a man lies dreaming

May 13, 2020

Tachyon tidbits featuring Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Kameron Hurley, Lavie Tidhar, and Lauren Beukes

Rick Klaw blog a man lies dreaming, afterland, apocalypse nyx, Caitlín R. Kiernan, central station, eleni sakellis, kameron hurley, lauren beukes, lavie tidhar, meet me in the future, Nick Mamatas, podcast, Publishers Weekly, r/weirdlit, reading envy, reddit, review, seiun award, the national herald, the people's republic of everything, the very best of caitlin r kiernan, xingyun award 0

The latest reviews and mentions of Tachyon titles and authors from around the web.

Caitlín R. Kiernan
Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Over at REDDIT in r/WeirdLit there is a hub for THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN.

This is our hub thread for collecting the short story discussion threads surrounding THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN. As long as Reddit allows me, I’ll be linking each discussion in order so that we can follow along.

Cover by Hannes Hummel
Design by Elizabeth Story

Eleni Sakellis for THE NATIONAL HERALD includes Nick Mamatas’ THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING among Tips and Recommendations for Your Lockdown Reading List.

For those interested in reading Greek-American authors, Nick Mamatas is a gifted writer with an impressive range of works to enjoy, including Sabbath, THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, and Mixed Up, a collection of cocktail recipes and flash fiction edited by Mamatas and Molly Tanzer.

READING ENVY 186 discusses several works by Kameron Hurley including MEET ME IN THE FUTURE and APOCALYPSE NYX.

Cover by Wadim Kashin
Design by Elizabeth Story

January 12, 2017

CENTRAL STATION offers a dazzling experience

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, best of 2016, bsfa, central station, final blow joe, interview, lavie tidhar, máquina de escrever, non-euclidean æthercast, podcast, salik shah, sarah anne langton, science fiction, strange horizons, the pinocchio theory, you tube

The year end acclaim keeps rolling in for Lavie Tidhar’s fantastic CENTRAL STATION.

Photo: Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013

As part of STRANGE HORIZONS year end review, Salik Shah praises the book.

Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s WE, among other novels, offered dazzling, somewhat perplexing, but deeply illuminating experience than a television extravaganza like WESTWORLD.

Final Blow Joe loves the novel, listing it among his best of the year.

Both the book and the cover by Sarah Anne Langton were included on the BSFA 2016 Awards Longlist.

THE PINOCCHIO THEORY and MÁQUINA
DE ESCREVER list CENTRAL STATION, without comment, among the best titles of the year.

Lavie Tidhar was interviewed on NON-EUCLIDEAN
ÆTHERCAST
#42.

This has been a long time coming and I am actually a little bit confused about why it did not happen earlier, but here it is: I have the great pleasure of welcoming my favourite contemporary author, Lavie Tidhar, for an interview and chat about a lot of things in my podcast.

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while you know I have reviewed a lot of Lavie’s works, most recently CENTRAL
STATION and
A
MAN LIES DREAMING .

Both novels are mentioned in the podcast, as well as their respective genesis. Other topics of the interview are: A most mysterious project (only hinted at), the difficulties of publishing novels with controversial plots, and how the reception of Lavie’s works differ from country to country.

Just have a listen yourselves!

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

November 10, 2016

PIRATE UTOPIA’s themes are as relevant as this years presidential politics

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, austin american-statesman, bruce sterling, gary k wolfe, joe gross, john coulthart, lavie tidhar, Locus, pirate utopia, review, warren ellis

In the November 2016 issue of LOCUS, Gary K. Wolfe praises Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA.

One can be
reasonably suspicious of a novella whose alternate history is so
obscure, contorted, and bordering on the absurd that it needs
appendices to help us draw the connections but the overall effect of
PIRATE UTOPIA is more chilling that comical somewhat in the same way
as Lavie Tidhar’s almost equally absurd A MAN LIES DREAMING.

<snip>

The idea of
brutality as policy crops up repeatedly in the many discussions that
makeup the intellectual heart of the story, and you can’t help but
read forward a century or so to see how such ideas persist even
today.

<snip>

PIRATE UTOPIA may
seem to be about an ancient and almost forgotten struggle between
Italy and Yugoslavia but its themes are as relevant as this year’s
presidential politics.

