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.