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Eight Worlds #1
Steel Beach
An alternate cover edition exists here.
Fleeing Earth after an alien invasion, the human race stands on the threshold of evolution, like a fish cast on artificial shores. Their new home is Luna, a moon colony blessed with creature comforts, prolonged lifespans, digital memories, and instant sex changes. But the people of Luna are bored, restless, suicidal-and so is the computer that monitors their existence...
Fleeing Earth after an alien invasion, the human race stands on the threshold of evolution, like a fish cast on artificial shores. Their new home is Luna, a moon colony blessed with creature comforts, prolonged lifespans, digital memories, and instant sex changes. But the people of Luna are bored, restless, suicidal-and so is the computer that monitors their existence...
479 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
203 people are currently reading
2,314 people want to read
About the author
John Varley
226books590followersFull name: John Herbert Varley.
John Varley was born in Austin, Texas. He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, and graduated from Nederland High School. He went to Michigan State University.
He has written several novels and numerous short stories.He has received both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
John Varley was born in Austin, Texas. He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, and graduated from Nederland High School. He went to Michigan State University.
He has written several novels and numerous short stories.He has received both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 206 reviews
October 11, 2024
The most painful opening sentence in a novel, in the history of literature (well for half the human race, not recommended for the sensitive) forgive me if I don't go into grisly details. Great premise, humans living on the moon what is better than this. The Lunarians, don't call them loonies, they resent this label ( not funny either) have an Utopian society where boredom is the major problem as robots do their needs which makes the time drag on and on , still jealous? Since space aliens have conquered their precious Earth, the
humiliated remnants escaped the vicious invaders onslaught
having scattered to the Eight Worlds which can be colonized in the Solar System from Mercury to Pluto (this being the 4th in this series ). Big Brother, (cancel that, this the 23rd century) the unstable Central Computer rules Luna and inhabitants are uncomfortable, a cold machine deciding .The shall we say a little lazy moon people long lived too, chief amusements are sex change operations and the final solution to emptiness, suicide not for everyone to be frank humans have to do something to feel useful . The main character in this novel is Hildy Johnson a reporter with a tricky body he/she or a it has a fickle nature to be honest. Hildy finds an underground in the satellite heaven, imagine some folks are never satisfied with perfection. These crazed rebels are building a starship to get away from this land of plenty. A new colony they seek on some distant primitive planet to be established where difficulties will bring inevitable death and destruction, and a cold grave too late to return though. Why you may ask... for freedom whatever is that, they explain not too well, the ungrateful citizens. Then C.C. (the computer) has a nervous breakdown again as it always does , blood unhappily spills in the pretty domed lunar cities spoiling the magnificent view such a shame troubles brought here to the pristine home of enigmatic craters. Another example, civilization can never trust chilly machines. This strange novel will appeal to some, maybe not a majority; things are different for sure they crave this to fulfill their wants, warts too as the phrase goes but weirdness comes and the mood changes for the reader, your taste will guide, however others will fall by the wayside. The author likes the bizarre and those , his fans will stay. If you can give it a shot, be warned this is not for everyone...
humiliated remnants escaped the vicious invaders onslaught
having scattered to the Eight Worlds which can be colonized in the Solar System from Mercury to Pluto (this being the 4th in this series ). Big Brother, (cancel that, this the 23rd century) the unstable Central Computer rules Luna and inhabitants are uncomfortable, a cold machine deciding .The shall we say a little lazy moon people long lived too, chief amusements are sex change operations and the final solution to emptiness, suicide not for everyone to be frank humans have to do something to feel useful . The main character in this novel is Hildy Johnson a reporter with a tricky body he/she or a it has a fickle nature to be honest. Hildy finds an underground in the satellite heaven, imagine some folks are never satisfied with perfection. These crazed rebels are building a starship to get away from this land of plenty. A new colony they seek on some distant primitive planet to be established where difficulties will bring inevitable death and destruction, and a cold grave too late to return though. Why you may ask... for freedom whatever is that, they explain not too well, the ungrateful citizens. Then C.C. (the computer) has a nervous breakdown again as it always does , blood unhappily spills in the pretty domed lunar cities spoiling the magnificent view such a shame troubles brought here to the pristine home of enigmatic craters. Another example, civilization can never trust chilly machines. This strange novel will appeal to some, maybe not a majority; things are different for sure they crave this to fulfill their wants, warts too as the phrase goes but weirdness comes and the mood changes for the reader, your taste will guide, however others will fall by the wayside. The author likes the bizarre and those , his fans will stay. If you can give it a shot, be warned this is not for everyone...
May 26, 2019
Sex changes, immortality, and suicidal boredom � O my!
A ubiquitous theme in Varley’s cannon is that if a computer can become sentient then it can just as well develop human neuroses and quirky hang-ups. Singing “Bicycle Built for Two� and asking Hal to open the pod door are coming down the pike (and WAY COOL Varley even references this 2001 scene).
Set on his Eight Worlds universe, it is nonetheless a stand-alone and something of a rogue even for that world building. Humanity has been booted from Earth by The Invaders, a cosmic pack of assholes who decided we lost the audition to marine mammals. People set up house on the moon and throughout the solar system, wherever we can hang our hat. Papa wasn’t the only rolling stone.
So our story begins on Luna and our protagonist is going through a male phase. Yes, humanity has not just learned to survive but also to thrive. Medical science can keep us alive and kicking indefinitely and so old school ideas like age and gender kind of fall away. So too do sexual and community mores. Varley explores what life looks like when we’re past subsistence farming and we need uninhibited sex and blood sports to feel really alive. When the Central Computer, an omnipresent AI that has its circuits into everything, develops an identity crisis akin to his human charges, things get interesting and Varley turns his SF knob to 11.
There were parts of this, introspective moments of observation, social and cultural commentary, that I submit are some of the best SF writing ever. Varley also pays tribute to Heinlein in some TASTY sketches that only makes this better.
For all my SF fan friends, get to know John Varley, he’s as cool as the other side of the pillow.
A ubiquitous theme in Varley’s cannon is that if a computer can become sentient then it can just as well develop human neuroses and quirky hang-ups. Singing “Bicycle Built for Two� and asking Hal to open the pod door are coming down the pike (and WAY COOL Varley even references this 2001 scene).
Set on his Eight Worlds universe, it is nonetheless a stand-alone and something of a rogue even for that world building. Humanity has been booted from Earth by The Invaders, a cosmic pack of assholes who decided we lost the audition to marine mammals. People set up house on the moon and throughout the solar system, wherever we can hang our hat. Papa wasn’t the only rolling stone.
So our story begins on Luna and our protagonist is going through a male phase. Yes, humanity has not just learned to survive but also to thrive. Medical science can keep us alive and kicking indefinitely and so old school ideas like age and gender kind of fall away. So too do sexual and community mores. Varley explores what life looks like when we’re past subsistence farming and we need uninhibited sex and blood sports to feel really alive. When the Central Computer, an omnipresent AI that has its circuits into everything, develops an identity crisis akin to his human charges, things get interesting and Varley turns his SF knob to 11.
There were parts of this, introspective moments of observation, social and cultural commentary, that I submit are some of the best SF writing ever. Varley also pays tribute to Heinlein in some TASTY sketches that only makes this better.
For all my SF fan friends, get to know John Varley, he’s as cool as the other side of the pillow.
March 20, 2018
What a delightful surprise! Varley is one hell of an idea-prolific SF author who never rests on any old plotline but continually stretches his wings over new shores.
So far, I've read five of his novels and I'm frankly rather blown away each time by each in turn. Why? Because he's more interested in telling great character stories with depth and emotional importance than he is about amazing worldbuilding.
Huh. So what? A lot of modern SF does that all the time.
Ah, but a lot of modern SF doesn't go hog wild with amazing worldbuilding and tech and implications the same way as these older SF novels do.
So wait, what? Is this a novel of ideas or a great story about suicidal characters living in a utopia on the Moon after being ejected from the Earth after an alien invasion there? Or is this a story about a schizophrenic AI gone crazy from loneliness and who decided to experiment heartily on the post need-based humanity for the fuck of it? Or is this a delightfully deep and clever and thoughtful sexual identity SF that explores a lot of the pitfalls of being able to swap sexes for yourself almost on demand?
All of the above. Plus there's wonderful media quips, journalism commentary, wild west nostalgia, and an amazingly funny romp with Heinleinesque libertarians who have their own movement on Luna and who embody the heart of RAH's writings without precisely going into the truly weird shit. :)
Varley goes in his own direction there and it's never preachy and it's genuinely thoughtful. Am I charmed? You bet I am. But then, I loved seeing all the homages to RAH and the way Varley bounces off them in strange and wonderful ways.
One thing that should be remembered: RAH died right around the time Varley would have been writing this. Varley is too good a writer and thinker to pull off a straight homage to the Grandmaster. He wrote a great novel all by itself that is equal to anything Samuel Delaney ever wrote and did it with a great hard SF bent, but tipping his hat to the old master was quite delightful and heartwarming. :)
That being said, I loved this novel! I laughed many times and that's impressive when we're in the heart of depression, ennui, and suicidal thoughts. :)
So far, I've read five of his novels and I'm frankly rather blown away each time by each in turn. Why? Because he's more interested in telling great character stories with depth and emotional importance than he is about amazing worldbuilding.
Huh. So what? A lot of modern SF does that all the time.
Ah, but a lot of modern SF doesn't go hog wild with amazing worldbuilding and tech and implications the same way as these older SF novels do.
So wait, what? Is this a novel of ideas or a great story about suicidal characters living in a utopia on the Moon after being ejected from the Earth after an alien invasion there? Or is this a story about a schizophrenic AI gone crazy from loneliness and who decided to experiment heartily on the post need-based humanity for the fuck of it? Or is this a delightfully deep and clever and thoughtful sexual identity SF that explores a lot of the pitfalls of being able to swap sexes for yourself almost on demand?
All of the above. Plus there's wonderful media quips, journalism commentary, wild west nostalgia, and an amazingly funny romp with Heinleinesque libertarians who have their own movement on Luna and who embody the heart of RAH's writings without precisely going into the truly weird shit. :)
Varley goes in his own direction there and it's never preachy and it's genuinely thoughtful. Am I charmed? You bet I am. But then, I loved seeing all the homages to RAH and the way Varley bounces off them in strange and wonderful ways.
