Mammoth

“[An] imaginative and engaging…writer…Varley is in top form.
Mammoth
delivers the kind of snappy exposition, clever speculation, and narrative complexity that have made so many of his contributions to the genre so enjoyable and vital…He’s a far better science fiction writer than Crichton, though, and he takes pains to make
Mammoth
as unpredictable as possible. He keeps the reader off balance, playing different sets of expectations off one another, and concocts a story that alternates elements from a variety of genres—romance, puzzle story, survival adventure, espionage, and even crime caper. By the time the identity of the mummified caveman is revealed,
Mammoth
has worked through its suspenseful premise with the perfect amount of wit and craftsmanship.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] rollicking, bittersweet tale of time travel and ecology…Varley’s sparkling wit pulls one surprise after another out of this unconventional blend of science and social commentary with real people convincingly doing unreal things. Fuzzy, though, is the true hero, an irresistible fifteen-foot-tall reminder of the wonders of nature and imagination. The winner of numerous Hugo and Nebula awards, Varley should garner new laurels with this outstanding effort.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“A terrific science fiction thriller with a fabulous final twist that will shock the audience…The cast is a delight as the prime players seem real, but it is the science in which John Varley has H. G. Wells meet
Jurassic Park
that hooks the audience.”

—
The Best Reviews

“The author of
Red Thunder
excels in imaginative SF adventure, bringing together an intriguing premise and resourceful characters in a tale of mystery, suspense, and a voyage through time. A good addition to most SF collections.”

—
Library Journal

“Varley’s fans won’t be disappointed.”

—
Booklist

PRAISE FOR

RED THUNDER

“Varley’s great strength is in his characterizations, but in
Red Thunder
he also shows a strong sense of place. The novel is also in a sense an elegy: Science fiction readers have long hoped to travel in outer space, and Varley implies that this will be possible only if we discover something radically different from anything now known to physicists. But if you are willing to simply fantasize about fleeing your office cubicle and becoming a heroic space explorer, this novel will fulfill your wishes.”

—The Washington Post

“The heart-pounding space race is on! [A] riveting SF thriller…with hilarious, well-drawn characters, extraordinary situations presented plausibly, plus exciting action and adventure.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Fast-paced…engaging characters.”

—Rocky Mountain News

“Full of little gems of wit and intelligence.”

—Booklist

“[A] fun-filled adventure. Varley matches a serious literary style with an outrageous plot and he’s one of the few writers in the field who could make it work.”

—
Chronicle

“[
Red Thunder
] is unlike anything John Varley has previously written, and yet it bears all the hallmarks of his past work…startling ideas, pellucid dreams, amiable characters, a gorgeous specificity of detail, and a sense of honest victories achieved at real costs. Dedicated to the master of such topical tomorrows, Robert Heinlein, this novel also pays allegiance to the comic capers of Carl Hiaasen. Varley lauds the unconquerable human spirit of exploration. But it’s just the frosting on the rich cake of practical, visionary comic adventure he’s already supplied in full.”

—Science Fiction Weekly

PRAISE FOR

JOHN VARLEY

“One of science fiction’s most important writers.”

—The Washington Post

“Science fiction doesn’t get much better than this.”

—Spider Robinson

“Inventive…strong and satisfying.”

—
The New York Times

“Varley is a mind-grabber.”

—Roger Zelazny

“Superior science fiction.”

—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Varley has earned the mantle of Heinlein.”

—
Locus

“One of the genre’s most accomplished storytellers.”

—Publishers Weekly

MAMMOTH

JOHN VARLEY

ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

This book is dedicated to John and Doris Varley.

My father, John E. Varley, died on
January 13, 2005, at the age of 79,
in Big Spring, Texas.

He was a very good man who led a good life
and raised two good daughters, and me.
He hated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish,
the New York Yankees,
and the Texas A&M Aggies,
and loved most other Texas teams.
He lived to see the Red Sox humiliate the Yankees,
and a lot of people didn’t.

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1

FROM “LITTLE FUZZY, A CHILD OF THE ICE AGE”

Once upon a time in what would one day come to be known as the month of August, many, many years ago, in a place that would one day be known as
Manitoba
, a herd of mammoths came over the low hills to the south and into a gentle green valley rich with the scent of water.

There were twenty or twenty-five mammoths in the herd. Maybe thirty. No one is sure. What we do know is that the herd was made up of females of all ages and males younger than fifteen years old.

Mammoths did not live in families like we do, with a daddy and a mommy and their children, and maybe a granny and a grandpa. Mammoths were like our elephants today, and their families were bunches of sisters and aunts and nieces and young male mammoths.

When the males reached a certain age they became troublesome, bothering the females all the time…just like boys do today! When this happened, the older female mammoths ganged up on the youngster and pushed him out of the herd so he wouldn’t cause so much trouble. The young male would then find his way to a herd of other males.

The leader of this herd was the oldest and largest female, what scientists call the
alpha cow
. We’ll call her Big Mama.

Big Mama was old, maybe forty-five, maybe fifty; no one knows for sure because mammoths didn’t have calendars and didn’t write down their birthdays like we do, so they didn’t know how old they were. But Big Mama had seen many winters and many summers, and she had been the alpha cow for
many years. She was the wisest and strongest member of the herd, by far, and all the other females respected her without question.

It had been a hard summer. The places that would one day be called the
Mississippi and Missouri river valleys
had not seen any rain in many months but there had been plenty of lightning. The prairies were dry and there were many fires.

Big animals like mammoths and bison and woolly rhinoceros had to keep moving to find enough food and water. Big Mama had not led her herd this far north in many years, but her memory was good and she kept them moving.

Sure enough, on that fine day in what would be August, they came into a land bursting with green shrubs and grass and trees with tasty leaves just waiting to be pulled down by the clever trunks of the mammoths.

But others were there before them. They were mammoths, but they were strange, completely covered with hair.

To understand why this should be strange to Big Mama and her herd, you should know that there was more than one kind of mammoth, all those years ago. (There were also cousins of mammoths, called
mastodons
, but we don’t need to worry about them.)

There were people back then, and they hunted the mammoths, but we don’t know what they called them. Today, we call the two types of mammoth that lived in North America the
woolly mammoth
and the
Columbian mammoth
.