Estación Central

Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar, Alexander Páez (Translator)

Una diáspora mundial ha dejado un cuarto de millón de personas a los pies de una estación espacial. Las culturas chocan en la vida real y en la virtual. La vida apenas tiene valor, y la información tiene incluso menos.

La Estación Central es el núcleo interplanetario en medio de todo: la Tel Aviv con sus constantes cambios; una potente arena virtual y las colonias espaciales donde la humanidad se ha marcado para escapar de los estragos de la pobreza y la guerra. Todo está conectado por los Otros, poderosas entidades alienígenas que, a través de la Conversación (un torrente inestable de conciencia) suponen el inicio de un cambio irreversible.

En la Estación Central, los humanos y las máquinas siguen adaptándose, prosperando e incluso… evolucionando.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories

312 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Lavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.

Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.

Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.

Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.

He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).

Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.

His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.

Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).

Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).

He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.

He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).

Tidhar lives with his wife in London.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know you've got a winner when:

You keep saying to yourself, over and over and over, I hope this never ends, I hope this never ends.

You get so deeply immersed in ideas, with so much world-building and awe and exploration of humanity, post-humanity, robot, evolutionary AI, and how everyone interacts, explores, and lives together pretty much harmoniously, that you cry and say, I live here. I will always live here. I have already been living here.

You snap out of a nested story self-reference long enough to realize that the author just Louis Woo'd you or slammed you right into a data-singularity mine within the Game-World or you just found your way to the mythical land of Pac-Mandu.

Woah.

This novel is not a plot-heavy. It doesn't need to be. It follows an ensemble list of characters, all fascinating and wonderful in their own rights, following a dense nested stream of short stories tightly tied to the place of Tel-Aviv a good long while AFTER the technological singularity had had its way with the world and the solar system, until everyone from normal humans, noded humans, cyborgs, demi-godlings, and most especially, the "Others" (Post-Singularity Intelligences) coexist and live in an extremely idea-dense world.

Its full of Jewish-Robot religions, a wide assortment of post-mortality packages, Strigoi (data vampirism, damn I loved Carmel,) and a heavily advanced system of MMORPG's that is tied very tightly to real-money systems, and can help you earn enough to book passage off-planet by way of captaining a starship in-game. How cool is all this? I can't even begin click off all these hundreds of wonderful ideas, and so many of them get explored so deeply, too.

Yes, it's a setting piece, but the characters are much more than just setting. The themes are also deep and introspective and Lavie Tidhar loves to explore everything deeply and interestingly.

I just couldn't get enough of this novel.

But don't expect a plot payoff, mind you. This isn't that kind of novel at all. Think about an interwoven tapestry of dense short stories that touch and caress Central Station, itself, and just revel in the glory of sensations. You won't be disappointed.


As something of an afterward, I do want to bring up one last thing. Another reviewer mentioned that the feel is close to Hannu Rajaniemi in many ways, and I have to agree. Hell, the one thing that decided me on reading this book was that reference. It sold me and sold me HARD.

So what about a post-analysis comparison? Both artists love their nested stories, their sometimes nearly hidden easter eggs, their wide and exhaustive knowledge of the SF field, and the glory of the godlike *idea*. Both imagine a Post-Singularity solar system. The difference between them are pretty fundamental, though. Lavie Tidhar focuses on reflection and coming to grips with reality and just plain living. It's gorgeous. Hannu Rajaniemi doesn't ignore those themes, but he also ties some really damn BIG rip-roaring adventures and plot twists among all the nested stories.

You might say that this novel has a bit more yin to Hannu's yang. This might be a major selling point to prospective readers. Who knows? I know I loved it, but it IS quite different in tone. :)

I could read this novel forever. I could keep reading its like from now to eternity. It's just that good and it's BRIGHT in my head.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:

Central Station is a brilliantly imagined, vividly detailed world, where Lavie Tidhar stitches together concepts about scientific developments, the future of humanity, community and family, love, religion and individual choice, all at the same time. It’s an impressive and beautiful patchwork quilt; it’s just that there isn’t a whole lot of plot to it. Central Station is more focused on the ideas and the characters. But what scintillating ideas, and what fascinating characters!

The novel is set in and around Central Station, an immense space port located in Tel Aviv, where a quarter million refugees and migrants live in clustered around the base of the space station. Most people have a genetically built-in data node that connects them virtually to the world around them, making them permanently part of the “Conversation,” the online communication. It’s all internet, all the time. Some people are genetically engineered in labs that can remove genetic diseases along with giving you patented and trademarked features like “green Bose” or “Armani blue” eyes. Between the Others ― purely digital entities and personalities ― exist all types of mixes: cyborg-like robotniks, vampirish Strigoi who hunger for data and memories from their victims, and more. Those who are human are a mix of cultures and nationalities: Jewish, Chinese, Russian and many more. It’s a true melting pot.

Like a futuristic Cannery Row, Central Station follows episodes in the lives of various characters who live around Central Station space port, touching and changing each other’s lives. We begin with Boris Chong, who returns to Earth after many years working in space. His version of the built-in data node is a biological networking augmentation, a pulsating biomass permanently attached behind his ear. He runs into his former lover Miriam, who is raising Kranki, a boy even more connected to the Conversation than most, who even has a virtual friend. These characters connect in turn to others, all different types of humans, part-humans and Others, but all, at heart, worthy of sympathy and consideration as people.

A nice touch of humor is added by a chatty elevator and other smart appliances with artificial intelligence:

A group of disgruntled house appliances watched the sermon in the virtuality — coffee makers, cooling units, a couple of toilets — appliances, more than anyone else, needed the robots’ guidance, yet they were often willful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both with their owners and with themselves.

I think my favorite creation was Carmel, the data vampire, inflicted with the Nosferatu Virus, driven to suck data from the necks of humans who have the ubiquitous data node. Like the Shambleau of old, she is feared and hunted down by humans, but the digital Others have a particular role in mind for her.

Tidhar’s rich, allusive writing contains a wealth of ideas and a breathtaking vision for what humanity may become. In the vast differences between the various types of characters, it becomes clear that it’s the similarities that are most important, connecting people in all our diversity. While I would have like a more fully developed plot, in the end I felt like I had gained in insight and compassion by being immersed in the day-to-day world of the people of Central Station.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for review. Thank you!