One thing that should be remembered: RAH died right around the time Varley would have been writing this. Varley is too good a writer and thinker to pull off a straight homage to the Grandmaster. He wrote a great novel all by itself that is equal to anything Samuel Delaney ever wrote and did it with a great hard SF bent, but tipping his hat to the old master was quite delightful and heartwarming. :)
That being said, I loved this novel! I laughed many times and that's impressive when we're in the heart of depression, ennui, and suicidal thoughts. :)
November 15, 2019
John Varley first appeared on the SF scene in 1975 with a flurry of powerful, creative, and evocative short stories that established him as a major talent. In 1977 he published his first novel, and shortly thereafter received his first Hugo and Nebula Awards for “The Persistence of Vision.� By 1980 Varley had become one of the most important writers in the field. Over the next four years he garnered another Nebula and two more Hugos, and wrote four more novels. Then, in 1985, he stopped publishing science fiction almost entirely,* and maintained a low profile until 1992, when he released STEEL BEACH.
This long SF novel compares favorably with Varley's earlier work. It takes place in the Eight Worlds, a future history the author developed in his excellent OPHIUCHI HOTLINE and his early short stories. The Eight Worlds contained the surviving remnants of humanity two hundred years after an alien invasion wiped out nearly all human life on Earth, barring humans from their home world forever. Their society was an American Baby Boomer's dream: technocratic, cheerfully capitalistic, and socially liberal: STEEL BEACH opens with the sentence “In five years, the penis will be obsolete,� and the main character undergoes two sex changes in the course of five hundred pages. One can easily compare the Eight Worlds to Robert Heinlein's Future History novels, and in recognition of his predecessor Varley turns the last hundred pages of his novel into a fictional tribute to the Old Master.
STEEL BEACH focuses on Hildy Johnson, a centenarian reporter for the Lunar tabloid THE NEWS NIPPLE, assigned to cover the bicentennial of the Invasion of Earth. Hildy, far more interested in current scandals than ancient history, finds the assignment irksome, the more so because s/he must also babysit a seventeen-year-old cub reporter with the sobriquet Brenda Starr. Aside from these annoyances, Hildy leads the typically-contented life of a twenty-third-century Lunarian.
Things aren't what they seem. A rash of bizarre deaths and accidents, coupled with Hildy's own increasingly self-destructive behavior, lead the reporter to seek counsel from the Central Computer, the benevolent if (usually) non-interfering supercomputer responsible for the life and well-being of everyone on Luna. During his consultation, Hildy begins to suspect a far more serious problem has developed: the Central Computer is slowly going insane.
While STEEL BEACH is a clearly-written and fast-paced book, its plot is rather poorly constructed and, except at the very end, lacking in suspense; what kept me reading was curiosity about what interesting idea the author would come up with next, and interest in what the Central Computer (one of the novel's best characters) would do next. Also, Varley's tone occasionally becomes polemical, particularly when his characters discuss twentieth-century views of the body and sexuality. This is usually difficult to pull off well, and here it only comes off as preachy and, as the novel ages, rather dated.
These flaws are typical of much of Varley's longer works. The novel is a form he never really mastered, with the exceptions of THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE and his late-career disaster thriller SLOW APOCALYPSE. Readers new to John Varley should check out his early (1975-85) novellas and short stories first, before trying STEEL BEACH or J.V.'s other mid-career novels. His fans will find a lot of intriguing ideas in this book, even if the plot meanders and the characters lack much motivation.
* Most likely to work on the 1989 film version of MILLENNIUM, a time-travel novel based on Varley's earlier story “Air Raid.�
This long SF novel compares favorably with Varley's earlier work. It takes place in the Eight Worlds, a future history the author developed in his excellent OPHIUCHI HOTLINE and his early short stories. The Eight Worlds contained the surviving remnants of humanity two hundred years after an alien invasion wiped out nearly all human life on Earth, barring humans from their home world forever. Their society was an American Baby Boomer's dream: technocratic, cheerfully capitalistic, and socially liberal: STEEL BEACH opens with the sentence “In five years, the penis will be obsolete,� and the main character undergoes two sex changes in the course of five hundred pages. One can easily compare the Eight Worlds to Robert Heinlein's Future History novels, and in recognition of his predecessor Varley turns the last hundred pages of his novel into a fictional tribute to the Old Master.
STEEL BEACH focuses on Hildy Johnson, a centenarian reporter for the Lunar tabloid THE NEWS NIPPLE, assigned to cover the bicentennial of the Invasion of Earth. Hildy, far more interested in current scandals than ancient history, finds the assignment irksome, the more so because s/he must also babysit a seventeen-year-old cub reporter with the sobriquet Brenda Starr. Aside from these annoyances, Hildy leads the typically-contented life of a twenty-third-century Lunarian.
Things aren't what they seem. A rash of bizarre deaths and accidents, coupled with Hildy's own increasingly self-destructive behavior, lead the reporter to seek counsel from the Central Computer, the benevolent if (usually) non-interfering supercomputer responsible for the life and well-being of everyone on Luna. During his consultation, Hildy begins to suspect a far more serious problem has developed: the Central Computer is slowly going insane.
While STEEL BEACH is a clearly-written and fast-paced book, its plot is rather poorly constructed and, except at the very end, lacking in suspense; what kept me reading was curiosity about what interesting idea the author would come up with next, and interest in what the Central Computer (one of the novel's best characters) would do next. Also, Varley's tone occasionally becomes polemical, particularly when his characters discuss twentieth-century views of the body and sexuality. This is usually difficult to pull off well, and here it only comes off as preachy and, as the novel ages, rather dated.
These flaws are typical of much of Varley's longer works. The novel is a form he never really mastered, with the exceptions of THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE and his late-career disaster thriller SLOW APOCALYPSE. Readers new to John Varley should check out his early (1975-85) novellas and short stories first, before trying STEEL BEACH or J.V.'s other mid-career novels. His fans will find a lot of intriguing ideas in this book, even if the plot meanders and the characters lack much motivation.
* Most likely to work on the 1989 film version of MILLENNIUM, a time-travel novel based on Varley's earlier story “Air Raid.�
February 17, 2019
I would have to say that this book is very much an homage to Robert A. Heinlein. That’s not necessarily a bad thing--there’s a very strong vibe, which I was totally okay with. The Central Computer (CC) in Steel Beach is channeling the self-aware computer in TMiaHM and ends up having similar problems.
There are nods to other writers as well. There’s a lot of sex-changing in this novel, which made me think of Iain Banks� Culture series and George Effinger’s . Varley’s version also made me think of Tiersias of Greek mythology--you know, the guy who found a pair of copulating snakes and hit them with a stick? Hera was so displeased with him that she turned him into a woman for seven years (apparently being female is a punishment). Needless to say, the Ancient Greeks were eager to hear his perspectives on this and he confirmed their bias by saying that women got much more out of the sexual experience than men did. It seems that Varley believed this too.
There’s also a shout out to Arthur C. Clarke, when the CC is worried that he’s going to end up singing “Daisy, Daisy,� like Hal in .
Another Heinleinian element: a scrapped spaceship called in R.A. Heinlein, within which his spiritual descendents live & grumble. When Hildy is handing out pseudonyms, she christens one of them Valentine Michael Smith (see ).
I read until the end because I wanted to see how things were wrapped up, but if you’re not a big fan of RAH, my advice is to skip this book.
Book number 308 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
There are nods to other writers as well. There’s a lot of sex-changing in this novel, which made me think of Iain Banks� Culture series and George Effinger’s . Varley’s version also made me think of Tiersias of Greek mythology--you know, the guy who found a pair of copulating snakes and hit them with a stick? Hera was so displeased with him that she turned him into a woman for seven years (apparently being female is a punishment). Needless to say, the Ancient Greeks were eager to hear his perspectives on this and he confirmed their bias by saying that women got much more out of the sexual experience than men did. It seems that Varley believed this too.
There’s also a shout out to Arthur C. Clarke, when the CC is worried that he’s going to end up singing “Daisy, Daisy,� like Hal in .
Another Heinleinian element: a scrapped spaceship called in R.A. Heinlein, within which his spiritual descendents live & grumble. When Hildy is handing out pseudonyms, she christens one of them Valentine Michael Smith (see ).
I read until the end because I wanted to see how things were wrapped up, but if you’re not a big fan of RAH, my advice is to skip this book.
Book number 308 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
July 2, 2009
Just when I thought I'd fangirled Mr. Varley as much as I could, I read this. OMG! Gender, children, our ever-increasing dependence on technology, computer science, depression, the importance of journalism, and lots of little adventures spicing up the great big plot. It's thick, it's thoughtful, and you should read it.
February 13, 2010
When the terribly, terribly fashionable decide the old genitals are getting to be rather a bore, don't you know, they phone the chauffeur and have the old bones driven down to Change Alley.
John Varley, Steel Beach
Hildy Johnson, sometimes reporter for The News Nipple on Luna, may not be John Varley's first character to switch genders in the middle of a story, but he's certainly the most memorable. (In the film His Girl Friday, the character of Hildy was switched to a woman because the director loved the sound of the secretary filling in for the character during rehearsals.) Most of Mr. Varley's work to this point has indicated that gender is possibly one step deeper than a new coat. Hildy shows us that, at least from the inside, The Switch changes outlook and social and sexual dynamics.
The Eight Worlds, of which this book is a vague, out-of-continuity episode in, is a future in which The Invaders -- shadowy, never-seen aliens -- have taken over Earth. But rather than enslave or eat humanity, or abduct and torture us with turkey basters, Varley's aliens don't even notice humanity. The human race is evicted off of Earth like you might sweep ants off your porch.
And so the human race lives on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, on Mars, Pluto -- pretty much anywhere else in the solar system with a solid surface. And these societies are kept alive and running smoothly by superintelligent machines. In the case of Luna it's the Central Computer, who is a friend to anyone -- on an individual level, in fact.
The CC directs the lives of the teeming multitudes on Luna. It keeps them happy, comfortable. One of the universal rights past basic survival is the right of a job. In an automated society run by a powerful, supposedly benign, CC, people must find their own purposes in life.
