He grew up in Fort Worth, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, graduated from Nederland High School—all in Texas—and went to Michigan State University on a National Merit Scholarship.

He started as a physics major, switched to English, then left school before his 20th birthday and arrived in Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco just in time for the "Summer of Love" in 1967.

There he worked at various unskilled jobs, depended on St. Anthony's Mission for meals, and panhandled outside the Cala Market on Stanyan Street (since closed) before deciding that writing had to be a better way to make a living.

Varley has written several novels (his first attempt, Gas Giant, was, he admits, "pretty bad") and numerous short stories, many of them in a future history, "The Eight Worlds".

But humans have inhabited virtually every other corner of the solar system, often through the use of biological modifications learned, in part, by eavesdropping on alien communications.

In addition, two of his short stories ("Options" and "Blue Champagne") were adapted into episodes of the short-lived 1998 Sci-Fi Channel TV series Welcome to Paradox.