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theology that pretends to be sci-fi. Author uses near future Tel Aviv, chaotic and eclectic, to search for god/gods among dozens of religions - new and old. In his vision of the future humanity spread all over the solar system, cultures and nations blended, new races emerged, but people still go to churches and temples to look for ultimate answer and spiritual guidance.

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

It'd been a while since I'd read some really good, original cyberpunk - and Tidhar's vision of a future Israel definitely qualifies. I'm upping my 'star rating' to a four because the setting of 'Central Station,' its conflicts and concerns, are so vivid, rich and enjoyable.

However, this is a fix-up novel, and it shows. I'd read a couple of the segments in this book before, in somewhat different form, and said, "hmm" when I encountered them. At the end, there is a list of all the venues where other segments were previously published - it's most of the book. There's nothing wrong with having what's essentially a collection of short stories with a twisting strand of plot tying them together - but at times some of the different stories felt like puzzle pieces awkwardly shoved into spaces that didn't quite fit.

Even then, though - I still liked the stories. What I mainly took away from 'Central Station' was its sense of history and community, how even as technology changes what it means to be human, and even as social injustice and all the weaknesses of humanity persist through those changes, a city is still a rich tapestry full of life, with all of its inhabitants' wonderful quirks, their loves, their dreams, their connections.

I'll definitely be following this author in the future.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome to the Future

Lavie Tidhar's Central Station is a fantastic journey into the future. Filled with poetic imagery and complexity, Central Station takes place in and around a Spaceport in Tel Aviv some thousands of years hence. In a world filled with many changes, the question is what it means to be human and what it means to be other.

From the birthing labs to the space colonies, the world is different. Old soldiers have had their parts slowly replaced over the centuries till they are robotniks, barely remembering their old lives. Others have embraced religion like the Robot Church or buried themselves in drugs or virtual reality games. Others are data vampires, plugging in and sucking away data, memories, thoughts. Most have connections where they can plug in to the Conversation.

This novel is beautiful in the way it's structured but not a standard action plot facing off against the Dark Star or The Emperor. I have quickly become a big fan of this author, but it's a different kind of story, one that draws you in and fills your senses and your thoughts.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once, the world was young. The Exodus ships had only begun to leave the solar system then; the world of Heven had not been discovered; Dr. Novum had not yet come back from the stars. People still lived as they had always lived: in sun and rain, in and out of love, under a blue sky and in the Conversation, which is all about us, always.

Very good novel that isn't actually a novel but a collection of sketches / cameos linked by location (the main Earth spaceport from the title) and by family ties. I will get back to the family part later, but for a start let's look at the spaceport: curiously situated in Palestine/Israel instead of the more commonsense Equatorial location required by planetary laws of physics, Central Station is both a marvel of technological progress and a melting pot for the multitude of races and creeds and cultures that form humanity. A few years past its best, the Station attracts the usual suspects of any Mediterranean port through the ages: seekers of adventure, seekers of faith, refugees from conflict, small artisans and merchants, a lot of mendicants and, of course, prophets.

The opening phrase is a hint that, no matter how far we progress in technology, human nature remains basically the same, and it is best described through myths and legends. In the case of Lavie Tidhar, memories of a dystopian future that is also a monument of our capacity for endurance, adaptability and hope.

This all happened long ago, but we still remember; and we whisper to each other the old tales across the aeons, here in our sojourn among the stars.

The author is sketchy on the actual details of how the future has come about (politics, wars, migration, exploration, etc), preferring to focus on the impact technology has on individual lives. The little we find out about past events is through character flashbacks: how one became a 'strigoi' ( a pleasant find of a Romanian word in an English text, describing a sort of vampire that sucks information out of the brain instead of blood) ; how another lives in a symbiotic relationship with an alien creature growing out of his neck; how the internet became the Conversation thanks to implants directly into our brain that connects one to the cloud without any hardware; how former mech-soldiers become either homeless vagrants searching for spare parts or prophets of a new religion; how the perfect recall of past events can drive a person insane; and so on...

He had not grown up with a node; he found it difficult to follow the Conversation, that endless chatter of human and machine feeds a modern human would feel deaf and blind without.

Of the things I liked in particular about the collection of spaceport stories I would mention: religion in the future as a sort of 'faith bazaar' where a person or a robot can go to a Mall and pick the boutique that seems the most interesting; the evolution of the Internet into the 'Conversation' ; online gaming as an actual job; young children with paranormal powers; some attempts to solve current 'hot-button' issues by moving them into the future and presenting them as resolved (Palestine vs Israel, sexual and religious emancipation, wars carried out by artificial intelligence weapons, etc).

In the absence of a conventional plot, or of a central character, the journey is pushed forward by the dynamic between the myriad of future cyber gadgets and the game of 'six-degrees-of-separation' between the denizens of Central Station. Everybody seems somehow related to everybody else, which is actually the point the author is trying to make. Despite our differences, or maybe because our differences bring something unique into the equation, we are all part of the same family, often a dysfunctional one, but an enduring one nevertheless.

Family wasn't like that, not really. It was not something small and compact, a 'nuclear family'; it was a great big mess of people, all interlinked, cousins and aunts and relatives-by-marriage and otherwise – it was a network, like the Conversation or a human brain. It was what he had tries to escape, going into the Up and Out, but you cannot run away from family, it follows you, wherever you go.

You might ask in the end, how we can get together as a family, when the past tells us we are much better at discord. The author manages to weave though all the episodes, like the thread guiding Theseus out of the labyrinth, the one link that can save us:

Love made humans shine, as though they were metal filaments heated by an electrical current

Good stuff, if a little fanciful and rambling in spots..

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha encantado porque es increíblemente original y actual.
Tiendo a leer ciencia ficción clásica o que se escribió durante el siglo XX y resulta TAN REFRESCANTE e interesante leer algo contemporáneo que utiliza elementos tan reconocibles y los explota de una manera tan creativa y genial...
Quizás no me hayan marcado los personajes o sus tramas, pero sí me ha llegado esa Estación Central (seguramente el personaje principal) y la cantidad de ideas increíblemente geniales que propone Lavie Tidhar y que como buen autor de ciencia ficción plantea consiguiendo que el lector reflexione y analice la sociedad en la que vive.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Q: “Our maker who art in the zero point field, hallowed be thy nine billion names . . .” (c)
Q: 'Under the eaves of the Central Station' (c) a world long since transformed lingers… Q: … 'the station like a heart, beating.'(c)

The destinies of robots (or 'robotniks', as they call them part of the time here).