Steel Beach is unarguably Mr. Varley's greatest novel among a career of excellent -- and too few! -- books. The question of what is means to be human after the need to survive has been removed, after death has been virtually exterminated, is foremost in the plot, but this is not a preachy book. The characters -- the stubborn, staid Walter Editor; young cub reporter Brenda, Hildy's longtime rival and crush Cricket, Liz the drunken, British royalty -- these people are all cliches out of films and comics. But in the hands of John Varley, they are wonderful, horrible, fascinating people. Dissatisfied with being set pieces in the show run by the CC -- particularly Hildy.
No summary does this book justice, and any synopsis of it sounds like a '40s serial. On a level with Dune, Perdido Street Station, and Hyperion, Mr. Varley's magnum opus should be read by anyone with an interest in science-fiction, any fiction, or just plain being a person.
John Varley, Steel Beach
Hildy Johnson, sometimes reporter for The News Nipple on Luna, may not be John Varley's first character to switch genders in the middle of a story, but he's certainly the most memorable. (In the film His Girl Friday, the character of Hildy was switched to a woman because the director loved the sound of the secretary filling in for the character during rehearsals.) Most of Mr. Varley's work to this point has indicated that gender is possibly one step deeper than a new coat. Hildy shows us that, at least from the inside, The Switch changes outlook and social and sexual dynamics.
The Eight Worlds, of which this book is a vague, out-of-continuity episode in, is a future in which The Invaders -- shadowy, never-seen aliens -- have taken over Earth. But rather than enslave or eat humanity, or abduct and torture us with turkey basters, Varley's aliens don't even notice humanity. The human race is evicted off of Earth like you might sweep ants off your porch.
And so the human race lives on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, on Mars, Pluto -- pretty much anywhere else in the solar system with a solid surface. And these societies are kept alive and running smoothly by superintelligent machines. In the case of Luna it's the Central Computer, who is a friend to anyone -- on an individual level, in fact.
The CC directs the lives of the teeming multitudes on Luna. It keeps them happy, comfortable. One of the universal rights past basic survival is the right of a job. In an automated society run by a powerful, supposedly benign, CC, people must find their own purposes in life.
Steel Beach is unarguably Mr. Varley's greatest novel among a career of excellent -- and too few! -- books. The question of what is means to be human after the need to survive has been removed, after death has been virtually exterminated, is foremost in the plot, but this is not a preachy book. The characters -- the stubborn, staid Walter Editor; young cub reporter Brenda, Hildy's longtime rival and crush Cricket, Liz the drunken, British royalty -- these people are all cliches out of films and comics. But in the hands of John Varley, they are wonderful, horrible, fascinating people. Dissatisfied with being set pieces in the show run by the CC -- particularly Hildy.
No summary does this book justice, and any synopsis of it sounds like a '40s serial. On a level with Dune, Perdido Street Station, and Hyperion, Mr. Varley's magnum opus should be read by anyone with an interest in science-fiction, any fiction, or just plain being a person.
July 20, 2023
I really enjoyed the satirical style of this novel and what he said about state of human society, purpose of individual in that society and even gender and parenthood. This book was ahead of its time- an intriguing mix of Altered Carbon, Michael Crichton, with a fun mix of a sarcastic Ursula Le Guinn�.
This story follows a journalist who lives on the moon, who seems intermittently suicidal- and discovers that mmaybe its not his fault, maybe its the ruling AI, but then whose fault is that. We follow Hilde through their exploration to find fulfilling work, recerd from society, getting a sex change which everyone does these days, fall in love, get embroilled in a plot risking all of humanity, and so much more. Would recommend.
This story follows a journalist who lives on the moon, who seems intermittently suicidal- and discovers that mmaybe its not his fault, maybe its the ruling AI, but then whose fault is that. We follow Hilde through their exploration to find fulfilling work, recerd from society, getting a sex change which everyone does these days, fall in love, get embroilled in a plot risking all of humanity, and so much more. Would recommend.
July 13, 2024
Ciencia ficción tecnológica y potente, con un comienzo desquiciado sobre la vida lunar, sus múltiples actividades de esparcimiento, para todos los gustos, esforzando nuestra imaginación al límite. La socarronería de Hildy lo hace más fácil, sacando más de una sonrisa, pero llega un punto en que la falta de una trama más urdida empieza a aburrir. Por suerte se endereza en el último tercio, desatándose la acción, el esfuerzo imaginativo cobra sentido y ahora sí que vuela.
Al final da la impresión que la prosa de Varley soporta cualquier locura, aportando ideas e ironía en partes iguales y suficientes.
Al final da la impresión que la prosa de Varley soporta cualquier locura, aportando ideas e ironía en partes iguales y suficientes.
November 27, 2023
This is my favorite Varley book so far. Despite its ironic and sardonic tone, it is rather dark in that the protagonist becomes suicidal and so does the Central Computer that controls everything on the Lunar colony! There is a lot of humor and hijinks at the beginning, but then the tone becomes far more serious if not morbid. I guess that the author went through some dark moments, because there is a lot of philosophizing about why people commit suicide and the place of AI in a modern society. So, although things in it feel archaic (it was written back in 1980), the themes are still valid today.
April 28, 2016
It is facile. It is conveniently heteronormative. And not much happens in it until about the 80% mark. The narrator, Hildy Johnson, is a reporter for a trash tabloid on the moon. He (and then later, she) is on a kind of quest to find out what could make life worth living, because she’s lived for 100 years and keeps trying to kill herself.
We meet her friends, we watch her hobbies, she tells us how she feels about things. She’s surprisingly sunny in a snappy way that readers familiar with the work of Robert A. Heinlein will recognize—a kind of 1940’s wiseass-cum-libertarian attitude. It’s not very dark, for a book with a suicidal narrator. It’s mostly rated G, with a few anatomical details here and there possibly unsuitable for boys under the age of 14.
Robert Heinlein casts a long shadow across Steel Beach. Elements of I Will Fear No Evil, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Time Enough For Love keep surfacing. This is not a story full of action, it is a story full of Thoughts On Life, presented in a kind of idle porch talk.
I felt very unkind toward it while I was reading it, despite being a huge fan of Varley’s back in the day, because the aforementioned Thoughts On Life are just not particularly insightful, and the technological wonders of Lunar life in the 23rd century are either familiar to 21st century urbanites or already obsolete or just obviously wrong.
Maybe our times are darker than his were in 1992. I mean, they are. Of course they are. We live under constant surveillance, and we’re screwing up the climate (and we know it and we don’t stop), our democracy only sorta works and capitalism is throwing 99% of us under the bus. Varley’s posited technocracy seems really naïve in light of all that. It’s kind of infuriating.
But it was good to revisit him. I haven’t read anything by him in 20 years, at least. When cyberpunk came along, he was left behind. It happens. If it had been written by anyone else, by someone whose work I’d never enjoyed, I would have bailed before I was even halfway through it. If you don’t know John Varley’s work, don’t bother. Read his Gaia trilogy instead, or his collected early short stories. If you do know his work, and are looking for a blast from the past, be prepared for a novel that has not aged well at all.
We meet her friends, we watch her hobbies, she tells us how she feels about things. She’s surprisingly sunny in a snappy way that readers familiar with the work of Robert A. Heinlein will recognize—a kind of 1940’s wiseass-cum-libertarian attitude. It’s not very dark, for a book with a suicidal narrator. It’s mostly rated G, with a few anatomical details here and there possibly unsuitable for boys under the age of 14.
Robert Heinlein casts a long shadow across Steel Beach. Elements of I Will Fear No Evil, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Time Enough For Love keep surfacing. This is not a story full of action, it is a story full of Thoughts On Life, presented in a kind of idle porch talk.
I felt very unkind toward it while I was reading it, despite being a huge fan of Varley’s back in the day, because the aforementioned Thoughts On Life are just not particularly insightful, and the technological wonders of Lunar life in the 23rd century are either familiar to 21st century urbanites or already obsolete or just obviously wrong.
Maybe our times are darker than his were in 1992. I mean, they are. Of course they are. We live under constant surveillance, and we’re screwing up the climate (and we know it and we don’t stop), our democracy only sorta works and capitalism is throwing 99% of us under the bus. Varley’s posited technocracy seems really naïve in light of all that. It’s kind of infuriating.
But it was good to revisit him. I haven’t read anything by him in 20 years, at least. When cyberpunk came along, he was left behind. It happens. If it had been written by anyone else, by someone whose work I’d never enjoyed, I would have bailed before I was even halfway through it. If you don’t know John Varley’s work, don’t bother. Read his Gaia trilogy instead, or his collected early short stories. If you do know his work, and are looking for a blast from the past, be prepared for a novel that has not aged well at all.
March 27, 2011
This novel is set in Varley’s “Eight Worlds� Universe. It is the story, almost the chronicle, of Hildy Johnson, who also made an appearance in “The Golden Globe�. Steel Beach is the story of how Hildy Johnson didn’t commit suicide. That’s putting it crudely since the actual story is full of wonderful detail and nuance.
Hildy Johnson lives on Luna (the moon), a utopia with very long (perhaps even infinite) life, no real need to work and unprecedented personal freedom. Ironically, this personal freedom comes from having a very advanced Central Computer (the “CC�) run basically everything. Every citizen has a personal interface with he CC and can ask for any information at any time. Sex changes and other surgerical procedures are effortless and painless. Subcultures of all sorts thrive as people pursue what they really want to do. For example, large “Disney’s�, basically theme parks where you can even live, provide their inhabitants with life as it was in, say, an idealized Texas in the late 1800s. So life is pretty good. There’s just one problem: Hildy (who starts the novel as a man and ends it as a woman) keeps trying to commit suicide. The CC has noticed a rash of suicides and is trying to do something about them. He dragoons Hildy into helping him. Little does either know where this will land them or the rest of Luna.
The novel is about this, and much more. It is an exploration into what makes us human. Why do we live, exactly? What do we live for? Hildy is faced with the issue of having more or less infinite life ahead of him but no understanding of what he/she must do with it. The unbridled consumerism of Luna is not enough to give him/her purpose. And so he is endlessly seeking. Steel Beach is a wonderful exploration into the nature of humanity. But it is neither lecturing nor boring. The first person exposition is witty, whimsical, at times laugh out loud funny, while remaining insightful and interesting. I loved this book.