Joe Gross in the AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN mentions the book in We Look Ahead to November’s New Releases.

Hey, it’s some new fiction from Austin’s former don of science fiction. This alternate history novella includes a post-World War I Italian utopia (Sterling lives in Turin, Italy), flying boats, Harry Houdini as a secret agent, and no Hitler building up power in Germany (even if D’Annunzio is still around). With an introduction by Warren Ellis. Looks like a blast.

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and by John Coulthart

June 30, 2016

Poetic CENTRAL STATION is one of the Best Sci-Fi Books of 2016 So Far

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, central station, flavorwire, jonathan sturgeon, lavie tidhar, review, sarah anne langton, science fiction, vbpl recommends, virginia beach public library, woody haut

At FLAVORWIRE, Jonathon Sturgeon included Lavie Tidhar’s moving, lyrical, and insightful CENTRAL STATION among The 10 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2016 So Far.

Tidhar, another World Fantasy Award winner, sets this novel-of-stories in the wake of a diaspora that brings thousands of immigrants to a spaceport. Robotniks, virtual reality, cheap data. It’s by some measure the most interesting world presented in SF/F this year.

Woody Haut on his eponymous blog praises the novel.

And most recently CENTRAL STATION, a novel that’s appeared in bits and pieces in various magazines over the last few years. Likewise, it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle of book that reads like a prose poem based perhaps on some barely recognisable or remembered mythology. Perhaps something along the lines of a 21st century version of Theodore Sturgeon’s MORE THAN HUMAN crossed with Tanith Lee poetic-realism. Based on the four Tidhar novels I’ve read over the past couple years, his work seems to get better and better. And even though I’ve come to expect a certain range and unexpectedness, CENTRAL STATION was still full of surprises. But, then, that’s been the case since his 2011 novel OSAMA (I’ve yet to read his daunting but no doubt readable steampunk trilogy THE BOOKMAN HISTORIES), the title alone demonstrating the author’s willingness to go places few others would dare. One gets the feeling that Tidhar, who grew up on a socialist kibbutz in Israel, followed by long spells in South Africa and elsewhere before ending up in London where he now resides, couldn’t be dull if he tried.

As with A MAN LIES DREAMING, Tidhar has created a poetic, dream-like, even nostalgic, world that, however foreign, is all too imaginable. Which might well be the hallmark of any good science fiction story. Beneath it all CENTRAL STATION yearns for a place that once was, or maybe never was save for someplace deep within the author imagination… And like a disturbing and complicated dream, it’s a novel that, like A MAN LIES DREAMING, will haunt any appreciative reader long after he or she has turned its final page.

For VBPL (Virginia Beach Public Library) RECOMMENDS, Tracy V. reviews the book.

This world has made advances with cyber tech, AI, and genetic engineering, humanity has spread far into space, and the definitions of human and living have become more fluid. It is a future where everything is online, and everyone is connected to the data stream (the Conversation) with their virtual lives taking on their own existence. Tidhar is not afraid to think outside of the box for this imaginary future and explore interesting ideas. The definition of humans have stretched with cyborgs, modified humans, robots, AIs, and alien presence. Same with the definition of living, there are virtual-only existences and some hybrid of virtual and physical. Just the way they think of themselves and what they worry about is so different and intriguing and, at the heart of it, still something human that readers can relate to.

Tidhar’s writing establishes a strong sense of place with Central Station. He draws strongly on Tel Aviv’s present-day heritage and culture and its mingling of other peoples to build this imaginative version. There is a strong international flavor, with cultural foods, sights, language, and even religion. The writing is literary and poetic. His prose grounds the story and ties all these elements together into one convincing and believable package. His writing establishes the feel of this world better than any technical details. He writes with conviction and captures the way the different characters experience their world, their interactions, and their dialogue–all as insiders rather than an outsider looking in–adding to that immersive experience.

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

May 27, 2016

CENTRAL STATION distills all of science fiction into a single book

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, b&n sci-fi & fantasy blog, central station, ceridwen christensen, elan samuel, fantasy literature, lavie tidhar, orbital operations, review, sarah anne langton, skye walker, the warbler, warren ellis

A quartet of reviews of Lavie Tidhar’s thoughtful and poignant CENTRAL STATION.

