The Golden Globe (Eight Worlds Book 3)

Remember those kids shows from the 1990s? In other words, the shows that my generation (the one that came after the millenials) grew up with. Okay. Now imagine a show just a bit like those, with a run time of about thirty years, a brilliant child star with spikey hair and no pants, and a gang full of misfits to put the Lost Boys to shame.This book is not about that show. This book is about what happened to that child star seventy years later as he embarks on an Odyssey to put 2001 and Odysseus to shame, complete with his very own angry poseidon (in the form of a VERY angry, VERY scary man from Charon) and a spaceship named Hal (stolen). Oh, and a cute mascot.The best part of this book is the characterisation of the main character. Sparky Valentine's education solely comes from his roles in the theatre. He knows about relativity from a one-time-role as Einstein in what sounds like an Einstein/Marx slash fic. He memorised the complete works of Shakespeare at an early age. At one point, he mentions the Coriolis effect but--due to the fact that he knows more Shakespeare than physics--he consistently refers to it as the Coriolanus effect (after the play). This doesn't appear to be a mistake; the author obviously knows what he's talking about in order to deliberately misname it. But he has a healthy understanding of his highly unreliable and self confessed dissociative narrator.The second best part of this book is technology. Many scifi novels suffer from a fatal flaw: there's no way in a million years our civilization could evolve into THAT. Oh, you can slip into and out of the authors' worlds easily enough, sure, but they always feel just a bit alien. Varley avoids this. As a child of the nineties, his television show feels like the kid's shows from my childhood. As a fan of Arthur C Clarke and his space odyssey, I can feel a sense of wonder when Sparky openly acknowledges that humanity has finally gotten around to building the massive wheel of a space station inspired by 2001. As someone who can see why society would go to surgically implanted telephones, I can see why Sparky might not opt in.By projecting a future from the late 1990s, John Varley creates the world that I always figured would exist when I read about space as a child. I don't know how somebody from a different age bracket would react, but for me, the Eight Worlds feel very familiar and it's tremendously exciting to go on a long, epic, sometimes chronologically confused, often hilarious romp through many of them.

The life of an itinerant actor stumping from village to town, dreaming of his own theatre in the big city translates well to space travel when John Varley writes it. His brilliant poly-named polymorphic main character is sometimes star and sometimes hobo, sometimes leading man (or leading lady) but more often bit player or street performer. "Sparky," "Dodger," and formally, "K.C.Valentine," is how this fellow refers to himself in his reminiscences. Because the tale is told almost entirely in first person, we must learn from those around him that he doesn't share his real name—or face—with anyone except his two constant sidekicks, Toby and Elwood.Since Toby is a dog, and Elwood stays out of sight of everyone except Valentine, they aren't giving away his secrets.So Valentine stays one step ahead of whatever bête noire chases him, equally ready to ride the twenty-second century equivalent of the rails as to travel in splendor on a luxury cruise line. He must adapt, chameleon-like, to each new community's standards, and be adroit with a bribe as he moves from world to world, for: "...the more bureaucrats there are, the more laws are needed to keep them fed."By contrast, when he sleeps we hear from the troubled soul of this mountebank. We learn of his courage in the face of an abusive father and troubled childhood. And we begin to see why Valentine is determined to "play Lear," to build a grand Shakespearean theater in the asteroid belt. "...we didn’t have to play Shakespeare in free fall, as we’d done at Boondocks and several previous engagements. 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, throw me a tie-down!' Talk about your theater in the round."This novel has a daunting physical and emotional scope, yet even so, the story does not feel heavy-handed. Valentine copes with the great talent and low support life has given him, and with the assistance of Toby and Elwood, stays as close to sane and happy as most men come. The tale ranges from high drama to low humor; it was never more clear that Shakespeare's claim in "As You Like It" was right: "All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts..."

Not my cup of tea, but it's very well written, the tech and society is likely yet somewhat surprising and the protagonist is a rogue with sort of good intentions whose hijinks are sometimes entertaining, sometimes outside my comfort zone. Your mileage may vary. Several people in my family absolutely loved this book: 5 stars, couldn't put it down, loved the humor, etc, etc. etc. They couldn't stop raving about it, so I had to change the topic and walk away slowly. I did actually finish it, and it was not boring or totally illogical, so three stars.

I know. I can't believe it. I never thought I'd be giving John VARLEY one star. I mean, JOHN VARLEY! I've read Ophiuchi Hot line so many times that the pages are now held together with duct tape. But John Varley needs to take a long vacation from writing in first person because he just can't pull it off anymore without going off on these endless, self indulgent vents. The thing that made his earlier stories not just great reads, but great friends was his talent for creating characters who were both a product of their exotic environments, yet completely accessible. `Show, don't tell' is a challenge for all good SF writing but Varley always pulled it off. As you read his stories you were transported into his brilliantly imagined universe through the awareness and emotions of the characters in the stories. As the reader, you were flooded with new ideas, yet were given enough room to feel like you were discovering these convincing people and their extraordinary society. Even his less likable characters were capable of moving you. Unfortunately, The Golden Globe is narrated by a character who is so self involved, you can barely see past him into the story. Is there even a story? Why should I care about this guy? He's so boring. And annoying. He's like one of those people who comes up to you at a party after one too many drinks and starts to tell you an anecdote, and then gets side tracked telling you about how smart they are, and how stupid everybody else is, and how much they know, and on and on and on and on until you just want to scream, "Get OVER yourself and get to the POINT!" There's no room in this story for the reader. I am so disappointed but I'm not giving up. I'll check out Varley's next book (well, I'll check it out of the library) because eventually all the momentum of his earlier writing has got to push him past this phase.

The Golden Globe is one of my favorite books of all time and as soon as I found it on the Kindle I bought it.And it was as fun a read as I remembered. For those that don't know, it's the adventures of Kenneth 'Sparky' Valentine as he flees the outer system one step ahead of the Charonese mafia headed for Luna and King City to perform in King Lear. Along the way we get Sparky's history as one of the most beloved performers of his generation.It's a blast of a book with a great character, a wonderful setting (Varley's Eight Worlds) and a great story.So, normally, I'd give this five stars.But, the publishers put this out without _editing_. There are numerous spelling errors and many of them are distracting. If someone in Penguin checks these reviews, feed this one to a copy editor with a hardcopy of the novel.