Hildy Johnson lives on Luna (the moon), a utopia with very long (perhaps even infinite) life, no real need to work and unprecedented personal freedom. Ironically, this personal freedom comes from having a very advanced Central Computer (the “CC�) run basically everything. Every citizen has a personal interface with he CC and can ask for any information at any time. Sex changes and other surgerical procedures are effortless and painless. Subcultures of all sorts thrive as people pursue what they really want to do. For example, large “Disney’s�, basically theme parks where you can even live, provide their inhabitants with life as it was in, say, an idealized Texas in the late 1800s. So life is pretty good. There’s just one problem: Hildy (who starts the novel as a man and ends it as a woman) keeps trying to commit suicide. The CC has noticed a rash of suicides and is trying to do something about them. He dragoons Hildy into helping him. Little does either know where this will land them or the rest of Luna.
The novel is about this, and much more. It is an exploration into what makes us human. Why do we live, exactly? What do we live for? Hildy is faced with the issue of having more or less infinite life ahead of him but no understanding of what he/she must do with it. The unbridled consumerism of Luna is not enough to give him/her purpose. And so he is endlessly seeking. Steel Beach is a wonderful exploration into the nature of humanity. But it is neither lecturing nor boring. The first person exposition is witty, whimsical, at times laugh out loud funny, while remaining insightful and interesting. I loved this book.
December 4, 2020
Primarily smut with a SciFi backstory... not my cup of tea
June 10, 2022
Clearly Inspired by Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress, But Overlong
Having just listened to Varley's debut novel The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) supposedly set in the same setting, I had no idea I'd be getting a much longer update and revisiting of the themes of Robert A Heinlein's famous The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), which I have argued was his last good novel before he got very creepy and cantankerous.
Now John Varley, like Heinlein, is very keen that readers recognize that he can indeed get inside the female mind and write from their perspective, and with all the gender changing in this lunar society he had plenty of chances to explore that to the fullest. I found it a bit tiresome - I can't be sure, but I'd love to ask some female readers if he does, indeed "get it"?
I'd have to say that I found this book overlong and the plot a bit scattered, and while the narrator had that Heinlein snark and independence, it did get a bit wearisome overtime. It also felt remarkably dated and implausible that beat journalists chasing human interest stories (with fedoras no less) could still exist in a future post-scarcity Luna colony. One of my favourite parts of the prior book was the whole bizarre alien invasion and interactions, and that was completely absent from this book. The two books are only very loosely connected really, but I thought the first was better.
Having just listened to Varley's debut novel The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) supposedly set in the same setting, I had no idea I'd be getting a much longer update and revisiting of the themes of Robert A Heinlein's famous The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), which I have argued was his last good novel before he got very creepy and cantankerous.
Now John Varley, like Heinlein, is very keen that readers recognize that he can indeed get inside the female mind and write from their perspective, and with all the gender changing in this lunar society he had plenty of chances to explore that to the fullest. I found it a bit tiresome - I can't be sure, but I'd love to ask some female readers if he does, indeed "get it"?
I'd have to say that I found this book overlong and the plot a bit scattered, and while the narrator had that Heinlein snark and independence, it did get a bit wearisome overtime. It also felt remarkably dated and implausible that beat journalists chasing human interest stories (with fedoras no less) could still exist in a future post-scarcity Luna colony. One of my favourite parts of the prior book was the whole bizarre alien invasion and interactions, and that was completely absent from this book. The two books are only very loosely connected really, but I thought the first was better.
November 16, 2010
Love it. Will say more later, but this is absolutely in the big-ideas-dropped-like-little-bombs tradition of Heinlein, but with a big sense of why you don't actually want to BE that guy on a political or a social or a personal level. Plus some really all-in gender switching by main characters including the viewpoint characters, with a sense that gender, sex, and orientation don't all line up the same way for different people, nor does CHANGING one of those things have a predictable effect across different people (pretty good for the '80s). Adore the moment when one single mom starts begrudgingly wearing a mustache (real, biological) because her kid heard from the other kids at school that dads are pretty cool.
Plus the Disneylands, which are historical theme areas left for those who don't quite fit into modern life, but with an easy escape hatch, and Westerns, or dinosaur riding. Leading to an incredible line about how the main character can't imagine old Earth held anything more beautiful and mysterious than a Disneyland sunset.
Something about old postscarcity-obsessed SF really speaks to me. Maybe because of how hard it is anymore to believe we'll ever get there, but it's great to haunt your dreams with.
Plus the Disneylands, which are historical theme areas left for those who don't quite fit into modern life, but with an easy escape hatch, and Westerns, or dinosaur riding. Leading to an incredible line about how the main character can't imagine old Earth held anything more beautiful and mysterious than a Disneyland sunset.
Something about old postscarcity-obsessed SF really speaks to me. Maybe because of how hard it is anymore to believe we'll ever get there, but it's great to haunt your dreams with.
September 11, 2013
Blah.
Some interesting concepts here - humanity cast off the earth by an uncaring alien race, re-establishes itself on the moon and nearby planets. Medical technology has made every disease curable, every body part update-able and every injury fixable. Over-riding all that, a computer consciousnesses is involved in every aspect of life and thought. And what happens when that omnipotent, benevolent (?) AI starts getting depressed?
All huge concepts, any one of which could have made compelling SF, but all mixed together with hundreds of pages devoted to the awesome future of easy sex-changes... whah, who, huh? Not into it. But that's just me. Also many musings on the nature of sexuality and the serious consideration of suicide... count me not interested.
How do you remain connected to a depressed, suicidal protagonist who is swapping genders at the drop of a hat? Seemed like a lot of deep self-psycho-therapy for the author.
I would have preferred a real story given the great concepts.
Some interesting concepts here - humanity cast off the earth by an uncaring alien race, re-establishes itself on the moon and nearby planets. Medical technology has made every disease curable, every body part update-able and every injury fixable. Over-riding all that, a computer consciousnesses is involved in every aspect of life and thought. And what happens when that omnipotent, benevolent (?) AI starts getting depressed?
All huge concepts, any one of which could have made compelling SF, but all mixed together with hundreds of pages devoted to the awesome future of easy sex-changes... whah, who, huh? Not into it. But that's just me. Also many musings on the nature of sexuality and the serious consideration of suicide... count me not interested.
How do you remain connected to a depressed, suicidal protagonist who is swapping genders at the drop of a hat? Seemed like a lot of deep self-psycho-therapy for the author.
I would have preferred a real story given the great concepts.
December 7, 2009
just fucking terrible. if I hadn't been stuck in airports or on a plane I never would have continued reading this shit.
I knew it was going to be bad when there were mentions of Heinlein in there. Nothing good comes of science fiction authors referencing Heinlein because Heinlein sucked and was a pervert.
So yeah, this book was basically a shallow copy of the kind of stuff written by a dead would-be sex offender.
I knew it was going to be bad when there were mentions of Heinlein in there. Nothing good comes of science fiction authors referencing Heinlein because Heinlein sucked and was a pervert.
So yeah, this book was basically a shallow copy of the kind of stuff written by a dead would-be sex offender.
June 12, 2014
Con Varley siempre me pasa lo mismo, a ratos es fascinante y a ratos un coñazo.
July 8, 2018
Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 4/5
Consider these three factors if you're weighing whether or not to read Steel Beach.
1) My edition ends with an author's note in which he explains how this is related to his Eight Worlds future history series:
2) The first words of the novel: "In five years, the penis will be obsolete..." The journalist, also our narrator, covering this sales pitch sarcastically remarks that he'll hold off calling his broker to sell all the jock-strap stock . The pitch continues, "Sex as we know it is awkward, inflexible, unimaginative. By the time you're forty, you've done everything you possibly could without present, 'natural' sexual system." The pitch and the details and reasons for the foreseen demand for the product, ULTRA-Tingle, continues. Interspersed with some background information on the main character and his colleague who work for different tabloids, The News Nipple and the The Straight Sh*t, respectively; we quickly get front row seats (along with passerby) to what sexual relation in this futuristic society looks like. And it is a future of hedonistic, instant gratification. Some part of this was genuine speculative fiction. Varley was looking at our current trajectory and forecasting what we'd do with technological advances, how it would change both our relationships and our very conception of the self. The greater part of this was raunchy licentiousness, Varley - freed from the social mores and natural limitations in the real world - gets the license to graphically detail and explore the possibilities, doing a great job conveying the delight (and quickly resulting boredom) that so many would take once boundaries had been expanded. Most of the text thereafter a mix of insightful social commentary on the future of identity and straight up pornography.
3) This is a Moon is a Harsh Mistress imitation. Varley has done this before, his Gaea trilogy a knockoff of Niven's Ringworld. It is a little too close to be considered simply "inspired by" - but too serious to be labeled a spoof. They are inarguably original once you accept that Varley is intentionally building upon and expecting readers to already be familiar with the precursors. Much as Varley had tried to out-Niven Larry Niven (a great portion of the middle Gaea book, Wizard, devoted to the mating patterns and possibilities of his fantasy creatures), he also attempts to out-Heinlein Robert A. Heinlein. You can read the implicit challenge between the lines, Varley thinking, "Oh you think that is liberty do you? I show you what Libertarianism would really look like!. And Heinlein was already pretty far out there - sexual relations between family members, family marriages, sexual indulgence as a right - but Varley wants to take them even further to their extremes. This makes for a bizarre political ideology when compared to the society and time in which it was written (much as it was for Heinlein), a mix of extreme conservatism of the Libertarians and the wildest possibilities and affirmations sought by radical progressives. Varley moves beyond sex, and readers get see how life society would regard guns, euthanasia, privacy, education, and Big Government. And really, in the last 150 pages or so of this novel, I thought the novel turned into something more than shock art. After all the meandering and scandalizing, Varley found a purpose to put all this to. Some readers might be able to put those first sections aside, and enjoy the story Varley finally came to discover. And when I could forget those initial 400 pages, I could get there as well. I was never able to put aside those initial hours of agony aside for long, however, and the most I can say for it is that you might as well read to the end, it does get better.
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 4/5
Consider these three factors if you're weighing whether or not to read Steel Beach.
1) My edition ends with an author's note in which he explains how this is related to his Eight Worlds future history series:
It does share background, characters, and technology with earlier stories of mine, which is part of the future history tradition. What it doesn't share is a chronology. The reason for this is simple: the thought of going back, rereading all those old stories, and putting them in coherent order filled me with ennui. It got so bad I might as well give up on this story. Then I thought, what the heck?That really should tell you all you need to know about care in which this was stitched together.