Lavie Tidhar

In his ORBITAL OPERATIONS newsletter, Warren Ellis offers his take.

CENTRAL STATION. Lavie Tidhar. Now this is a thing. This is a science fiction novel written in an episodic style, where, in fact, it seems to me, each episode is also a little study of science fiction. Old science fiction. It’s like Tidhar is enacting a cold restart of the genre in the Middle East. References to old science fiction abounds – I came across the Louis Wu reference and was suddenly wait, what? And then Shambleau, and a chapter that was in large part a set-up for a bit about sandworms, and damn. A spaceport that’s Jewish on one side and Arab on the other and the seat of the project of science fiction.

“Our maker who art in the zero point field, hallowed be thy nine billion names …”

The Nine Billion Names Of God. Short story by Arthur C Clarke. Tidhar does this all the way through the book. Central Station is the locus of science fiction. Defining it as the source of global stories. There is one single American in the book that I noticed, and even he is noted as having lost his accent.

And, yes, it does tell its own story, one that is as much myth and legend as sf. Interrupted love, the culture of abandoned robots, designer babies with imaginary friends and released AI as wild djinni. The book is bigger than it seems, and I’m still thinking about it, unpacking the layers of it. 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.

Skye Walker of FANTASY LITERATURE reviews the book.

CENTRAL STATION is a thoughtful, poignant, human take on a possible future. For the most part CENTRAL STATION occurs at the titular port on planet earth. This space resides in what we know today as Tel Aviv, but in the distant future it has gone through many names and many people. Everything seems to begin in earnest when Boris Chong arrives in Central Station after spending a great deal of time away — some of which on Mars. Central Station, the place, is a half-thought meeting of a variety of worlds. CENTRAL STATION the book is more thoughtful than I think I know how to express, but I’ll give it a try.

<snip>

CENTRAL STATION is about humanity in every form it may take. It’s about yearning and hopes and frustrations. Its intricate design of life, love, and happenstance in a distant future isn’t so much grounded in a forced humanity as revelling in it. It’s also about mysteries never to be solved. There are a fair few things in CENTRAL STATION that I continue to wonder about. In most stories without a foreseeable continuation these kinds of loose ends would bother me. In the case of CENTRAL STATION they lend to the idea that what I read was just a moment. There was time in the lives of the characters before the story began, and there is life after. CENTRAL STATION is written like a segment of history, except that it’s set in the future.

If you’re looking for a plot-heavy sci-fi narrative you may want to look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a deeply complex comment on humanity in a future where many lines are blurred, this is the right pick for you.

On the B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG, Ceridwen Christensen writes about the vibrant novel.

This is the second of Tidhar’s novels I’ve read in as many months, and I have to say, I’m incredibly impressed with his range of style and voice. A MAN LIES DREAMING was pulp snarl, a book both thoughtful and lewd, nasty and pointed. But CENTRAL STATION, now this is something different: amiable, shifting, slow, and stealthy. There’s nothing particularly urgent about it, no main arc that drives you from here to there. This is not to say there aren’t stakes for the people who live in the shadow of the station. This Tel Aviv is a vibrant, textured place. Tidhar has the knack of detailing his beautiful, worn city with the specificity of pop songs and cultural detritus only known to its people, the kind of tossed off knowledge that cements a people to a place, and is ultimately unknowable to outsiders.

He had me leaning in, listening, to this conversation. You should take a listen too, on your way from here to there.

Elan Samuel on THE WARBLER praises CENTRAL STATION.

I thought it would be difficult to find a book at good as Hannu Rajaniemi’s COLLECTED FICTION this year, but Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION, also published by Tachyon, has overtaken it for the top spot in my list this year. By a tiny margin.

For me, CENTRAL STATION was more than a good—or even great—book. It was an important book, for several reasons. The first is that it is some advanced science fiction that breaks through a number of barriers in the genre, which I’ll dig into below. The second is that it was written by an Israeli author and takes place in Tel Aviv.

