Deluxe Signed Slipcase Edition, 375 pages
English language
Published Dec. 2, 2016 by PS Publishing.
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 multigenerational 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 …
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 multigenerational 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.
Re-read before reading Neom, by the same author, in the same universe
3.5 stars rounded down. See previous comment (should be easy to find on the bookwyrm instance itself?), only thing I'll add is that it ended somewhat abruptly.
Looking back, though, the entire work is almost more like a slice-of-life manga than a traditional scifi novel (again: emphasis is very much on mood and place, over plot or conflict) so it's not like it was all that jarring.
I'm glad I read it, but I'm also not likely to rush to seek out Tidhar's other works. (But if I ran across another one recommended in some context like a good friend gushing about it? Sure, I'd give him another shot.)
This was a really interesting book with some really cool tech and fascinating social dynamics around it. I wanted more, not just of the characters, but a little more story. It was a bit more slice of life than I was expecting.
This is what is sometimes called a "mosaic novel" -- a novel made up of short stories that have been tweaked to relate to each other. The stories are masterfully written and the connections between them work well; I enjoyed this thoroughly. The ending felt a bit unfinished to me, but that is also understandable -- unlike many more traditional novels, the lives of the characters don't necessarily reach culmination (there is no "lived happily ever after"), but most reach a place where their lives have changed -- so it is, in a way, more realistic.
In short, it's a beautifully penned series of stories. I recommend it.
A collection of shorter pieces woven into a longer story, perhaps too many different directions at once, but bus stations are like that.
Really well written, thought-provoking... characters and ideas stick with you after you finish the book.
It's not easy to write Sci-Fi about Israel, where you barely know what's going to happen tomorrow let alone predict the future.
But one thing that has been a constant is the Arab Israeli Conflict. Tidhar gets past the elephant in the room by solving it and leaving it in the past. Even the vets don't remember which side they were on.
This is a bit of a copout, but it leaves Tidhar free to pursue other dimensions rather than the obvious.
On the other hand this did leave me feeling that apart from allot of name dropping of locations and Israeli dictionary terms such as Kibbutzim, this story could have taken place in the slums of any large city that attracts migrants. We hardly get to meet any characters from Tel-Aviv or Jaffa and those we do have no depth to them.
This is a collection of short stories …
It's not easy to write Sci-Fi about Israel, where you barely know what's going to happen tomorrow let alone predict the future.
But one thing that has been a constant is the Arab Israeli Conflict. Tidhar gets past the elephant in the room by solving it and leaving it in the past. Even the vets don't remember which side they were on.
This is a bit of a copout, but it leaves Tidhar free to pursue other dimensions rather than the obvious.
On the other hand this did leave me feeling that apart from allot of name dropping of locations and Israeli dictionary terms such as Kibbutzim, this story could have taken place in the slums of any large city that attracts migrants. We hardly get to meet any characters from Tel-Aviv or Jaffa and those we do have no depth to them.
This is a collection of short stories and it shows with lots of repetition of background information that you read just a few pages ago in a previous section. I wonder why this couldn't be edited out when combining the stories into a book.
I work in Tel-Aviv, I go through Central Station a number of times a week, thought these days I use the nearby Ha'hagana train station and don't actually enter the station building. My work place used to be on one of the streets near the Station though it is not named in the book.
I teach blind people how to use computers and smartphones. These days we've moved to a more lucrative location in north Tel-Aviv, but many of my students still come from southern Tel-Aviv. The relations between the old residence of the Central Station area and the migrants is complicated and involves allot of fear resentment and bigotry. However many Israelis aid the migrants. Last year I taught a blind Philipinian migrant girl how to use an iPhone that was donated by someone from Tel-Aviv. I donated my teaching time because our mandate is to teach seniors not children.
As it turned out the social worker that helped get the iPhone donation forgot to ask for enough money to also buy a case. We needed an extra 100$ to get a good Otterbox to protect the expensive assistive technology. Sitting at a table at my Kibbutz's dining room it took me just a couple of minutes telling her story to three of my friends, in order to get them to pitch in and we got her the case.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I would have liked to see a more complex future Israel in this book.
Provocative, challenging, with a deep sense of world building. Books like this don't come around often. Do yourself a favor & read it.
http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2016/05/excuse-me-while-i-wipe-up-my-brain.html
