- Title:
- The Golden Globe
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Ace Books, 1998
- ISBN
- 0-441-00558-6
The lure of a successful novel must be to an author what the song of the sirens was to Odysseus, or the whisperings of Mephistopheles to Faust: "Write a sequel!" Who could resist? A ready and eager audience. A tried setting. Loved and familiar characters. Even mediocre TV series survive one season after another on the strength of these recommendations.
Sadly, most sequels, plainly speaking, suck. I have no idea why that should be. Possibly it is a problem intrinsic to story telling: stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A sequel denies the end, drags out the middle, and attempts to insert a new beginning. This tends to be a certain recipe for disaster.
There are two ways to avert disaster, I think. One is to write a story that is basically a succession of smaller stories, one overlaying another, and all supporting the main story which could probably be told in much fewer words (and probably make a lot less money). A number of authors are busy featherbedding in this fashion, particularly (apparently) a number familiar to fans of fantasy: Eddings and Jordan spring to mind.
The second way to avert disaster involves connecting the sequels only very loosely. Examples are most of Brin's "Uplift War" series, or Heinleins "The Past through Tomorrow", a science fiction classic. The loose connection allows the author to use proper beginnings, middles, and endings, without descending into the "just one more book" syndrom of the Neverending Series.
When I say that The Golden Globe is a sequel to Steel Beach I mean a sequel of the second variety. Varley has kept some of the characters from his earlier book, but they play essentially peripheral roles. The stage, quite literally, belongs to Kenneth Valentine, from the first to the last line. Except for their role as history, the events of the previous novel do not intrude on this one.
One thing this story does have in common with Varley's previous work is an unsettling look at the nature of sanity. Varley seems to dwell on this theme quite a lot: in the "Titan" series the sentient computer is going insane because it's too old. In Steel Beach Hildy Johnson (and many other people) repeatedly attempt suicide because they have nothing left to live for.
The warm water filled his ears. It made a deep roaring sound. He heard splashes that sounded far away, and he heard his own heartbeat. Air trickled from his lips and nose.
Friends, Romans ...
Looking up, he saw the shimmery surface of the water, and beyond that, the dark figure with the ceiling light behind his head, making a halo.
At first the reader has no idea that this scene describes a father drowning his four-year old son for not memorizing Shakespear's "Julius Caesar". The truth becomes clear with an almost nauseating shock as Varley unveils increasingly larger parts of the insanity that governs Kenneth Valentine's life.
In The Golden Globe Varley creates a metaphor that is surprisingly fitting for its subject. Both the victim and the perpetrator are on stage, and neither dares step off for even a moment. Even though one actor has no more speaking parts the play must go on, and Varley gives the remaining actor lines that ring with conviction. Through flashbacks Varley lays out the relationship between victim and perpetrator, until there is no doubt left about what really happened.
The book succeeds masterfully. The only complaint I found involves what I thought was almost worshipful mention of Robert A. Heinlein, whose memory Varley certainly honors with prose on which Heinlein could not have improved. But "political philosopher"? I don't think so.