Central Station – Lavie Tidhar

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and data is cheaper.

When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris’s ex-lover is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik—a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts. His father is terminally-ill with a multi-generational mind-plague. And a hunted data-vampire has followed Boris to where she is forbidden to return.

Rising above them is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful alien entities who, through the Conversation—a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness—are just the beginning of irrevocable change.

At Central Station, humans and machines continue to adapt, thrive…and even evolve.

Amazon Featured Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Book of May Barnes & Noble Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016 pick Bookskill Recommended Book Featured in the Jewish Telegraph Featured on the Reading Envy podcast Guardian Best SF & Fantasy Book of 2016 Kirkus Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror Books You`ll Want to Read in May Kirkus 2016 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy pick NPR Best Books of 2016 Publishers Weekly Staff Pick SFBluestocking Best of 2016 Tor.com Best Book of 2016 io9 May Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Book That Will Blow Your Mind 2016 British Science Fiction Award, Longlist 2016 Locus Recommended Reading List 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner 2017, Shortlist Winner Sarah Anne Langton Nomination, Chesley Award, Best Cover Illustration – Sarah Anne Langton 2017 British Fantasy Society – Shortlist for Best Artist – Sarah Anne Langton “It`s all of science fiction distilled into a single book.”
—Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan and Gun Machine

REVIEWS

“World Fantasy Award–winner Tidhar (A Man Lies Dreaming) magnificently blends literary and speculative elements in this streetwise mosaic novel set under the towering titular spaceport. In a future border town formed between Israeli Tel Aviv and Arab Jaffa, cyborg ex-soldiers deliver illicit drugs for psychic vampires, and robot priests give sermons and conduct circumcisions. The Chong family struggles to save patriarch Vlad, lost in the inescapable memory stream they all share, thanks to his father’s hack of the Conversation, the collective unconscious. New children, born from back-alley genetic engineering, begin to experience actual and virtual reality simultaneously. Family and faith bring them all back and sustain them. Tidhar gleefully mixes classic SF concepts with prose styles and concepts that recall the best of world literature. The byways of Central Station ring with dusty life, like the bruising, bustling Cairo streets depicted by Naguib Mahfouz. Characters wrestle with problems of identity forged under systems of oppression, much as displaced Easterners and Westerners do in the novels of Orhan Pamuk. And yet this is unmistakably SF. Readers of all persuasions will be entranced.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review

“. . . a fascinating future glimpsed through the lens of a tight-knit community. Verdict: Tidhar (A Man Lies Dreaming; The Violent Century) changes genres with every outing, but his astounding talents guarantee something new and compelling no matter the story he tells.”
Library Journal, starred review

“It is just this side of a masterpiece — short, restrained, lush — and the truest joy of it is in the way Tidhar scatters brilliant ideas like pennies on the sidewalk.”
NPR Books

“A marvellous, multi-faceted story that flows gently from one character to another like an intimate private tour of Tel Aviv and the spaceport at its centre.”
SF Crowsnest

“A fantastic mosaic novel.”
New York Review of Science Fiction

“Tidhar, who the Guardian newspaper compared to Philip K. Dick, has given the world a fascinating and imaginative snapshot of a distant future.”
Charlie Shifflett, author of Accomplices

“Breathtakingly heady . . . a wonderfully inventive set of interconnected tales, brimming with sensory detail and paying tribute to a plethora of science-fiction tropes.”
Intergalactic Medicine Show

“Tidhar presents a richly constructed future in this beautifully crafted world.”
David Brin, author of Startide Rising and Existence

“Central Station is in every way a literary masterpiece.”
The Future Fire

“Thought-provoking . . . highly intellectual.”
Booklist

“A sprawling hymn to the glory and mess of cultural diversity.”
Guardian

“Quietly enthralling and subtly ingenious.”
Asimov’s Science Fiction

“Beautiful, original, a shimmering tapestry of connections and images – I can’t think of another SF novel quite like it. Lavie Tidhar is one of the most distinctive voices to enter the field in many years.”
Alastair Reynolds, author of the Revelation Space series

