a supreme ruler, a god, whose body is failing and whose mind is swiftly deteriorating. Signs, portents and warnings from every quarter of the living world hint at one devastating conclusion: Gaea was insane. Rocky is not in much better shape herself. The once-proud commander is little more than a drunken bum, trying to wash away with the gin the knowledge that she needs Gaea, and Gaea needs her, and that someday they must struggle.
In Wizard, John Varley has written a novel every bit as compelling as Titan. Wizard is more than an adventure novel, however; it is a thoughtful and humane examination of free with taken to its most profound and frightening extremes. Wizard is speculative fiction of the first rank and a novel of extraordinary power.« less