Q: “We are beggars,” he said. “My kind. We are broken machines.” (c)
In this world, battle robots are the new homeless. They speak Yiddish, the newly secret language. They wage battles, have feelings and then are discarded to beg for spare parts and gasoline.
Q: She knew he had died, that he had been remade, a human mind cyborged onto an alienated body, sent out to fight, and to die, again and again. That now he lived on scraps, depending on the charity of others. . . . (c)

Yes, they are emotionally anthropomorphized:
Q:
“Do robots feel love?” she said.
The robot’s mouth moved. Perhaps it was meant as a smile. “We feel nothing but love,” the robot said. (c)

Isobel, Schrödingering :
Q: She was the Isobel Chow, captain of the Nine-Tailed Cat, a starship thousands of years old, upgraded and refashioned with each Universal Cycle, a salvage operation she, Isobel, was captain and commander of, hunting for precious gamesworld artefacts to sell on the Exchange—(c)

Lots of other players:
- Tong Yun City on Mars
- a Guilds of Ashkelon universal singularity

Some people have Nakaimas (a mojo of sorts, 'a quantum curse').
Others have Martian reverse-engineered brain implants that nobody really knows how to work.
Most are a religious lot: they have faith bazaaars, like
Q:
The one they had on Level Three here was a low-key affair—a Church of Robot mission house, a Gorean temple, an Elronite Centre for the Advancement of Humankind, a Baha’i temple, a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic church, an Armenian church, an Ogko shrine, and a Theravada Buddhist temple. (c) Yeah, that's low key. Huh.

This world is hard on its prophets:
Q:
He still remembered the messiah, a genuine descendant of King David, genetically certified... Then someone took him out with a sniper rifle.
One messiah down. (c)

Imagine having 'Weiwei’s Folly' - acccess to memories of multiple generations of your family.

Imagine the hunted as Strigoi / Shambleau - the digivamps.

An imaginative depiction of the world as it has never been. The imagery is vast and imaginative, spanning generations and cultures. The only thing that's making me cranky about it is that there was no discernible plot, rhyme or reason for many things we've seen. (-1 star).

Other quotes:
Q:
“For us, it is unimaginable, to exist as a pure digital entity, to not know physicality. And yet, at the same time, we seek to escape our physical existence, to achieve heaven, knowing it does not exist, that it must be built, the world fixed and patched . . . but what is it really that you ask me, Isobel daughter of Irina?” (c)
Q:
On the green, robotniks huddled together around a makeshift fire in an upturned drum. Flames reflected in their faces, metal and human mixed artlessly, the still-living debris of long-gone wars. (c)
Q:
If you subscribe to the Alien Theory of Spiritual Beings, which was briefly popular around the time of the Shangri-La Affair, Ogko would be considered, alongside Jesus, Mohammed, Uri Geller and L. Ron Hubbard, as an alien entity. It was the answer to Fermi’s famous paradox. The reason we don’t see aliens out there, reasoned the proponents of the AToSB, is because they’re here. They walk—and preach— among us. (c)
Q:
...for fleeting moments she was like a slideshow of humans, she was a Lunar shopkeeper and a Martian field worker, she was a Re-Born in the ancient Mars-That-Never-Was, four-armed and bronze-red, standing on the shimmering canals. She was a human with an Other flesh-surfing him, she was a robot priest at a shrine for St. Cohen, she was a Hagiratech hunter on Jettisoned, she was an Exodus ship departing the solar system, she was a human from Manhome itself, swimming in a vast and alien ocean. (c)
Q:
… she no longer needed a mirror. She could see herself reflected in the virtuality, every part of her, and she was filled with other people’s ghosts. (c)
Q:
His mind was rich, so rich! He was an artist, a weather hacker, his mind full of swirling storms, of rain, of wind and power. (c)

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have meant to read something by Tidhar for a long time, and this was my first opportunity. I know he writes in a variety of science fiction and fantasy subgenres. In this novel, Tel Aviv has become a crosspoint for even more of society - it is Earth's Central Station for the universe surrounding it. Humans have made a mass exodus to surrounding planets and moons, scientists have forced an evolutionary stage of humans that combines robotniks with humans (and all these groups are trying to live together). Also included - a sullen Martian private detective, a data vampire, and of course the Chinese Jewish descendants that share an ancestral memory that is more like a virus.

There is something to the way this is written that reminded me of early William Gibson (perhaps the info-dump details of early cyberpunk), but the sections that made me laugh and read out loud to my husband reminded him of Douglas Adams (when an elevator started waxing poetic, I couldn't help myself.) So somewhere in that spectrum, this book falls comfortably with a lot of unique details and vivid world-building. I loved reading it!

My only pseudo-criticism is that there isn't really an overarching plot. There are stories introduced with each character and I was so caught up in the details of the world that I didn't really notice the lack of clear plot until the end. For me, I was okay without that being the point.

Thanks to the publisher for granting me access to this title through Netgalley.

[Paul Sánchez Keighley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tel Aviv’s actual Central Bus Station is a labyrinthine hulk of crumbling concrete that looms Gormenghast-like over the poor, backwater neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv. It’s a place begging to be written about. It thrives with ill life at the point beyond which it no longer matters if it’s abandoned, forgotten or given up on. The station crouches impervious amidst the looting and loitering, the heavy responsibility-wanting silence of those angry but too weak or sick to cry out, the invisible rustle of currency seeping between the immigrated black hands moving and moving for equally black markets. It even contains an abandoned nuclear fallout shelter that became so densely populated by bats it was declared a nature reserve.

When I first visited the station, years ago, I described it in my travel notes as a setting out of a cyberpunk novel - so when I learnt that an actual cyberpunk novel had been written about it in which the bus station is reimagined as a far-future space station, I couldn’t get my hands on it soon enough. In Tidhar’s novel, the ramshackle Chabad stands are replaced by chapters of the Church of Robot; the knock-off handbags and computer part shops, by imitation Armani-patented gene-ripped eye colour providers; and the garish arcades, by full-immersion MMORPGs in which people lead parallel lives and even make a living.

