The Golden Globe
by John Varley
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted August 8, 2026
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This was not actually a re-read for me, except in the sense I finally finished it. The previous two times I abandoned it early, but I persevered this time. I'll try to be brief in explaining my reactions without spoiling too much, because other readers reacted differently. For instance, this book has a higher average rating on Goodreads than Steel Beach, which I consider Varley's best novel. One of my major complaints is it is much longer than it needed to be, but a lot of that has to do with an unsympathetic main character and his very much unreliable first-person narration. The Golden Globe is another in the Eight Worlds series, with some flashbacks that take place before Steel Beach, with other scenes following it.
We first meet itinerant actor Kenneth "Sparky" Valentine as he is finishing a performance on Pluto. He prefers acting on the legitimate stage but sometimes has to rely on other means to survive, such as panhandling and con games. He discovers he has a price on his head and has to avoid a bounty hunter. He thinks they are after him for one of his cons, where he stole several valuable netsuke carvings. He later learns it is about a previous situation, one he didn't consider a crime, but the father of the woman involved did. He first tries to hide out in the Pacifica disneyland, first seen in the novelette "Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe." His tracker finds him but he is able to escape again, hiding aboard a freight hauler to Uranus, then to the still under construction Oberon wheel habitat, being built from materials mined from the now almost depleted moon Oberon. There is another tense and perilous encounter with his pursuer, yet he is able to escape again. He hijacks a space yacht and eventually lands on Luna, the scene of an earlier crime, which we don't learn about until near the end.
What could have been a fascinating tour of the outer solar system gets bogged down in Valentine's reminiscences of his early life on Luna. There are plenty of hints that should allow the astute reader to guess what his crime was, the reason he fled Luna some 70 years earlier than when we first meet him on Pluto. He had used multiple stage names over the years, so why does he slip up and identify himself to a few others, people who shouldn't have trouble learning about his earlier life? He was a famous personality on Luna, which we learn in tedious exposition. Does he want to get caught? Does he want to be punished for his crime, or does he not consider it a crime? It doesn't matter to me because I didn't like him. He is arrogant, conceited, obnoxious, self-serving. It also doesn't matter that we learn the reasons for his personality traits. He is obviously a good actor since he is able to convince a lot of people he is the opposite of all those negative traits. I do not care if I am in the minority here, but I do not recommend this. I am still a fan of other Varley work, and will continue with more re-reads throughout the year.
Related link:
An index of all my Varley Reviews.
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