Gilda

I've read it, along with all of Varley's Nine Worlds stories. Steel Beach is probably his strongest novel. The way he extrapolates advances in medical technology is interesting there, in that he has it a quantum leap above current technology, so advance that it becomes cheaper, more accessible, more effective, and requires less expertise. It's a lot like electronics in that way, where real costs go down as quality goes up, unlike current healthcare models, where real costs are scaling with technological advances, or rising faster. It does raise the question of whether that trend will someday reverse itself with advanced enough technology.

We're reading three Varley short stories for the transgender portion of my GLBT lit class. He's a really good source for that, as he plays with gender concepts in a lot of interesting ways.

Gilda

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