The book is great. It’s not story-heavy, being a patchwork of short stories rewritten and roughly sewn together to form a single narrative. Consequently, it does tear a bit at the seams. But story is not what this book is about; it’s a book of ideas, a cracking post-singularity sci-fi positively crackling with electrifying ideas. Each chapter, each paragraph, is so packed with wildly imaginative details about this future society, one loses oneself in the scenery as one would do when contemplating a Brueghel.

I’m extremely happy Tel Aviv’s Central Station, a big rheumatic eyesore though it may be, got this futuristic homage, and I couldn’t help but pad out this review with a little homage of my own to the Central Station of the present as I know and experienced it, that place that welcomed me when I first stepped off a bus with the sight of a woman crouched, lace knickers strung between knees, in the middle of the street, pouring forth a sickly stream of piss, too darkly coloured –almost toffee– and rancid smelling to omen anything good, adding just another odour to the miasma of legal, illegal and loophole-legal drugs; burned out and/or over electric components; choking old CO-spewing motors; and dirty people lumbering under dirty clothes, their minds bunged up with software made softer from abusing the hardware, so soft it rips and splats and paves amongst the shit of man or dog, the stenches of which rise and mingle with the wafts of sex crawling out of red hardly-curtained windows, through the clouds of reefer, up past the clotheslines heavy with linen and drying shtreimels, above and beyond the station's reach but never escaping its gaze, trapped between the dim light of a sooty moon and the gravity well of a stony star.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lavie Tidhar is one of those mercurial writers whose diverse output paradoxically means he tends to fall off the radar of most readers. I remember reading ‘Osama’ before it won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2012 and being blown away by his breathtaking mix of noir and alternate history.

I read one or two of his later novels, but never consistently, which meant I quickly fell behind his output. Tidhar apparently “grew up on a kibbutz and has lived all over the world”, including a stint in South Africa. He is also a noted editor and champion of international SF, with the ‘Apex Book of World SF’ series and most recently the two volumes of ‘The Best of World SF’ under his belt. (One of his more oddball collections is ‘Jews versus Aliens’, edited in conjunction with Rebecca Levene).

His latest novel is ‘Neom’, a quasi-sequel to ‘Central Station’. I subsequently decided to read the latter first as it is available on Scribd. And boy am I glad I did. One of the best books I have read so far this year, no matter the genre, it hearkens back to Golden Age ‘anthology novels’ like Simak’s ‘City’ and Bradbury’s ‘Martian Chronicles’, while cleverly updating it for the Anthropocene.

Comparing writers can often be a lazy shortcut to make a point in a review (here the author bio says Tidhar has been ‘compared to’ Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut, a decidedly odd combination). But such comparison is inevitable in a genre like SF, if only to illustrate how a particular writer has developed a trope or riffed off of something done before. Here Tidhar’s tone and outlook reminded me strongly of Ian McDonald, particularly ‘Desolation Road’, ‘River of Gods’ and ‘The Dervish House’.

The general consensus seems to be to describe ‘Central Station’ as an interconnected set of short stories. While many of the individual pieces were written separately over time, Tidhar has revised them for the purposes of the novel and added a lot of connective tissue.

In short, this is definitely a novel, and certainly the best kind of SF novel: One that uses the trope of a space station in a culturally, religiously and economically challenged area like Tel Aviv to tell a tale of a disparate group of people whose stories gradually interweave.

And if you love robot stories – I am especially thinking of the quirkier robots of Asimov and Murderbot by Martha Wells – you will fall head over heels for R. Brother Patch-It: “An ordained minister in the Way of Robot and a Hajii, having travelled to the robot’s Vatican in Tong Yun City. Also a part-time moyel.” (He performs Jewish circumcision rituals).

There are even ‘data’ vampires! And ordinary appliances are semi-sentient and aspiring in their own way to follow the Way of Robot and ultimately achieve Otherhood. In ‘Central Station’ itself, there is even a talking elevator that waxes philosophical:

“For humans, life is like a sea, but for an elevator it is a shaft in which one can go up or down but not sideways. There are more things in the up or down, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Shakespeare said that.”

[Kitty G Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

I definitely liked bit of this story, but some of it just didn't work for me. I think this may be another case of a world which fascinates, and a character set that I couldn't engage with (kind of like my feelings for The Essex Serpent). What I did most enjoy about this book was seeing the progression of humanity into various types and blends of people/alien and bot. We have cool technology nodes that the majority of humans now have implemented into their brains, we have robots who work and cyborgs who are washed up after serving in wars year ago, we have a twist on vampires who suck out data and we have the Others, a race of people who are like no others...

Sadly for me the biggest problem with this book was that it felt like an exploration of the crazy ideas a lot more than it felt like a story. I had hoped as I went on one of the characters would draw me into their plot, but although all the plots do contribute to the development of Central Station as a setting and curiosity, I just couldn't get into it.

We follow quite a cast of characters who all intermix and know one another because their paths all cross on Central Station (set in Tel Aviv on Earth but in a futuristic world). Central Station is a hub for interspace travellers and different types of people to coverge. They talk of religion, love, family, loss and technologies. There's people who share memories with all their ancestors from centuries past, people who just own shops and work in the station, people who are developing crazy breeding programs, and much more besides. It's all very overwhelming and exotic...but it's also a bit sloppy for my liking :/

I guess in the end I think it's a solid world, but I just didn't feel it was used as well as it could have been. I wanted to see more of a story and get invested in the characters, whereas I think this book aims more to show you the wonders without actually explaining the innovations and mad world to the extent I hoped. I think it's a story that would have possibly benefitted from just one or two major characters rather than a cast of so many trying to weave together.

Overall it was an interesting read but I think of the Tidhar work I have read so far I enjoyed the Bookman histories more. It's certainly a weird read, but I would be interested to hear other people's take on it and whether others enjoyed it more. 2.5*s from me.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 4th book by Lavie Tidhar this year; I think I have discovered a new favorite! I really admire his capacity to bounce from one end of the speculative fiction spectrum to another so smoothly, his always beautiful prose and his completely unbridled imagination. 4th, but definitely not last!

In Earth’s space-faring future, Tel Aviv has become the literal central port for people going off planet, or coming back from human colonies across the solar system. This book is a little mosaic of what life is like in the shadow of the enormous Central Station, a strange place where ancient buildings and traditions co-exist, sometimes uneasily, with the newer technologies, where families come together and are pulled apart and where cultures blend but never lose their distinctive flavors.