<snip>

Beyond its significance to me for personal reasons, CENTRAL STATION is an excellent book that pushes at the boundaries of science fiction, while maintaining a deliberately sci-fi core. It was not a story of adventure, or of love, or of horror, though at points it had elements of of all of these. It is a human story. It offers glimpses into the lives of people living their lives, and shows us that no matter how sophisticated our technology becomes or how the world may change, to be human is to struggle, to connect, to love, to fear, to believe and disbelieve. It is absolutely science fiction, and it is also a literary exploration of the human condition through the lenses of family, death, evolution, technology, and religion.

CENTRAL STATION is told almost in vignettes, which makes sense given that Tidhar wrote and published each chapter separately over the course of several years before compiling them into a book with Tachyon. The cast sometimes feel disconnected from each other, but then you realize their connection is their home. Tel Aviv. Central Station. The writing is superb, sometimes eschewing superficial imagery for abstraction, but always returns to a place of clarity. It flows beautifully throughout the read, and though it is short, it is full.

CENTRAL STATION blew me away. I hope it will do the same for you.

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and poster by Sarah Anne Langton

May 24, 2016

CENTRAL STATION is a beautifully atmospheric and deeply moving mosaic novel

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, battered tattered yellowed & creased, book club, central station, chicago, chicago nerd social club, dancing on glass, fleur clarke, hodderscape, interzone, jonathan mccalmont, lavie tidhar, review

The reviews and mentions of Lavie Tidhar’s well-written CENTRAL STATION keep rolling in.

Photo: Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013.

In INTERZONE 264, Jonathan McCalmont reviews the novel.

Made up of short
stories that first appeared in INTERZONE and a few other placers,
CENTRAL STATION is a beautifully atmospheric and deeply moving mosaic
novel about the realities of life in the a futuristic Tel Aviv where
cultures clash, religions spawn and Otherness is exported to the
stars.

<snip>

Tidhar’s brilliantly
multicultural approach to science fictional weirdness is most evident
in the way he handles religion, as his futuristic Tel Aviv appears to
have learned from the ethnic and religious violence of our era and
bacome a place where different identities and beliefs grow stronger
by intertwining. This is a world in which a church operated by robots
not only embraces same-sex marriage but looks on benignly when a
combination of performance art, high-technology, and powerful
narcotics prompt the creation of brand new gods that burn intensely
but only for a short while.

Novels like OSAMA, A
MAN LIES DREAMING, and THE VIOLENT CENTURY may well have won awards,
but nothing I read in those novels prepared me for the excitement I
felt when reading CENTRAL STATION. At a time when science fiction is
all too often reduced to the stale visuals of American films, it is
nice to be reminded that a multicultural 21^st century
science fiction can still speak to who we are and where we are
headed.

BATTERED,
TATTERED, YELLOWED, & CREASED praises the book.

The towering spaceport of Central Station rises over the old city of Tel Aviv, a melting-pot of Arab, Jew, and the multicultural thousands who flocked there in the wake of a worldwide diaspora. The city’s sprawl is unchecked, packed with hundreds of thousands of people both real and digital, all blended together in one Conversation—the digital network and stream-of-consciousness that cascades all noded life-forms into one stream of endless data. It is the transhuman future, a complex hybrid of beauty and decay… a world as brilliant in its originality as it is startling in its familiarity.

<snip>

Tidhar’s prose presents the ethereal beauty of a landscape blending the ramshackle, the exotic, and the alluring, blending sickly-sweet fresh love with the sad pangs of heartbreak. Tidhar has quite a way with words, and paints the poetic imagery of future Earth with precision; the plot is a delicate and ephemeral thing, but his writing has a captivating power that I found hard to put down.

CENTRAL STATION is very much in the vein of literary science fiction, rooted in human-driven drama and eschewing genre’s typical love affair with plot—it’s nearly plotless, to be honest. But is as much a “literary” novel as it is a homage to pulp fiction—see the cover—a love-letter to SF which has come before. There’s a multitude of easter-eggs references scattered throughout these pages: a nod to God’s nine billion names; things will use the verb “ubicked;” the term for “data vampire” is a homage to C.L. Moore’s pulp story “Shambleau,” chosen with obvious care.

