So if you want to read both, read Steel Beach first. The Golden Globe works as a stand-alone novel, but the later novel does mention one of the big plot surprises of the earlier novel. It has been a while since I read it, but I recall it as being just as good.

Highly recommended.Īlso highly recommended is the book's kinda-sorta prequel, Steel Beach. It is not a head punter, but it is expertly crafted. The book is one of the better sf pieces I've read in a while. Varley has true wit, and the protagonist is a charming enough rogue that the reader willingly spends 500+ pages in his company. John Herbert Varley (born August 9, 1947) is an American science fiction writer. Nevertheless, there are numerous funny lines and amusing situations. The themes include child abuse, species survival, personal survival, art, and liberty. The Golden Globe is not a comic novel, that is, one in which humor is intended to be the primary draw. Much flashback is used, and it is slowly revealed how the protagonist became so seriously screwed up. Decisions he makes in order to survive and make the trip proceed to complicate his life. A Shakespearean-trained actor, down on his luck, wants to go from a beyond-Pluto colony back home to Luna so that he can take the part of King Lear, reserved for him if he can get there in time. The above is all background and isn't especially important to the plot, other than the knowledge that people no longer are allowed to live on Earth.

(Note: Varley has admitted that he makes no special effort to keep the Eight Worlds universe strictly consistent from novel to novel that use the setting.)

Earth's moon, Luna, is the center of human civilization. Fortunately, they have advanced technology and intelligent computers to aid them. Mankind has been forced to live in the rest of the solar system. The setting is Varley's Eight Worlds universe, in which unfathomable invaders from beyond the solar system-who consider cetaceans to be the planet's superior life forms-have wiped humanity from Earth and created a colony on Jupiter, where they do nothing that is detectable by mere humans. A few days ago I finished reading The Golden Globe by John Varley.