2) The first words of the novel: "In five years, the penis will be obsolete..." The journalist, also our narrator, covering this sales pitch sarcastically remarks that he'll hold off calling his broker to sell all the jock-strap stock . The pitch continues, "Sex as we know it is awkward, inflexible, unimaginative. By the time you're forty, you've done everything you possibly could without present, 'natural' sexual system." The pitch and the details and reasons for the foreseen demand for the product, ULTRA-Tingle, continues. Interspersed with some background information on the main character and his colleague who work for different tabloids, The News Nipple and the The Straight Sh*t, respectively; we quickly get front row seats (along with passerby) to what sexual relation in this futuristic society looks like. And it is a future of hedonistic, instant gratification. Some part of this was genuine speculative fiction. Varley was looking at our current trajectory and forecasting what we'd do with technological advances, how it would change both our relationships and our very conception of the self. The greater part of this was raunchy licentiousness, Varley - freed from the social mores and natural limitations in the real world - gets the license to graphically detail and explore the possibilities, doing a great job conveying the delight (and quickly resulting boredom) that so many would take once boundaries had been expanded. Most of the text thereafter a mix of insightful social commentary on the future of identity and straight up pornography.
3) This is a Moon is a Harsh Mistress imitation. Varley has done this before, his Gaea trilogy a knockoff of Niven's Ringworld. It is a little too close to be considered simply "inspired by" - but too serious to be labeled a spoof. They are inarguably original once you accept that Varley is intentionally building upon and expecting readers to already be familiar with the precursors. Much as Varley had tried to out-Niven Larry Niven (a great portion of the middle Gaea book, Wizard, devoted to the mating patterns and possibilities of his fantasy creatures), he also attempts to out-Heinlein Robert A. Heinlein. You can read the implicit challenge between the lines, Varley thinking, "Oh you think that is liberty do you? I show you what Libertarianism would really look like!. And Heinlein was already pretty far out there - sexual relations between family members, family marriages, sexual indulgence as a right - but Varley wants to take them even further to their extremes. This makes for a bizarre political ideology when compared to the society and time in which it was written (much as it was for Heinlein), a mix of extreme conservatism of the Libertarians and the wildest possibilities and affirmations sought by radical progressives. Varley moves beyond sex, and readers get see how life society would regard guns, euthanasia, privacy, education, and Big Government. And really, in the last 150 pages or so of this novel, I thought the novel turned into something more than shock art. After all the meandering and scandalizing, Varley found a purpose to put all this to. Some readers might be able to put those first sections aside, and enjoy the story Varley finally came to discover. And when I could forget those initial 400 pages, I could get there as well. I was never able to put aside those initial hours of agony aside for long, however, and the most I can say for it is that you might as well read to the end, it does get better.
July 10, 2016
After a decade-long hiatus, John Varley returned to his Eight Worlds series with Steel Beach, and the change is considerable. The original gist of the series is that humanity has been evicted from Earth by an unknown alien force dubbed "the Invaders," forced to eke out a living on the other eight worlds of the solar system (Pluto's recent demotion messes up the name a little, I guess). The only book from the original series I've read is The Ophiuchi Hotline, written in the 1970s, which revolved around an aspect of the Eight Worlds conspicuously absent from Steel Beach: a hotline of data streamed towards Earth from the star Ophiuchi, providing new technology which gives the human race a leg-up in surviving in exile.
This is the only major change from the original series, in storyline terms at least. Varley's prose, on the other hand, has become far better. While The Ophiuchi Hotline was typical mid-century science fiction, with an occasional glimmer of humour and wit, Varley's new style of prose is wonderfully funny, laced with dry observations and laconic philosophy.
The book revolves around Hildy Johnson, a newspaper reporter for Luna, now the most populous and important world since the Invasion. (Hildy describes it as "Refuge of Humanity as well as the Front-Line Planet and the Bulwark of the Race - not to mention the First To Get Our Asses Whipped if the Invaders ever decide to continue what they started.") Despite being on the doorstep of Earth, Lunarians rarely think about the Invaders; it has been two hundred years since their arrival, and most have grown lazy and complacent in a society run by the all-powerful, benevolent Central Computer, where all their needs are provided and Earth is a distant memory. All is not well, however; after several failed suicide attempts, Hildy is choked with an inexplicable despair, and the Central Computer informs him a disturbing fact: suicide is fast becoming the primary cause of death in Lunar society. Even more troubling is the fact that the CC has been feeling rather depressed himself lately...
This sets the tone for most of the book - dissatisfaction and depression. There's a lot of introspection, philosophy and hypothesising about the human condition, which sometimes leaves the plot aimless and confused. But the book still works. Luna itself is a fascinating society, with a hundred amusing little things over every page. People get sex changes every few years or so. The Apollo landing site has become a theme park. There are underground ranches filled with cloned brontosaurs. A modern religion canonizes long-dead celebrities like Elvis for worship. People who used to be kings and queens on Earth now scrape out a living as plumbers or stunt doubles along with the rest of society, and have to save up if they want to rent a party hall for a coronation.
There's an aspect to Varley's work, a Pratchett-esque understanding of how humans tick, that makes it so much more real than anything by Heinlein or Robinson. Of course people are more interested in celebrity marriages than the Invasion of Earth. Of course the original lunar landing site is a replica, since the original one was trashed by drunken college students. Of course there are enormous, underground habitats made to look exactly like 19th century Texas or Oregon, so tourists from the cities can come and watch actors shoot it out with blank cartridges. Human beings were shallow, pedantic and trivial in the 20th century; why shouldn't they be so in the 23rd? It's a hell of a lot more realistic than most hard science fiction, and lot more fun, too.
This is the only major change from the original series, in storyline terms at least. Varley's prose, on the other hand, has become far better. While The Ophiuchi Hotline was typical mid-century science fiction, with an occasional glimmer of humour and wit, Varley's new style of prose is wonderfully funny, laced with dry observations and laconic philosophy.
The book revolves around Hildy Johnson, a newspaper reporter for Luna, now the most populous and important world since the Invasion. (Hildy describes it as "Refuge of Humanity as well as the Front-Line Planet and the Bulwark of the Race - not to mention the First To Get Our Asses Whipped if the Invaders ever decide to continue what they started.") Despite being on the doorstep of Earth, Lunarians rarely think about the Invaders; it has been two hundred years since their arrival, and most have grown lazy and complacent in a society run by the all-powerful, benevolent Central Computer, where all their needs are provided and Earth is a distant memory. All is not well, however; after several failed suicide attempts, Hildy is choked with an inexplicable despair, and the Central Computer informs him a disturbing fact: suicide is fast becoming the primary cause of death in Lunar society. Even more troubling is the fact that the CC has been feeling rather depressed himself lately...
This sets the tone for most of the book - dissatisfaction and depression. There's a lot of introspection, philosophy and hypothesising about the human condition, which sometimes leaves the plot aimless and confused. But the book still works. Luna itself is a fascinating society, with a hundred amusing little things over every page. People get sex changes every few years or so. The Apollo landing site has become a theme park. There are underground ranches filled with cloned brontosaurs. A modern religion canonizes long-dead celebrities like Elvis for worship. People who used to be kings and queens on Earth now scrape out a living as plumbers or stunt doubles along with the rest of society, and have to save up if they want to rent a party hall for a coronation.
There's an aspect to Varley's work, a Pratchett-esque understanding of how humans tick, that makes it so much more real than anything by Heinlein or Robinson. Of course people are more interested in celebrity marriages than the Invasion of Earth. Of course the original lunar landing site is a replica, since the original one was trashed by drunken college students. Of course there are enormous, underground habitats made to look exactly like 19th century Texas or Oregon, so tourists from the cities can come and watch actors shoot it out with blank cartridges. Human beings were shallow, pedantic and trivial in the 20th century; why shouldn't they be so in the 23rd? It's a hell of a lot more realistic than most hard science fiction, and lot more fun, too.
August 11, 2014
This novel is set on the Moon, in a future where Earth has been invaded, and human life continues on the "Eight Worlds" of the solar system. There are some minor discrepancies regarding the timeline of this setting and that of other "Eight Worlds" novels such as The Ophiuchi Hotline - but John Varley states in the post-word that he really doesn't care about that. In this novel, set about two hundred years after the invasion, tabloid reporter Hildy Johnson wants to retire from the business, but becomes embroiled in several big stories anyway. In this future, changes in humanity are supported through biotechnology - sex-change at will and adaptation to vacuum - but genetic change remains taboo. The Central Computer has developed an emergent intelligence that no one can live without, and may be experiencing a form of mental illness. It is a long novel, with plenty of diversions into social adaptation and sexual behavior of humans and into pop culture. The novel was nominated for Hugo Award, but did not win. I found it to be good entertainment, but not particularly profound.
John Varley pays extensive tribute to two prior works:
1) The Front Page is a 1928 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, concerning a male newspaper reporter in Chicago named Hildy Johnson, who wants to retire from the business but cannot resist the lure of a big story. His Girl Friday is a 1940 film adaptation concerning a female newspaper reporter Hildy (Rosalind Russell), who wants to retire from the business and her ex-husband boss Walter (Cary Grant) but cannot resist the lure of a big story. Having seen both, I think the film is the stronger influence on Steel Beach, but the gender difference between the play and the film plays into the sex-changes of Varley's lunar society.
2) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is a 1966 novel by Robert Heinlein, concerning a libertarian revolution on the Moon, led by an emergent artificial intelligence. There are also references to other Heinlein works, and in fact one segment of the lunar society is named to be the Heinleiners.
John Varley pays extensive tribute to two prior works:
1) The Front Page is a 1928 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, concerning a male newspaper reporter in Chicago named Hildy Johnson, who wants to retire from the business but cannot resist the lure of a big story. His Girl Friday is a 1940 film adaptation concerning a female newspaper reporter Hildy (Rosalind Russell), who wants to retire from the business and her ex-husband boss Walter (Cary Grant) but cannot resist the lure of a big story. Having seen both, I think the film is the stronger influence on Steel Beach, but the gender difference between the play and the film plays into the sex-changes of Varley's lunar society.
2) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is a 1966 novel by Robert Heinlein, concerning a libertarian revolution on the Moon, led by an emergent artificial intelligence. There are also references to other Heinlein works, and in fact one segment of the lunar society is named to be the Heinleiners.
