On the surface, this Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic is about a drifter who comes to stay in a New Mexico commune founded by a group of deaf-blind people. But beneath the story, author John Varley examines deep, universal issues. What is the nature of communication? What does an individual gain - or lose - by subsuming himself to the whole? Can an outsider ever truly "belong"?

Varley says that he has had more response to this story than anything he has ever written, that some readers have even told him it changed their lives. Listening to The Persistence of Vision, it is easy to understand why.