“If you want to know what SF is going to look like in the next decade, this is it.”
Gardner Dozois, editor of the bestselling Year’s Best Science Fiction series

“A dazzling tale of complicated politics and even more complicated souls. Beautiful.”
Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

“If Nalo Hopkinson and William Gibson held a séance to channel the spirit of Ray Bradbury, they might be inspired to produce a work as grimy, as gorgeous, and as downright sensual as Central Station.”
Peter Watts, author of Blindsight

“Central Station is masterful: simultaneously spare and sweeping—a perfect combination of emotional sophistication and speculative vision. Tidhar always stuns me.”
Kij Johnson, author of At the Mouth of the River of Bees

“Central Station boasts complexity without complication, sharp prose, and a multi-dimensional world.”
Jeffrey Ford, author of The Girl in the Glass

“Lavie Tidhar weaves the threads of classic and modern science fiction tropes with the skills of a gene surgeon and creates a whole new landscape to portray a future both familiar and unsettling. A unique marriage of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, C. L. Moore, China Miéville, and Larry Niven with 50 degrees of compassion and the bizarre added. An irresistible cocktail.”
Maxim Jakubowski, author of the Sunday Times bestselling Vina Jackson novels

“Like all good science fiction, the linked stories of Central Station are really about the here and now we live in. Most urgently, they are about just who ‘we’ might be, here on this overcrowded, contested, Anthropocene world that we all must share.”
Carter Scholz, author of Radiance

“Tidhar weaves strands of faith and science fiction into a breathtaking and lush family history of the far future.”
Max Gladstone, author of Three Parts Dead

“Disturbingly strange, yet bizarrely familiar, like implanted memories from a future you have not yet lived. I loved it.”
Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies and Others

“A mosaic of mind-blowing ideas and a dazzling look at a richly-imagined, textured future.”
Aliette de Bodard, author of The House of Shattered Wings

“I recommend it highly. It’ll stay with you for days, because every idea in it has more ideas under it. It’s all of science fiction distilled into a single book.”
Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan and Gun Machine

“It’s an amazing book!”
Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories

“Central Station is brilliant.”
Barnes and Noble

“[Tidhar] has created a textured and original future that echoes real historical and economic tensions while satisfying veteran readers with deliberate echoes of classic science fiction…Deeply humane.”
Chicago Tribune

“[A] standout, absorbing, well realised sci-fi world, with characters who feel like they’re about to stroll off the page and take you for a cup of arak.”
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews

“[T]he escape from more traditional (and commercial) story structure allows the Central Station to be a place where the extraordinary and alien are commonplace, its world imbued with life beyond the service of a single narrative arc.”
Ars Technica

“It’s a compelling collection that mixes the epic and the intimate, one that succeeds at being profound, incredibly moving and, quite simply, stunning.”
Starburst Magazine, 10 out of 10 stars

“Some of Tidhar’s finest writing. Verdict: Come to Central Station and allow yourself to be enveloped in its embrace.”
Sci-Fi Bulletin

“Central Station combines a cultural sensibility too long invisible in SF with a sensibility which is nothing but classic SF, and the result is a rather elegant suite of tales.”
Locus

“Central Station is without question the best assemblage of short stories I’ve read in recent memory…. Sublimely sensual, emotionally moreish, and composed with crystalline clarity irrespective of its incredible complexity.”
Tor.com

“I smelled the smells of Tel Aviv in the first paragraph of the introduction, meat cooking and sweat and sand and Mediterranean air. I saw the city squares, flowing with life and laughter and languages. I felt like I had come home.”
The Warbler

“Intricate and otherworldly, emotional and thought provoking,”
Books, Bones & Buffy

“It’s unlike any Science Fiction I’ve ever read, equally parts poetic, abstract, and authentic in its ability to show us a strange future we can believe that, yes, is certainly possible.”
Elitist Book Reviews