There isn’t really a plot to be found in the pages of “Central Station”, or that much exposition, either. Tidhar writes of this far-future Earth by assuming that humanity endures and adapts – for better or for worse. What kept me glued to the page was the incredibly creative world-building: religious robots, jobless cyborg soldiers, data-vampires… Tidhar is clearly fascinated by the concept of transhumanism, and he imagined various strange ways such things could unfold and evolve when the tech used to “evolve” people becomes obsolete. He explores this world through the connections between two families living by Central Stations: the Chongs and the Jones. But to these people, family does not necessarily mean blood ties, expanding this story to show that people are much more connected than they think, even without being plugged into a huge network of digital consciousness.

The stuff in this book can be grimy at times: there is plenty of dirty, misery and blood to go around, but there is also something strangely luminous about this world, where love and faith still hold an important place in people’s heart, and where the definition of humanity is broader than one could have imagined. Obviously, I loved it, and would have loved it even more if the book had been longer.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mosaic novel of Central Station, a major space port right next to Tel Aviv and set a couple of centuries into the future.

The story follows a group of loosely connected individuals through a science fictional stew of a setting. We have a robot priest, a cyborg family matriarch, a prodigal son returning with a martian parasite, AIs called Others, a data vampire, a cyborg super soldier falling in love and children who may be in the process of transcendence. That's all on the back of a settled solar system, incipient interstellar travel and an incredibly mature virtual fabric where things done in immersive MMO type worlds can be legitimate jobs.

There's not so much of a through plot here. It's all about the individual characters and their stories and how it all weaves a fabric. It's idea-rich, characterful, clever and uplifting. There's also a game for the reader in how many classic SF references you can find.

Lots of fun, brilliant ideas, but I think it would have needed more of a plot if it had gone longer.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Central Station is a collection of intertwined short stories, stitched together to form a sort of mosaic novel about the residents of the titular far-future Tel Aviv spaceport.
Tidhar pays homage to pretty much every golden age/pulp era SF writer you can think of, but the tone (gentler than his more provocative works) most recalls Clifford Simak, especially City.
Though most of the Tidhar's stories stand alone, they also contain various plot threads that weave throughout the different perspective shifts and character arcs, and the overall effect feels like not quite a story cycle and not quite a novel, but more like a collection of lived-in memories that infect the reader's mind.
A unique experience, unmissable for fans of golden age short SF.

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There’s no afterlife but the one we build ourselves.”

Central Station is one of the most breathtakingly, bewilderingly, mindbendingly imaginative stories I've read in some time. In terms of sheer breadth and volume of ideas, it reminds me of Hannu Rajaniemi, but Tidhar's style is far more lyrical and dreamlike. The story takes place in in a future Tel Aviv, now the site of Central Station. Adaptoplant neighborhoods blossom and twist around each other. Robotniks, the lost souls of forgotten wars, wander the streets and beg for spare parts. These soldiers, once resurrected to fight again and again as cyborgs, were shunted aside and now survive by selling the Crucifixation drug that once gave them a euphoric sense of faith in their cause. Babies created with gene-ripped Armani-knockoff blue eyes send a few prayers to St Cohen of the Others. Data vampires prey on the unwary, stripping them of exomemory. And surrounding it all is the ubiquitous Conversation, the universal talk of humans and robotniks and aliens and the almost omnipotent artificial intelligences of the Others, all connected through a web of virtual reality so dense that it permeates the real.

Central Station is a gorgeous book, but don't go into it expecting something that it's not. The story seemed to me to be primarily a vehicle for the ideas, and perhaps because of this, plot and characters are left undeveloped. Instead of driving narrative, the ensemble of characters and their "I-loop" narratives, riddled with unanswered questions, slowly reveal the world. The story is told with a dreamlike detachment that for me precluded engagement with the characters. In some ways, the book felt like a series of short stories set in the same world: the threads of the characters' narratives are often left unbound, and the people themselves are little changed by events. My biggest irritation with this aspect was Carmen and Vlad. We have one person stifling under the weight of memories and the other dying to consume them… how did nobody put that together? I get that they're foils, but how did not a single person make an allusion to the possibility in the story. As one of the many themes of the story is the power of narrative, I think this was entirely intentional:

"Life was half-completed plots abandoned, heroes dying halfway along their quests, loves requited and un-, some fading inexplicably, some burning short and bright."

"There comes a time in a man’s life when he realises stories are lies. Things do not end neatly. The enforced narratives a human impinges on the chaotic mess that is life become empty labels, like the dried husks of corn such as are thrown down in the summer months from the adaptoplant dwellings, to litter the streets below."

The story is thematically rich, exploring the meaning of stories, of self, of consciousness, of reality:

“Consensus reality is like a cloth... It is made of many individual strands, each of which is a reality upon itself, a self-encoded world. We each have our own reality, a world made by our senses and our minds. The tapestry of consensus reality is therefore a group effort. It requires enough of us to agree on what reality is. To determine the shape of the tapestry, if you will.”

If you're looking for a unique speculative fiction story that rejects straightforward character-driven narrative, Central Station is definitely worth a look. It's almost hallucinogenic, a lyrical poem to a far future, with substance hidden in the shadows.

~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Tachyon Publications, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes were taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe that they capture the spirit of the narrative as a whole.~~

Cross-posted on BookLikes.

[Chris Haught · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ebook copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

Well then. That was interesting. I'm a little torn on my rating after finishing this. I mean, some of the concepts were brilliant and the world-building was quite phenomenal. But for most of the book I felt like the scene was being set but there really wasn't much happening. Then a lot of the stuff was beyond my comprehension, like so much science fiction that I've read lately seems to be (Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, and Iain M. Banks, I'm looking at you). But like those SF giants, Tidhar has a voice for story and it's well done even through the parts that bored me.

So would I recommend this book? To fans of Banks, Reynolds, and Hamilton, surely. To people that want more Star Wars in their Sci-Fi, not so much. For those, I'd point them towards James S.A. Corey or Ian McDonald, both of whom I found myself wishing I was reading during parts of this book...

