Steel Beach

Steel Beach is a 1993 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 his 1998 The Golden Globe, set about ten years later.

The same year it was nominated for both the Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Novel. Upon publication it garnered much attention for its opening line: "In five years the penis will become obsolete".

Steel Beach takes place (as does The Golden Globe) in a universe similar to (but distinct from) Varley's "Eight Worlds" universe: in each, the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing aliens (known simply as "the Invaders") invading the Earth. The home planet and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but "Luna" -- the Moon, with its surface transformed to support conditions resembling Earth before the alien conquest of it, has become (along with all the other planets and moons of the solar system) 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 title alludes to humans being figuratively thrown onto the inhospitable moon, paralleling fish that made their way onto land in the evolution of amphibians.

The protagonist, Hildy Johnson, is a newspaper reporter (cf. His Girl Friday; also cf. in reference to Hildy's sex) who finds trouble beneath the surface of the near-utopian society run by the Central Computer. The Central Computer runs every aspect of every person's life: it is the government, court, information source, and friend to every citizen.