Steel Beach
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Steel Beach is a novel by John Varley, a science fiction writer who has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards multiple times. Steel Beach is set in the same continuity as The Golden Globe, but taking place much later, and was published in 1993. The same year it was nominated for a Hugo for best novel.
[edit] Synopsis
The Golden Globe and Steel Beach take place in a universe similar to, but different from, Varley’s "Eight Worlds" universe; in both universes, the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing aliens (known simply as "the Invaders") invading the Earth. Earth and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but Earth's moon (known as Luna) and the other planets and moons of the solar system have all become heavily populated. There are also minor colonies set in the Oort cloud beyond the solar system itself.
The Steel Beach in question is Luna, Earth's moon and the most heavily-inhabited world in the solar system since the Invaders obliterated human civilization on Earth. The allusion being that that humans were thrown onto the inhospitable moon, just as fish made their way onto land as they evolved.
The protagonist, Hildy Johnson, is a newspaper reporter that finds trouble beneath the near-utopian society run by the Central Computer.
