"The Persistence of Vision" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by American writer John Varley. It was included in the anthology of the same name and in '' The John Varley Reader''.

Plot summary

A hitchhiker discovers the town of Keller, a

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

whose adult inhabitants are all deafblind. He gradually explores the increasingly sophisticated levels of communication the inhabitants of the town have created, eventually realizing that he will never be able to fully attain the highest levels of communication. Unable to cope with this reality, he leaves the commune for the increasingly decrepit outside world. On New Year's Eve of 2000, he decides to return to Keller, where he discovers the adults have all vanished through some uncommunicable means. The remaining children have blinded and deafened themselves to remove the obstacles to comprehension, and the narrator soon chooses to join them.

Reception

"The Persistence of Vision" won the

Nebula Award for Best Novella The Nebula Award for Best Novella is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novellas. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novella if it is between 17,500 and 4 ...

of 1978,The Persistence of Vision
at

Science Fiction Writers of America The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, doing business as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, commonly known as SFWA ( or ) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization of professional science fiction and fantasy writers. Whil ...

; retrieved June 6, 2021 and the 1979

Hugo Award for Best Novella The Hugo Award for Best Novella is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The novella award is available for works of fiction of between ...

.1979 Hugo Awards
at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved June 6, 2021

James Nicoll James Davis Nicoll (born March 18, 1961) is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usene ...

felt that, as the story was written by John Varley in the 1970s, it was "pretty much guaranteed to be well written and worth reading", and noted that its setting required "social despair". In ''

Science Fiction Studies ''Science Fiction Studies'' (''SFS'') is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R. D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year at DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fic ...

'', Clayton Koelb considered that the story's "principal theme" was the costs and rewards of escape from the world and the world's language into a language of pure presence".The Language of Presence in Varley's "The Persistence of Vision"
in ''

''; Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jul., 1984), pp. 154-165; via

JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

References

External links

* 1978 short stories Nebula Award for Best Novella-winning works Hugo Award for Best Novella winning works {{1970s-story-stub