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Central Station is a "fix-up" novel of previously published short stories by Lavie Tidhar — stories which were always intended to be drawn together into a whole novel. It hints at huge changes and shifts for humanity while intimately focusing on the individuals; it's about a transformed human experience in the solar system, but stays in a single city. And it harks back to the feel of a golden age of SF with a distinctly retro vibe that is rich and imaginative. It manages to evoke the past and the future simultaneously, making me feel a sense of longing and familiarity with a history of pulp SF I've not even read! (And just look at that cover art from Tachyon — it's perfect!)

This is the first work I've read by Lavie Tidhar, and I can't wait to read more. I was so happy to come to Central Station without any expectations, encouraged by only a few brief anticipatory remarks from others. I not only thoroughly enjoyed Central Station, I also enjoyed going in blind and letting its atmosphere sink in.

So what is Central Station about? It's a series of stories about the people who live in Tel Aviv, near the space port Central Station. There are the street vendors, the artist birthing and killing a god while the locals gather to watch, a data vampire who came down the gravity well and set up house with a book collector, an Oracle who speaks to the Others, and and not-entirely-human children from the birthing centers... They're all here for a reason — gathered, returned, those who never left — in the shadow of Central Station, where people come and go from the stars.

"I don't want to go to the stars,' Vlad said. 'Going away seldom changes who we are."

(How's that for a quote that condenses the oft-repeated story of humans exploring the stars and themselves?!)

These stories can stand on their own, but meld together into an overall bigger narrative that works seamlessly. The chapters were originally published as short stories from 2011 to 2015 (and then "substantively" edited to combine them) and then a few chapters are original to final work.

In each chapter you experience a part of the story from a different character's viewpoint. Every person is a secondary character in someone else's story. I love this structure! It gave me chills and reminded me of reading Charles de Lint or Angelica Gorodischer for the first time. I mean, yes, it's totally different from works by those authors, but I just had the sense I was reading something different and impressive. The way the story was told pulled me in just as much as the story and characters itself.

Frankly, I do think it's strange that the publisher's description only names Boris, when other characters and women like Miriam ("Mama Jones") and Carmel (the data vampire) are just as important as him. And don't forget the robo-priest, R. Brother Patch-It, or the alte-zachen man! There's a plethora of fantastic types of people and places and things in Central Station. The world was solid; its depth was established with only brief mentions and small infodumps when necessary. Sometimes hints are better than long treatises, because half the fun is for the reader to fill in the blanks in their own mind and to use that imagination muscle to envision the bustling, colorful Tel Aviv transformed in the future with a space port looming above!

The lushness, the alien-ness, but organic feel of the setting of Tel Aviv, with the gamespace and the Conversation flickering in and around, reminded me of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. The idea that this is on Earth but felt actually alien to me was fantastic and refreshing: this is a futuristic imagining of a part of the world that is already unknown to me, but remained human and real.

The truth is I loved reading this book so much but it's hard to explain why, because it was so personal. It triggered some wonderful memories of other books and reading experiences and this intangible thing I seem to be pursuing in my own personal reading journey. Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a book while reading it for the first time? Because that's what it felt like. I also appreciated the subtle nature of the story itself: there may not be a decisive-enough conclusion to the tale for some readers, but I didn't need one. There are hints and implications and I saw where the story could go... it was the journey itself and the characters that I devoured.

(Originally published on my blog, www.koenix.org)

[Para (wanderer) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I probably never would have read Central Station at all if not for the fact that this year's r/Fantasy Bingo had a cyberpunk square. I hate the very thought of cyberpunk. Oppressive high tech societies? No thanks. So in the oldest tradition of Bingo, I went out in search of edge cases. Oddities. This was one of the candidates I couldn't quite choose between - then I saw it in a bookstore and it was decided. And I couldn't be more glad I did.

A group of disgruntled house appliances watched the sermon in the virtuality - coffee makers, cooling units, a couple of toilets - appliances, more than anyone else, needed the robots' guidance, yet they were often wilful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both with their owners and themselves.

The easiest way to describe it would be "gorgeous sci-fi fever dream." I have a long-standing love for weird, trippy books and for slice of life, so I could hardly have stumbled upon a more perfect match for my tastes. And before I scare anyone off: it's strange, yes, but never confusing.

I usually try to do a quick summary of the plot and what the book is about, but this is true slice of life in that there's no real plot, no real stakes. Each chapter follows another character as they go about their day. Structurally, it's much like a mosaic, or a tapestry - while everything is very interconnected, there's a lot of fragments and no arc the story would work towards. It just gently meanders along. I found it extremely relaxing to read. The general tone is calm and optimistic, and I liked pretty much all of the characters.

The real star of the book, however, is the worldbuilding. Even though it takes place in Tel Aviv, it's an obviously far-future world, very different from ours.

The general approach is of the surrealist, kitchen sink, throw-it-in kind with everything from robo-priests, vampires that feed on data, children with strange powers, oracles, drugs that induce a religious experience, completely mundane booksellers, artists that create gods, talking elevators...so many strange concepts that you think there's no way this could work. No way it wouldn't feel gimmicky. And yet it does work - wonderfully. It probably helps how integrated and interwoven every single aspect is - nothing appears in just one chapter, but is perhaps mentioned in the first, and then mentioned again in the second, and finally explored more in-depth in the third. There's a lot of references to religion (especially Judaism) and mythology, a lot of which I probably missed, but for someone with more knowledge in those areas it could be a real treat.

Another aspect I want to highlight is the diversity. Central Station is a true melting pot. Out of all the human characters, I don't think a single one was white, or from the exact same cultural background as another (except if from the same family). There are also no references to America, or Europe at all, and England is referred to only as (paraphrased) "those barbarians who drink tea wrong," which gave me a good chuckle. And among the mass of SFF books written from an obviously Anglo cultural viewpoint, it's neat to read one that isn't.

But most of all, Central Station is a book that has to be read to be believed. I'm not sure any words can do it justice. It's strange, it's beautiful, it's different, and I'd most highly recommend it.

Enjoyment: 5/5
Execution: 5/5

Recommended to: slice of life fans, anyone who liked City of Saints and Madmen but wants something simpler, fans of weird literary SFF, anyone looking for a very chill book, those who want diverse settings
Not recommended to: those who require a plot

Content warnings: suicide

More reviews on my blog, To Other Worlds.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a (post-)cyberpunk SF novel without a clear plotline, but with chapters (each from a new perspective), linked in a time-chain. The book was nominated for Literary and Arthur C. Clarke Awards and won John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

There is a space port in Tel-Aviv, called the Central Station. A lot of humans, robot and gods live there, both in the real world and a virtuality. The story starts with a strange boy, who by his will power / magic / whatever changes the reality around, e.g. “A thin, glittering membrane, like a soap bubble, appeared between his fingers, the boy secreting power and manipulating atoms to form this thing, this protective snow globe, capturing within it the single drop of rain. It hovered between his fingers, perfect and timeless.”