“The breadth of Tidhar’s imagination in this book just left me gasping…if you love worldbuilding, good characterisation and a world of possibilities, this is definitely for you.”
Blue Book Balloon

“This is a novel that captures the heart of human experience (in all it’s odd ways) whilst simultaneously building a world full of wonderful and far-reaching ideas. It’s beautiful, considered and complex in equal measure.”
The Bookbeard’s Blog

“I love Lavie Tidhar’s writing and, as always, here it is beautiful.”
For Winter Nights

“Tidhar’s imagination is not only seen in the newly-minted terms or the quirky languages the novel has, but in the ideas it contains. Central Station is full of fresh and well-thought concepts.”
Sense of Wonder

“Great…it has a very Blade Runner feel to it.”
The Writerly Reader

“If SF is about expanding boundaries and making us think in new ways, then this is absolutely at the core of the genre. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
Fed on Peaches

“Central Station is one of the most breathtakingly, bewilderingly, mindbendingly imaginative stories I’ve read in some time.”
Bookaneer

“If you’re looking for something a little more philosophical and thoughtful than the usual fare in the genre, look no further than this book . . . a fantastic read.”
Strange Currencies

“Lavie Tidhar gives enormous depth to the world he creates. . . . Central Station is a fascinating glimpse into a very possible future.”
Metapunk

“Central Station is a gorgeous book”
Booklikes

“I think I’ve just read one of the books of the year, although we are only in April.”
Dreams of Elvex

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one on the Nebula shortlist next year.”
Rob Weber, Val’s Random Comments

“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.”
Koenix

“Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys literary science fiction, especially authors like Hannu Rajaniemi”
Agreybox

“This is science fiction told on an intimate scale.”
Strange Alliances

“What makes this book special is the strong literary quality to the writing…. Central Station is not like anything else you’ve read. This book shows clearly that Lavie Tidhar is an author to watch.”
SF Revu

“Central Station is a wondrous thought-provoking book, as you would expect from someone as highly credentialed as Lavie Tidhar.”
Fantasy Book Review

“Powerfully imagined and beautifully rendered… capture[s] profound emotional truths”
Interzone

“Central Station is a thoughtful, poignant, human take on a possible future.”
Fantasy Literature

“I loved the array of characters, cultures, real and imagined from the robotniks with their robotic religion, to the description of a futuristic Tel Aviv that was so vivid, I could almost see it.”
The Conversationalist

“Full of sublime ideas and beautiful, evocative prose…It is a novel to fall in love with.”
Dancing on Glass

“Every page was a delight.”
Astounding Yarns

“It’s a really great piece of fiction, and one of the most interesting science-fiction novels of recent years.”
Bookmunch

“The further I got into this novel, the more I enjoyed myself.”
The Little Red Reviewer

“Tidhar is one of the few authors who can take these big, uncomfortable ideas and story tropes and pull something brilliant and beautiful and fresh out of them.”
Kalireads

“[A] short, wonderful novel that I loved from beginning to end and thoroughly recommend.”
Sense of Wonder

“Tidhar does a marvelous job of depicting his vision of Earth’s future, and after a few pages, you’re completely immersed in his semi-dystopian, realistic version of Tel Aviv.”
Girl Who Reads

“A gorgeous vision of what more likely than not will be the world to come and beautifully written to boot.”
Shelf Inflicted

“…a wonderful tribute to classic SF…”
Locus, Year in Review

“This is the future we were promised. . . . In Central Station the future is all around, all those glittering, exciting, shimmering things that we learned to recognise from science fiction.”
Paul Kincaid, the Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy

“A tapestry of individual characters, every one artfully and lovingly drawn down to the very least, whose lives touch and interact with each other, but who exist in their own right.”
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shadows of the Apt

“Amidst the loves and the fears, Tidhar reminds us of the intoxicating and invigorating power of longing and nostalgia.”
The Jewish Standard

“Groundbreaking . . . Genius literary invention.”
Asimov’s SF