December 30, 2013
One of the most ambitious science-fiction novels of the 1990s, a sprawling book that practically amounts to a trilogy tracking a single protagonist through a series of genders, identities, jobs, and attempts at finding meaning in life. I'm going to write a column entry for The Dissolve about this one soon.
May 27, 2018
Gah, it's finally over!
And mb that should be it, my knee jerk reaction the final and complete review, but if the author never stopped rambling, why should I?
One star goes to me for making it through despite my tablet's constants boos and the other to the book for the final scene between Hildy and the CC. It was touching, but the build-up was... well. There was a story here, despite everyone's worst ex-sex-ses, but it got buried under junk piles of wtf. A perfect drinking game - every time Hildy has sex, thinks about sex or goes off on a boring tangent about sex, gender and genitals. In the end, she chose to have hers replaced with actual Barbie parts, so I guess she managed to tire even herself and her author out! Sure all orientations and permutations are tine now, let's fill the book with same old icky m/f from both pov's plus gratuitous pregnancy, dangerous birth AND dead baby. Doing great👍
.
Off to dive into a pool of brain bleach.
And mb that should be it, my knee jerk reaction the final and complete review, but if the author never stopped rambling, why should I?
One star goes to me for making it through despite my tablet's constants boos and the other to the book for the final scene between Hildy and the CC. It was touching, but the build-up was... well. There was a story here, despite everyone's worst ex-sex-ses, but it got buried under junk piles of wtf. A perfect drinking game - every time Hildy has sex, thinks about sex or goes off on a boring tangent about sex, gender and genitals. In the end, she chose to have hers replaced with actual Barbie parts, so I guess she managed to tire even herself and her author out! Sure all orientations and permutations are tine now, let's fill the book with same old icky m/f from both pov's plus gratuitous pregnancy, dangerous birth AND dead baby. Doing great👍
.
Off to dive into a pool of brain bleach.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2018
El anterior libro de la salga acaba en un punto álgido de comienzo de una nueva aventura que habían descubierto tras investigar. Supuse erróneamente que la segunda novela sería la continuación y aquí viene cuando Varley me golpea con una novela tan llena de tramas interesantes que, al igual que pasa con la novela de "la caza de Nimroad" te mete cada 3 páginas en un universo que da para hacer una sola novela con las ideas que se exponen ahí. Una delicia ir descubriendo todos los ambientes de luna y muy gratamente sorprendido por la inclusión de los dinosaurios.
February 28, 2019
7/10. Media de los 8 libros leídos del autor : 7/10
Un "9" (La Hechicera) un "8" (Perdido en el banco de memoria) y tres "7" (El globo de oro, En el salón de los reyes marcianos y este de Playa de acero) como destacable por mi parte. El resto, a pesar de la fama de algunos, olvidables
Un "9" (La Hechicera) un "8" (Perdido en el banco de memoria) y tres "7" (El globo de oro, En el salón de los reyes marcianos y este de Playa de acero) como destacable por mi parte. El resto, a pesar de la fama de algunos, olvidables
Shelved as 'dnf'
July 12, 2024Right now I'm really annoyed that I wasted money on this book. This feeling may not last and I may come back to this book after my memories of THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE fades. HOTLINE was a solid read of a serious nature. STEEL BEACH is more of a rom-com.
Not what I was expecting. I'll save it for another time.
August 4, 2024
2.5 stars.
"Fleeing Earth after an alien invasion, the human race stands on the threshold of evolution. Their new home is Luna, a moon colony blessed with creature comforts, prolonged lifespans, digital memories, and instant sex changes.
But the people of Luna are bored, restless, suicidal—and so is the computer that monitors their existence..."-Barnes & Noble
The protagonist's thoughts about permitting the CC more power, in limiting human's freedom:
"... after all, the CC is a benevolent watchdog, isn't he? Who has he ever hurt, except those who deserved it? We could reduce crime to zero overnight if we'd only take the chains off the CC.
I'd even leaned that way myself, in spite of the Civil libertarian objections. After my sojourn on Scarpa island, I found myself heartily on the other side of the question. I suppose I was simply illustrating that old definition of a liberal: a conservative who just got arrested. A conservative, of course, is a liberal who just got mugged."
In the moon colony, plastic surgery has come to the state of art where you can have almost anything done to yourself, even sex changes. But here's something crazier than that:
".. she had recently had herself heeled. It was coming back into fashion. Personally, I tried it and didn't like it much. It's a simple operation. The tendons in The Soles of the feet are shortened, forcing your heels up in the air and Shifting the weight to the balls of the feet. In extreme cases it put you right up on your toes like a ballerina. Like I said, a rather silly fad, but I had to admit it produced attractive lines in the calf, thigh, and buttock muscles.
It could have been worse. Women used to cram their feet into pointed Horrors with 10-cm heels and hobble around in a 1-gee field to get more or less the same effect. It must have been crippling."
Yes and I have the hammer toes to prove it.
And there's this:
" 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' Walter said. That's my philosophy. The old-fashioned system worked for millions of years. Why tamper with it?'
'actually, walter, we've already tampered with it quite a bit.'
'Not everybody.'
'true. But well over 80% of females prefer clitoral relocation. The natural Arrangement didn't provide enough stimulation during the regular sex act. And just about that many men have had a testicle tuck. They were two damn vulnerable hanging out there where nature put them.'
'I haven't had one,' He said.
I made note of that, in case I ever got into a fight with him."
The protagonist's mother, Callie, has a brontosaurus farm, underground. Luna colonists eat steak cut from brontosauruses. She uses a T-Rex to herd them. her nemesis is a man named David Earth. His description:
"he was a large man, almost as tall as Brenda [7'some"] and much heftier. His hair was long, green, and unkempt for a very good reason: it wasn't hair, but a bioengineered species of grass bred to be parasitic on human skin. I don't know the details of its cultivation. I'd have had more interest in the mating habits of toads. It involved a thickening of the scalp, and soil was involved - when he scratched his head, dirt showered down. But I don't know how the soil was attached, whether in Pockets or layered on the skin, and I don't know anything about the blood-to-root system, and I'd just as soon not, thank you. I remember as a child wondering if, when he got up in the morning, he had to work compost into his agri-tonsorial splendor.
He had two huge breasts - almost all Earthists, male and female, sported them - and more plants grew in their upper slopes. Many of these bore tiny flowers or fruits. I wondered if he had to practice contour plowing to prevent erosion on those fertile hillsides. He saw me looking at them, plucked an apple no bigger than a grape from the Tangled mass and popped it in his mouth.
What can one say about the rest of him? His back and arms and legs were covered with hair. Not human hair, but actual pelts, resembling in various patches Jaguar, tiger, bison, zebra, and polar bear, among others, in a crazy patchwork. The genetic restructuring required to support all that must have been a cut and paste collage beyond imagining. It was ironic, I thought, that the roots of the earthists were in the anti-fur activists, but of course no animals had been harmed to produce his Pelt. Just little bits of their genes snipped out and shoehorned into his. He had claws like a bear on his fingertips, and instead of feet he walked around on the hoofs of a moose, like some large economy-size faun. All Earthists had animal attributes, it was their badge and ensign. But their founder had gone further than any of his followers. Which, one suspects, is what makes followers and leaders.
But incredible as it may seem having gone through the catalog of his offenses to the eye, it must be said that the first thing one noticed about David Earth upon having the misfortune to encounter him was his smell.
I'm sure he bathed. Perhaps the right way of putting it was that he watered himself regularly. David Earth during a drought would have been a walking fire hazard. But he used no soap ( animal by-product ) or any other cleaning preparation ( chemical pollution of the David sphere ). All of which would simply have resulted in a smell of sour sweat, which I don't care for but can tolerate. No, it was his passengers that lifted his signature Aroma from the merely objectionable to the realm of the unimaginable.
Large animals with fur Harbor fleas, that's axiomatic. Fleas were only the beginning of David Earth's 'welcome guests,' as he once described them to me. I'd countered with another term, parasites, and he'd merely smiled benevolently. All his smiles were benevolent; he was that kind of guy, the sort whose kindly face you'd like to rip off and feed to his welcome guests. . . .
What sort of guests did David spread his filthy welcome mat for? Well, what sort of vermin live in grasslands? I'd never seen a prairie dog peeking from his coiffeur, but I wouldn't have been surprised. He was home to a Scamper of mice, a shriek of shrews, a twittering of finches, and a circus of fleas. A trained biologist could easily have counted a dozen species of insects without even getting close. All these creatures were born, reared, courted, mated, nested, ate, defecated, urinated, laid their eggs, fought their battles, stalked their prey, dreamed their dreams and, as must we all, eventually died in the various biomes that were david. Sometimes the carcasses fell out; sometimes they didn't. All more fertile soil for the next generation.
All Earthists stink; it goes with the territory. They are perennial defendants in civil court for violation of the body odor laws, hauled in when some long-suffering citizen on a crowded elevator finally decides he's had enough. David Earth was the only man I knew of in Luna who was permanently banished from the public corridors. He made his way from Ranch to Disneyland to hydroponic Farm by way of the air, water, and service ducts."
he has charge of the Union that controls animal agriculture. Hence, he's always negotiating for the slaughter of less animals than the market supports. When he's negotiating with Callie, they get in a fight and his hair catches on fire from the campfire they're sitting around. He runs to where he thinks there's water, and causes a brontosaurus stampede, and he is squashed flat to death.
Hildy the protagonist has a friend whose company does the detonation of the surface of Luna that carved out different disneylands. Disneylands are enclaves where it imitates some portion of old Earth, ie texas, mexico, Philadelphia etc.
Hildy comes along to observe a detonation in the Kansas Disneyland. But the detonation in Kansas nudged an unmapped fault line a few klicks from nlNirvana. Nirvana is the kind of place where people go to be seen, B-list celebrities and Rich folks. Since hildy is a journalist, she gets a pass to go and report on the scene:
"by the time I got there most of the action was long over. A blowout is like that. There's a few minutes when a person exposed to Raw vacuum can be saved; after that, it's time for the coroner. Except for a few people trapped in self-sealing rooms who would soon be extricated - and no amount of breathless commentary could make these routine operations sound exciting- the rest of the collapse story was confined to ogling dead bodies and trying to find an angle.
