Some of Varley's stuff is honestly quite good, allowing for dated attitudes. His short stories are WAY better than his novels, IMO. I liked his short stories enough to read most of his novels, and the latter range from entertaining and inventive but absolutely batshit bizarre to just plain bad. I have not read Mammoth because I heard it was just plain bad. I'm voting F anyway for entertainment purposes but with the caveat that his short stories are still worth picking up.
Let me give you an example of the batshit. One of his books is set in a giant orbital ruled by an actual literal Goddess who sometimes manifests as a 700 foot tall Marilyn Monroe. The native intelligent life, among other beings, consists of multicolored hermaphrodite centaurs who love John Philip Sousa, can self-fertilize*, and lay eggs.
*Well, they could until the Goddess decided to limit their population by trapping a hapless human spaceship captain, making her immortal, and making all the centaurs infertile unless the captain put their eggs in her mouth.
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Let me give you an example of the batshit. One of his books is set in a giant orbital ruled by an actual literal Goddess who sometimes manifests as a 700 foot tall Marilyn Monroe. The native intelligent life, among other beings, consists of multicolored hermaphrodite centaurs who love John Philip Sousa, can self-fertilize*, and lay eggs.
*Well, they could until the Goddess decided to limit their population by trapping a hapless human spaceship captain, making her immortal, and making all the centaurs infertile unless the captain put their eggs in her mouth.