He is waiting there every Friday with his caretaker, Mama Jones, for his father, for he has to return before Shabbat. He continues to wait even despite the fact that he knows that he is vat-grown, lab-born. And this time he is successful, for a man comes from the space. Enter Boris Chong, a man with a Martian symbiont/parasite on his head that share his emotion, one from a big family, whose progenitor made them remember all memories of their ancestors, not only the important ones, but grocery lists… as story goes by (it is hard to say that it is progresses) we see more and more glimpses of this universe: robots, which fought in a long forgotten conflict and are now begging on the streets for spare parts; data vampires; people, who work is virtual games for a living; god-makers; collectors of garbage; messiahs.

There are some allusions to a lot of other SF works, from nine billion names of god to Dune, to A Princess of Mars to The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer and to works of the author himself, including published after this book. The mix is interesting, it is, as others noted, somehow similar to The Quantum Thief, which I ranked highly. What made for me this book worse than the novel by Hannu Rajaniemi is that there is no story, just gems and pebbles, thrown across the pages.

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real Rating: 2.5* of five, rounded up because it's not poorly written, it's just that I don't care at all

I'm still unable to articulate the source of my dissatisfaction with Central Station. I don't understand why it isn't working for me, but I'm Pearl-Ruling it at 61%, the end of Achimwene and Carmel's story.

I do not wish to continue reading, so I am not going to make myself.

[manuti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta novela la leí sin apenas conocer nada del libro en sí ni del autor. Aunque si había visto muchas reseñas y menciones por Twitter y Goodreads. Lo compré en oferta durante el confinamiento y ha tocado ir achicando la lista de cosas pendientes además de que me apetecía algo de literatura de evasión que era lo que me parecía prometer.
Después de mi rollo introducción que siempre meto, diré que el libro a mí no me ha parecido gran cosa. Resulta interesante ver un decorado como Tel Aviv con sus connotaciones del Medio Oriente y que me ha recordado a la trilogía del Budayen de George Alec Effinger. También me ha recordado a 334 de Thomas M. Disch aunque esta la leí hace mucho y lo mismo no tienen ningún parecido más allá del formal de la estructura.
La novela trata de distintos personajes en torno a una estación central espacial, que es al protagonista en indirecta. Los personajes pueden resultar interesantes y el futuro que plantea con estilo "ciberpunk" resulta sorprendente muchas veces.
Sin embargo, he echado en falta un hilo conductor, un algo que ate el conjunto y que no he encontrado. Así que le doy tres estrellas *** por estar entretenida y la recomiendo para fans de la ciencia-ficción, cualquier otro lector de literatura general no creo que disfrute de esta novela mínimamente.
Muy interesante las referencias a ciencia-ficción clásica como el Luis Wu de Mundo Anillo, los gusanos gigantes de arena, o los 9000 millones de nombres de dios.

[S. ≽^•⩊•^≼ I'm not here yet]

...

Neom 9/10 ⭐ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Escapement 8.25/10 ⭐ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Circumference of the World 7/10 ⭐
Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law 8.5/10 ⭐
Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels 9/10 ⭐
Judge Dee and the Poisoner of Montmartre to-read

[Metodi Markov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Продължава тенденцията, в тази поредица на Бард да попадат напълно случайни произведения, избрани по неясно какъв критерий?

Книгата на израелският писател Лави Тидхар си има своя чар, но някак се размиват историите в нея и като цяло не ми изглежда завършена.

Очаквах, че нещо ще се случи и ще ме извади от този пътепис за възможното бъдеще, но за съжаление това така и не се случи.

Имаше интересни моменти, но като цяло не съм доволен - самобитен свят и загатнати, на места само щрихирани герои не стигат за едно цялостно фантастично приключение...

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

For inventive originality, 'Central Station' is remarkable, a five-star read. But it failed to engage me on any other level except for the world-building. So why the high rating? The world of Tel Aviv, Israel, apparently many many centuries far into the future, is mind boggling.

I did not find a character who was appealing to me, gentle reader, but perhaps you might. In any case, I was fascinated and amazed throughout this story by the way people live in this 'reality', a kind of mixed Universe of digital and real life. However, context is often understood belatedly, and not all readers are comfortable with this kind of foreign/English/invented alphabet-soup writing, and some will need to go back and re-read chapters for understanding. Extreme readers of science fiction and most techies will love this book, though.

If you truly want to be surprised by 'Central Station', stop here. This is one of those books best enjoyed as a cold read, but if you must, read on.

Virtual reality is a connective tissue between the people of Earth, Mars, the Moon, the Belt, Jupiter's moons and Saturn because everyone's body is connected to the 'Conversation' through implanted node systems. Bodies can be altered to have red skin and four arms (a Martian affectation), but everyone hears soap operas, talk shows, podcasts, and news reports as a constant oceanic sound in the background. Everyone can see the same augmented reality, apparently something like Pokemon creatures that you see on your phone although they are not really there, floating or walking or interacting with real objects and people. The twist is that some of these virtual reality objects are alive, called the 'Others'. The Others were created in a lab, and they have no idea of physical life, other than occasional contacts with avatar humans in popular digital game worlds.

Humans enter the game world connecting through implanted skin plugins, from inside special pods. However, strange children, found abandoned and adopted by various individuals, seem to sometimes flicker between digital virtual reality and actual reality without any helper devices, being able to access nodes without aids, but as this skill has not been seen by many, it doesn't look as if anyone has taken much notice yet. This world is vast and busy, with many of mankind's older cultures and religions having intermixed and evolved into a melting pot stew.

Tel Aviv is overrun by begging robotic soldiers, surviving on scrap parts and batteries. At some point in the past, uploading human consciousness into computer processors was common, mostly with humans who were dying, like soldiers, and they were put back out into the field to fight wars, which are now long ago history and forgotten. These metal relics, called cyborg robotniks, are now falling apart and are not much respected. It is left to religious organizations to take care of them, but they do so minimally, not having the resources. As a result of their care, and perhaps robotic logic chips, it is the half-human robotic soldiers who seem to have the strongest religious faith, although most people pray and offer gifts to the Oracle, a human who has given up physicality to live entirely 24/7 in virtual reality through a connecting pod.