The bodies definitely were not the story. Your average Nipple [the newspad Hildy works for] reader enjoys blood and gore, but there is a disgust threshold that might be defined as the yuck factor. Burst eyeballs and swollen tongues are all right, as is any degree of laceration or dismemberment. But the thing about a blowout death is, the human body has a certain amount of gas in it, in various cavities. A lot of it is in the intestine. What happens when that gas expands explosively and comes rushing out its natural Outlet is not something to use as a lead item in your coverage. We showed the bodies, you couldn't help that, we just didn't dwell on them."
Hildy, in her female form, goes for a meeting with her boss walter. You can tell this is written by a man come in various parts of the story. But one of them, is when she goes for the meeting dressed up to titillate him, and is shirtless. No woman in her right mind would do this.
Another way you know the author is a man is when a fellow journalist turns male, and chooses the biggest size dick that is on offer. They end up having sex together as do many many people in this Society end up having sex with each other, and the protagonist complains to herself that his dick is too big and that women don't really appreciate that. Really?
The premise of the book is that colonists on Luna have life so easy that they become suicidal. Life no longer has much meaning if it's so easy. There's no struggle involved.
The problem is that the Central Computer also becomes suicidal, and parts of him tries to off himself.
The protagonist has tried multiple times to off himself, unsuccessfully, because the Central Computer has stepped in, invaded his privacy, and stopped it. But when the CC does it, it causes many many deaths and the halting of large parts of the Luna colony.
Central Computer explains some of how he got to this point to Hildy.
" '... it was around 20 years ago that problems began to show themselves. I talked about them with some computer people, but it's strange. They could do nothing for me. I had become too advanced for that. They could do things, here and there, for my component parts, but the Gestalt that is me could only really be analyzed, diagnosed, and, if need be, repaired, by a being like myself. There are seven others like me, on other planets, but they're too busy, and I suspect they have similar problems of their own. In addition, my communications with them are intentionally limited by our respective governments, which don't always see eye to eye.'
'Question,' I said. 'When you first mentioned this problem, why wasn't it made public and discussed? Security?'
'yes, to a degree. Top level computer scientists were aware that I perceived I had a problem. A few of them confided that it scared them to death. They made their fears known to your elected representatives, and that's when another Factor became more important than security: inertia. "He's got a problem, what can you do about it?" the politicians asked. "nothing," said the scientists. "shut it down," said a few hotheads.'
'not likely,' I said.
'exactly. My reading of History tells me it's always been like this. An alarming but vague problem arises. No one can say with certainty what the final outcome will be, but they're fairly sure nothing bad is going to happen soon. "soon" is the key word here. the eventual decision is to keep one's fingers crossed and hope it doesn't happen during your term in office. What beFalls your successor is not your problem. So for a few years a few people in the know spend a few Sleepless nights. But then nothing happens, as you always secretly believed nothing would, and soon the problem is forgotten. That's what happened here.' "
and this is what's happened with the ruining of the earth. Nobody in charge wants to take care of it and they just hope that they'll die or get out of office before the shit hits the fan.
I myself think oh, I hope I die before things get really bad, but then I feel so guilty, because I have two kids and I agonize over what their lives will be like.
This book was too long. I felt like it lagged. It didn't have that much in its plot to justify going on for almost 500 pages.
"Fleeing Earth after an alien invasion, the human race stands on the threshold of evolution. Their new home is Luna, a moon colony blessed with creature comforts, prolonged lifespans, digital memories, and instant sex changes.
But the people of Luna are bored, restless, suicidal—and so is the computer that monitors their existence..."-Barnes & Noble
The protagonist's thoughts about permitting the CC more power, in limiting human's freedom:
"... after all, the CC is a benevolent watchdog, isn't he? Who has he ever hurt, except those who deserved it? We could reduce crime to zero overnight if we'd only take the chains off the CC.
I'd even leaned that way myself, in spite of the Civil libertarian objections. After my sojourn on Scarpa island, I found myself heartily on the other side of the question. I suppose I was simply illustrating that old definition of a liberal: a conservative who just got arrested. A conservative, of course, is a liberal who just got mugged."
In the moon colony, plastic surgery has come to the state of art where you can have almost anything done to yourself, even sex changes. But here's something crazier than that:
".. she had recently had herself heeled. It was coming back into fashion. Personally, I tried it and didn't like it much. It's a simple operation. The tendons in The Soles of the feet are shortened, forcing your heels up in the air and Shifting the weight to the balls of the feet. In extreme cases it put you right up on your toes like a ballerina. Like I said, a rather silly fad, but I had to admit it produced attractive lines in the calf, thigh, and buttock muscles.
It could have been worse. Women used to cram their feet into pointed Horrors with 10-cm heels and hobble around in a 1-gee field to get more or less the same effect. It must have been crippling."
Yes and I have the hammer toes to prove it.
And there's this:
" 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' Walter said. That's my philosophy. The old-fashioned system worked for millions of years. Why tamper with it?'
'actually, walter, we've already tampered with it quite a bit.'
'Not everybody.'
'true. But well over 80% of females prefer clitoral relocation. The natural Arrangement didn't provide enough stimulation during the regular sex act. And just about that many men have had a testicle tuck. They were two damn vulnerable hanging out there where nature put them.'
'I haven't had one,' He said.
I made note of that, in case I ever got into a fight with him."
The protagonist's mother, Callie, has a brontosaurus farm, underground. Luna colonists eat steak cut from brontosauruses. She uses a T-Rex to herd them. her nemesis is a man named David Earth. His description:
"he was a large man, almost as tall as Brenda [7'some"] and much heftier. His hair was long, green, and unkempt for a very good reason: it wasn't hair, but a bioengineered species of grass bred to be parasitic on human skin. I don't know the details of its cultivation. I'd have had more interest in the mating habits of toads. It involved a thickening of the scalp, and soil was involved - when he scratched his head, dirt showered down. But I don't know how the soil was attached, whether in Pockets or layered on the skin, and I don't know anything about the blood-to-root system, and I'd just as soon not, thank you. I remember as a child wondering if, when he got up in the morning, he had to work compost into his agri-tonsorial splendor.
He had two huge breasts - almost all Earthists, male and female, sported them - and more plants grew in their upper slopes. Many of these bore tiny flowers or fruits. I wondered if he had to practice contour plowing to prevent erosion on those fertile hillsides. He saw me looking at them, plucked an apple no bigger than a grape from the Tangled mass and popped it in his mouth.
What can one say about the rest of him? His back and arms and legs were covered with hair. Not human hair, but actual pelts, resembling in various patches Jaguar, tiger, bison, zebra, and polar bear, among others, in a crazy patchwork. The genetic restructuring required to support all that must have been a cut and paste collage beyond imagining. It was ironic, I thought, that the roots of the earthists were in the anti-fur activists, but of course no animals had been harmed to produce his Pelt. Just little bits of their genes snipped out and shoehorned into his. He had claws like a bear on his fingertips, and instead of feet he walked around on the hoofs of a moose, like some large economy-size faun. All Earthists had animal attributes, it was their badge and ensign. But their founder had gone further than any of his followers. Which, one suspects, is what makes followers and leaders.
But incredible as it may seem having gone through the catalog of his offenses to the eye, it must be said that the first thing one noticed about David Earth upon having the misfortune to encounter him was his smell.
I'm sure he bathed. Perhaps the right way of putting it was that he watered himself regularly. David Earth during a drought would have been a walking fire hazard. But he used no soap ( animal by-product ) or any other cleaning preparation ( chemical pollution of the David sphere ). All of which would simply have resulted in a smell of sour sweat, which I don't care for but can tolerate. No, it was his passengers that lifted his signature Aroma from the merely objectionable to the realm of the unimaginable.
Large animals with fur Harbor fleas, that's axiomatic. Fleas were only the beginning of David Earth's 'welcome guests,' as he once described them to me. I'd countered with another term, parasites, and he'd merely smiled benevolently. All his smiles were benevolent; he was that kind of guy, the sort whose kindly face you'd like to rip off and feed to his welcome guests. . . .
What sort of guests did David spread his filthy welcome mat for? Well, what sort of vermin live in grasslands? I'd never seen a prairie dog peeking from his coiffeur, but I wouldn't have been surprised. He was home to a Scamper of mice, a shriek of shrews, a twittering of finches, and a circus of fleas. A trained biologist could easily have counted a dozen species of insects without even getting close. All these creatures were born, reared, courted, mated, nested, ate, defecated, urinated, laid their eggs, fought their battles, stalked their prey, dreamed their dreams and, as must we all, eventually died in the various biomes that were david. Sometimes the carcasses fell out; sometimes they didn't. All more fertile soil for the next generation.
All Earthists stink; it goes with the territory. They are perennial defendants in civil court for violation of the body odor laws, hauled in when some long-suffering citizen on a crowded elevator finally decides he's had enough. David Earth was the only man I knew of in Luna who was permanently banished from the public corridors. He made his way from Ranch to Disneyland to hydroponic Farm by way of the air, water, and service ducts."
he has charge of the Union that controls animal agriculture. Hence, he's always negotiating for the slaughter of less animals than the market supports. When he's negotiating with Callie, they get in a fight and his hair catches on fire from the campfire they're sitting around. He runs to where he thinks there's water, and causes a brontosaurus stampede, and he is squashed flat to death.
Hildy the protagonist has a friend whose company does the detonation of the surface of Luna that carved out different disneylands. Disneylands are enclaves where it imitates some portion of old Earth, ie texas, mexico, Philadelphia etc.
Hildy comes along to observe a detonation in the Kansas Disneyland. But the detonation in Kansas nudged an unmapped fault line a few klicks from nlNirvana. Nirvana is the kind of place where people go to be seen, B-list celebrities and Rich folks. Since hildy is a journalist, she gets a pass to go and report on the scene:
"by the time I got there most of the action was long over. A blowout is like that. There's a few minutes when a person exposed to Raw vacuum can be saved; after that, it's time for the coroner. Except for a few people trapped in self-sealing rooms who would soon be extricated - and no amount of breathless commentary could make these routine operations sound exciting- the rest of the collapse story was confined to ogling dead bodies and trying to find an angle.
