Kenneth sees everything he does in terms of parts that he is playing, both on and off-stage, because he has never been allowed to be himself. He has even retained his imaginary friend from childhood (Jimmy Stewart's Elwood P. The adult Kenneth, like many who were abused, is emotionally stuck in childhood because he never had a chance to grow up emotionally. (Much like Marjoe Gortner, who gained considerable fame as a child preacher.) As Kenneth sleeps and wakes, we get flashbacks of his simultaneously horrible and famous childhood, with a "Mama Rose"-like father who used drowning and suffocation as methods to force little Kenneth to memorize lines. When I think about The Golden Globe, the sequence I always remember is when Kenneth ships himself as cargo from Pluto to Uranus via "deadballing", a drug that drastically slows the metabolism. This time, it's Kenneth Valentine, aka Sparky, former child star and solar system fugitive. It takes place in the same general time period – 200 years after the Invaders have exiled the human race from Earth – and it is also a first person story by a centenarian. The Golden Globe is John Varley's third "Eight Worlds" novel and something of a companion volume to Steel Beach.
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