These future religions are very intermingled in beliefs; for example, there is a Buddhist Jewish sect, so I suspect they are very benign and pacifist. The entire issue of racism seems to be non-issue in this future, since multiple varieties of races and cultures mingle and live side by side. How much human flesh one possesses is where the dividing lines of difference appear to be.

Into this neighborhood surrounding the floating space port called Central Station a data vampire has arrived on a space ship. She has inexplicably passed security, which can only mean it was intentional. Why? She is a dangerous vampire sucking memories and other data from the minds of those unfortunate enough to be there when she is hungry. She is a pawn, being used by someone for something. What?

This ends as if there will be another book, gentle reader. I hope so.

[Maryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from the publisher through NetGallery, and this is my first read of Tidhar's works.

Lavie Tidhar used a mix of past religious figures to create a complicated future.
This story is created of hope and lost of hope. Souls that are forgotten and try to be remembered, to be known.A strange politic and history of wars and faith creates new intelligent beings and the purpose of their creation is now forgotten.

Human and non human live with and at the same time without each other,they to communicate,know and understand the other and experience feelings you don't think they posses;
people who don't seem to live peacefully close to each other all are gathered and put in the story plot and somehow you believe it, accept that it is not that impossible.

This books is a difficult but intelligent work.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Central Station is a book that should have been right up my alley. I love books that are from an entirely different perspective other than my own America-centric point of view. Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli man writing about a spaceport in Tel Aviv. The vision of Israel of the future was very unique. Central Station has a surprising huge payload in terms of themes. For example Tidhar's Israel is extremely multicultural. Very few characters came from Israel. They all immigrated from somewhere else (primarily Africa and Asia, a sprinkle of Europeans (and Americans)). It also addressed things like an virtual universe where people exist in the real and in that artificial realm, first contact with a new life form, data vampires (literally), cyborg (80% machine, 20% human) soldiers, population drug addiction, a new religion centering around robots, designer offspring and a host of other items. This was some very twisted science fiction that had my name all over it.

But alas, Tidhar has written a book that is very long on world building and short on substantive content. This is a novel about atmosphere and mood and not much else. Lots of characters with very little character development. That is not to say this isn't a rich, lavish novel. Tidhar is talented and there are some who would adore his use of language and turn of a phrase. For me however, it wasn't enough to keep my attention. I had a difficult time staying focused and while I found many of the concepts very interesting; on the whole I found the novel tedious. Not my cuppa, but I would consider another novel by this author.

3 Stars

Read on kindle

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Having lived in Tel Aviv for a bunch of years I found this mystical cornucopia of bizarre futurity in a far future but still recognizable Tel Aviv quite intoxicating. Each of the thirteen chapters is a loosely intertwining thread, with the characters and settings intersecting, weaving a series of vignettes of a working class neighborhood lying in the shadow of Central Station, an immense spaceport at the heart of Tel Aviv and adjacent Jaffa. The neighborhood is populated by a widely diverse group of descendants of refugees, migrant workers and native populations.

Tidhar mixes in a jaw dropping abundance of far out concepts, seamlessly blending and overlaying the physical (Universe-One) and the digital, including sentient robots, cyborg "robotniks", mysterious artificial intelligences known as "Others", a whole panoply of religious faiths both traditional and exotic, genetic engineering, man/machine biological implants including direct neural access to the all encompassing network called the "Conversation", "Strigoi" data vampires, and so much more. Sci-fi affeciondos will note the nods to a number of sci-fi greats, including Pohl (Gateway), Herbert (sandworms), Arthur C. Clarke (The Nine Billion Names of God), Cordwainer Smith (The Ballad of Lost C'mell) as well as to Lior Tirosh, his own fictionalized persona.

All in all, I found this quite enjoyable. However, lacking a meaningful "plot arc" or "payoff", and without my own nostalgic feelings for Tel Aviv, I can understand this might not be some folks cup of tea.

[J.J. Garza · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Alguna vez han ido a uno de esos eventos donde a manera de comida pasan los meseros con bandejas llenas de piezas pequeñas? Ya sean canapés, montaditos o pinchos; no hay un plato fuerte per se. Pero a medida que van desfilando los meseros y llevan piezas deliciosas (de las que uno agarra dos o tres) uno comienza a llenarse y termina diciendo: ¡Qué buena estuvo la comida! Pues así sentí esta novela.

Éste es un fix-up o un collage de historias cortas que se consolidan alrededor de un puerto espacial. Como cualquier buen puerto, es un lugar que está lleno de almas perdidas y desesperadas, almas queriendo escapar y almas en tránsito que se quedaron ahí. A esto añadamos un showcase de conceptos, de creación y de elementos que son versiones renovadas de grandes temas que hemos visto en este género de las ideas. Un mundo futuro lleno de complicaciones pero no de desesperanza. Un mundo de humanidad.

Y por supuesto con el trasfondo israelí y los temas de la tierra prometida, largamente anhelada, ganada y perdida y ganada para en marcar las vidas y la voz coral de los personajes.

La novela funciona más como sus partes por separado que la suma de éstas. No hay una historia marco tan poderosa como, digamos, Hiperión; o una trama que sea un arco muy claro, como en Fundación. Y esto hace que uno sufra para agarrarle cariño a ciertos personajes (o a algunos cuya historia comienza, se abandona y luego regresa). Quizá es el único punto de la novela que me hizo dudar entre las cuatro y las cinco estrellas, pero fue una de esas experiencias donde hizo click al final porque Tidhar ofreció al final un banquete con viñetas.

Puntos extra al lector atento que encontró los paralelismos que Tidhar pone (a mi parecer a modo de homenaje) a temas o elementos de Rice Burroughs, de Asimov, Clarke, Gibson, Herbert y hasta Bujold.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars but I am CLEARLY in the minority on this one. I don't often read much about a book before I read it. Sometimes I don't even read the description and that usually works well for me. This is a case where it did not work well. Had I known going in that this was written as a collection of short stories and not a novel I would have liked it better. The world-building is excellent but I kept looking for a plot and there just isn't really one. The thread that ties the stories together is there but it's thin in places.