Steel beach
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, and suicidal -- and so is the computer that monitors their existence...
Stats for nerds
3recommend
9mentions
9people
2009–2025years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Steel Beach and Golden Globe are both great books.
- "“In five years, the penis will be obsolete,” said the salesman."
Steel Beach - John Varley.
- Reminds me of John Varley's book Steel Beach. Set in the future, humans live on the Moon and everyone on Luna is connected to the central computer (CC) which behaves at once as government, friend, guide, psychologist, encyclopaedia and diary.
Fascinating stuff. Other topics in the book: nanotechnology and bioengineering as everyday commodities, gender fluidity and the CC-human relationship. Reminds me that the book is due for a reread!
- There were probably a few more sentences hand waving these sorts of details in the books, by the time they got mentioned you were probably more interested in worrying about the Moon-wide epidemic of suicide that the Moon’s governing AI had tasked the book’s protagonist with discovering the cause with, after the protagonist recovered from being brought back in a fresh clone after succumbing to it.
That’s the plot of Steel Beach, if you want to go see what happens next and how much time Varley actually spent on the details of this stuff.
- Steel Beach by John Varley. It's been 20+ years since I read it, but the main character is a newspaper reporter and as I recall he writes notes in the field on some kind of a screen or film embedded in his forearm.
- Re-reading Steel Beach by John Varley. A sort of post-singularity romp from 1992.
Politics And The Occult, by Gary Lachman. Much what it sounds like, a history of occult movements in politics.
The Lunar Men, by Jenny Uglow. Non-fiction about the Lunar Society, a science club in 18th century England.