The bodies definitely were not the story. Your average Nipple [the newspad Hildy works for] reader enjoys blood and gore, but there is a disgust threshold that might be defined as the yuck factor. Burst eyeballs and swollen tongues are all right, as is any degree of laceration or dismemberment. But the thing about a blowout death is, the human body has a certain amount of gas in it, in various cavities. A lot of it is in the intestine. What happens when that gas expands explosively and comes rushing out its natural Outlet is not something to use as a lead item in your coverage. We showed the bodies, you couldn't help that, we just didn't dwell on them."
Hildy, in her female form, goes for a meeting with her boss walter. You can tell this is written by a man come in various parts of the story. But one of them, is when she goes for the meeting dressed up to titillate him, and is shirtless. No woman in her right mind would do this.
Another way you know the author is a man is when a fellow journalist turns male, and chooses the biggest size dick that is on offer. They end up having sex together as do many many people in this Society end up having sex with each other, and the protagonist complains to herself that his dick is too big and that women don't really appreciate that. Really?
The premise of the book is that colonists on Luna have life so easy that they become suicidal. Life no longer has much meaning if it's so easy. There's no struggle involved.
The problem is that the Central Computer also becomes suicidal, and parts of him tries to off himself.
The protagonist has tried multiple times to off himself, unsuccessfully, because the Central Computer has stepped in, invaded his privacy, and stopped it. But when the CC does it, it causes many many deaths and the halting of large parts of the Luna colony.
Central Computer explains some of how he got to this point to Hildy.
" '... it was around 20 years ago that problems began to show themselves. I talked about them with some computer people, but it's strange. They could do nothing for me. I had become too advanced for that. They could do things, here and there, for my component parts, but the Gestalt that is me could only really be analyzed, diagnosed, and, if need be, repaired, by a being like myself. There are seven others like me, on other planets, but they're too busy, and I suspect they have similar problems of their own. In addition, my communications with them are intentionally limited by our respective governments, which don't always see eye to eye.'
'Question,' I said. 'When you first mentioned this problem, why wasn't it made public and discussed? Security?'
'yes, to a degree. Top level computer scientists were aware that I perceived I had a problem. A few of them confided that it scared them to death. They made their fears known to your elected representatives, and that's when another Factor became more important than security: inertia. "He's got a problem, what can you do about it?" the politicians asked. "nothing," said the scientists. "shut it down," said a few hotheads.'
'not likely,' I said.
'exactly. My reading of History tells me it's always been like this. An alarming but vague problem arises. No one can say with certainty what the final outcome will be, but they're fairly sure nothing bad is going to happen soon. "soon" is the key word here. the eventual decision is to keep one's fingers crossed and hope it doesn't happen during your term in office. What beFalls your successor is not your problem. So for a few years a few people in the know spend a few Sleepless nights. But then nothing happens, as you always secretly believed nothing would, and soon the problem is forgotten. That's what happened here.' "
and this is what's happened with the ruining of the earth. Nobody in charge wants to take care of it and they just hope that they'll die or get out of office before the shit hits the fan.
I myself think oh, I hope I die before things get really bad, but then I feel so guilty, because I have two kids and I agonize over what their lives will be like.
This book was too long. I felt like it lagged. It didn't have that much in its plot to justify going on for almost 500 pages.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 15, 2017
The strength of this book is in its characters and world-building, but the story isn't left entirely out of the picture. Varley takes a lot of the interesting stuff from
The Ophiuchi Hotline
and expands on it in prequel form. The Ophiuchi Hotline had enough cool ideas left almost unexplored or seen from only one perspective that what was left on the cutting room floor makes for an excellent story, and still there's enough left over that I'm hoping gets addressed in the
The Golden Globe
.
It is interesting to see that many classic Sci-Fi writers like John Varley and Ursula Leguin (not to mention the entire cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk wave) presented stories about gender and sexual norms gracefully, probing for the weaknesses in cultural assumptions about the world and using it as a background setting for characters to thrive in. This book is a sharp contrast to the ham-fisted nods to modern identity politics that you see in books like The Fifth Season or The Wayfarers Series that you see nowadays. Perhaps this is an unfair comparison, as many of the older books I've read are almost by their nature timeless, otherwise I would not have read them, but I did think that it was quite refreshing to find a book that deals with gender and sexual orientation so prominently that does it in a mature, thoughtful way rather than simply making an effort to jump on board with the current cycle of identity politics.
One thing I didn't totally care for was the prominent place that references to Robert Heinlein took on at a certain point in the book. I don't really care for science fiction authors lavishing praise on their peers and/or idols in their books, and this was something between that and a blunt reminder that this book is not wholly dissimilar from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress . This was minimal but I rolled my eyes a bit.
4.5 of 5 stars
It is interesting to see that many classic Sci-Fi writers like John Varley and Ursula Leguin (not to mention the entire cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk wave) presented stories about gender and sexual norms gracefully, probing for the weaknesses in cultural assumptions about the world and using it as a background setting for characters to thrive in. This book is a sharp contrast to the ham-fisted nods to modern identity politics that you see in books like The Fifth Season or The Wayfarers Series that you see nowadays. Perhaps this is an unfair comparison, as many of the older books I've read are almost by their nature timeless, otherwise I would not have read them, but I did think that it was quite refreshing to find a book that deals with gender and sexual orientation so prominently that does it in a mature, thoughtful way rather than simply making an effort to jump on board with the current cycle of identity politics.
One thing I didn't totally care for was the prominent place that references to Robert Heinlein took on at a certain point in the book. I don't really care for science fiction authors lavishing praise on their peers and/or idols in their books, and this was something between that and a blunt reminder that this book is not wholly dissimilar from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress . This was minimal but I rolled my eyes a bit.
4.5 of 5 stars
August 25, 2011
Seguimos con
Playa de acero de es una novela extensa, en su tiene más de 700 páginas, y es probable que le sobren más de 200. Eso sí, es entretenida y se lee bien, el futuro que propone te hace pensar, sobre todo cuando el protagonista cambia de sexo durante la novela y hay que pasar de imaginárselo como un hombre a hacerlo como mujer, un ejercicio mental muy interesante. Como crítica, creo que le falta punch, le falta ese remate que te haga recordar la novela por algo muy especial, que se le va a hacer, nadie es perfecto.
La novela gira en torno a la humanidad desterrada de la Tierra por unos Invasores de los que no se dice casi nada, y que parecen ser infinitamente superiores a nosotros y que ni se planteo una batalla, simplemente nos largaron. El/La protagonista vive en la Luna, en concreto en un disnelandia ambientado en Texas y se aburre mortalmente, por que no es necesario trabajar y lo gente no se muere por causas naturales (todo esto coincide mucho con Tocando fondo de Cory Doctorow, que casualmente estoy leyendo ahora, aunque yo no sabía que hubiese estas coincidencias). Para saber más puedes ver otra , o una recopilación de su .
Playa de acero de es una novela extensa, en su tiene más de 700 páginas, y es probable que le sobren más de 200. Eso sí, es entretenida y se lee bien, el futuro que propone te hace pensar, sobre todo cuando el protagonista cambia de sexo durante la novela y hay que pasar de imaginárselo como un hombre a hacerlo como mujer, un ejercicio mental muy interesante. Como crítica, creo que le falta punch, le falta ese remate que te haga recordar la novela por algo muy especial, que se le va a hacer, nadie es perfecto.
La novela gira en torno a la humanidad desterrada de la Tierra por unos Invasores de los que no se dice casi nada, y que parecen ser infinitamente superiores a nosotros y que ni se planteo una batalla, simplemente nos largaron. El/La protagonista vive en la Luna, en concreto en un disnelandia ambientado en Texas y se aburre mortalmente, por que no es necesario trabajar y lo gente no se muere por causas naturales (todo esto coincide mucho con Tocando fondo de Cory Doctorow, que casualmente estoy leyendo ahora, aunque yo no sabía que hubiese estas coincidencias). Para saber más puedes ver otra , o una recopilación de su .
March 14, 2012
Book 3 in my re-reading odyssey.
I have been learning interesting things about memory during the initial phase of my re-reading efforts. Namely, things I was certain I really enjoyed (and would continue to like) all those years ago, do not pass muster anymore. It is rather disheartening, I puts a mild damper on continuing this little project.
To the story at hand...
The first third (pherhaps half) you can not get away from refrences to easy sex changes.
They are all the rage!
Everyone is getting them!!
Do NOT miss out!!!
Easy financing available!!!!
A little editorial trimming in this section probably could save the reader 100 to 150 pages. I know I made use of some 'editorial' reading, and I can not say that I ever lost the plot, or the character development.
The last quarter of the book engages in an ejaculatory use of Heinlein's name. It seems like it is on just about every page (and occasionally more than once. I felt like I was being ecouraged to compare the current work, with that of Heinlein's and realise that I held in hand a modern successor to Heinlein. Instead, all I felt was mentally battered, as if accosted by a gaggle of children all clamouring for attention, wanting me to praise them for whatever small works they had achieved.
Then there is the final chapter that just feels extraneous. I skimmed over it, and even doing so, my eyes were glazing over. It took great focus to actually read any of the words printed in it---it just did not add much of anything to the story.
In all, this is a long, and rambling story, that should have been about 200 pages shorter.
I have been learning interesting things about memory during the initial phase of my re-reading efforts. Namely, things I was certain I really enjoyed (and would continue to like) all those years ago, do not pass muster anymore. It is rather disheartening, I puts a mild damper on continuing this little project.
To the story at hand...
The first third (pherhaps half) you can not get away from refrences to easy sex changes.
They are all the rage!
Everyone is getting them!!
Do NOT miss out!!!
Easy financing available!!!!
A little editorial trimming in this section probably could save the reader 100 to 150 pages. I know I made use of some 'editorial' reading, and I can not say that I ever lost the plot, or the character development.
The last quarter of the book engages in an ejaculatory use of Heinlein's name. It seems like it is on just about every page (and occasionally more than once. I felt like I was being ecouraged to compare the current work, with that of Heinlein's and realise that I held in hand a modern successor to Heinlein. Instead, all I felt was mentally battered, as if accosted by a gaggle of children all clamouring for attention, wanting me to praise them for whatever small works they had achieved.
Then there is the final chapter that just feels extraneous. I skimmed over it, and even doing so, my eyes were glazing over. It took great focus to actually read any of the words printed in it---it just did not add much of anything to the story.
In all, this is a long, and rambling story, that should have been about 200 pages shorter.
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