The Persistence of Vision by John Varley is actually my favorite short story of all time. This is a Hugo Award and LOCUS Award winner as a novella (hell if I know what determines which category it competes under) and can be found the collections: The Persistence of Vision and The John Varley Reader.A man hitch-hiking across the country stumbles across a commune of deaf, blind, mutes in the New Mexico desert. There he discovers that a new form of communication, a new form of community and new form of humanity is evolving. A unique and touching look at human evolution beyond what we can currently comprehend. I must confes that I cry every fucking time I read this story and that it was with much releaf that I read in Varley's introduction to the story in The John Varley Reader that, ".,, it pretty much wrote itself, and by the end I was crying, and I don't know why."
I can't tell you why I cry at this story either; if I told you the many reasons I think I cry, I would be giving away too much of the story, and I do not in any way want to ruin your experience of this tale. For it is an experience to read it; for the first time and repeatedly.
Tom Clancy has said, "John Varley is the best writer in America." If this story does not convice you of the truth in those words, nothing ever will.
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