<snip>

CENTRAL STATION is a subtle but well-written novel, handling emotionally rich and complex themes with dazzling clarity. The lack of closure for some of its plot-lines may be a bit unsatisfying for mainstream readers, but the novel is never boring—quite the opposite, it’s intoxicating, a dreamlike masterpiece (or near enough to a masterpiece for me). It’s one of the most unique and ambitious SF novels I’ve read of late, and I won’t be surprised to see it on awards lists (particularly the Nebula) later this year. CENTRAL STATION is available now, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to see what the future of science fiction looks like.

DANCING ON GLASS fell in love with Tidhar’s latest.

I
admired OSAMA and THE VIOLENT CENTURY a great deal and I loved A MAN
LIES DREAMING but CENTRAL STATION is a novel to fall in love with.
Tidhar, it goes without saying now, is a fantastic writer and his new
book is a rare and glorious thing, full of sublime ideas and
beautiful, evocative prose.

CENTRAL STATION is a rich, complex and satisfying work of art. It manages to be spectacularly lyrical (I was going to write ‘literary’ but stopped myself) and spectacularly sfnal too. I’m not sure it has ploughed down into my unconscious like a Harrison text or as novels by Robson and Fagan have this year but I realise that doesn’t matter. It’s more of an aesthetic pleasure – the pleasure of language and ideas, of cerebral oohs and aahs and of wonder. It is metaphorically rich in its thinking about the relationship of places and spaces to time, memory and history. It is meditative and kind. It is daring and full of grace.

It is a novel to fall in love with.

Fleur Clarke at HODDERSCAPE includes CENTRAL STATION in her “Around
The World in 18 Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels.”

The CHICAGO NERD SOCIAL CLUB has chosen the book as their June Book Club selection.

When: Monday, June 13th, 2016, 6:30pm-7:30pm
Where: Filter Cafe 1373-75 N. Milwaukee Ave

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and poster by Sarah Anne Langton

April 8, 2016

The full-of-good-ideas CENTRAL STATION sparkles

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, art and war, central station, coode street podcast, donde acaba el infinito, interview, jonathan strahan, lavie tidhar, podcast, review, sarah anne langton, science fiction

The buzz for Lavie Tidhar’s forthcoming novel CENTRAL STATION continues with a new review and an interview.

At the Spanish language DONDE ACABA EL
INFINITO, Alexander Paez García enjoys his first exposure to the interesting Lavie Tidhar.

With CENTRAL STATION Lavie Tidhar leaves out everything that hitherto had cultivated: novels noir reminiscent of Dashiell Hammet and that could be found in the ucronía. In this case we have a more texts like Ken Liu, more focused on the aspects that make us human story, but which in turn echoes of classics like Isaac Asimov in technological evolution and robotics are concerned.

It is the first novel I read Tidhar Lavie, and above all the above, I have been fascinated by the way of narrating the author. With brief pincelazas and small details, build a world alive and palpable. It is also evocative and gives a great pace to the plot. CENTRAL STATION is full of great ideas that sparkle on every page. It is not a book of action but that does not mean that there is tension and conflict in sufficient amounts to not being able to put aside the novel. Lavie Tidhar is the most interesting authors I’ve read in a long time.

(Translation from Spanish, courtesy of Google)

Lavie Tidhar joined Jonathan Strahan on the COODE STREET PODCAST.

This week we are delighted to be joined by Lavie Tidhar, whose Jerwood Fiction Underwood Prize Award winning novel
A
MAN LIES DREAMING has just appeared in the U.S., and whose fix-up science fiction novel CENTRAL STATION is set to appear in May, with the reissue of the Bookman novels and nonfiction book ART AND WAR scheduled as well this year.

We discussed his sometimes controversial approach to alternate history, the question of borrowing tropes from pulp fiction in portraying serious events such as the Holocaust and terrorism, the importance of American SF writers like Cordwainer Smith, his own experiences growing up in a kibbutz and what he read there, and the never-ending question of genre literature vs “literary” fiction.

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and poster by Sarah Anne Langton

July 28, 2015

Incredible Lavie Tidhar garners two British Fantasy Award nominations

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a man lies dreaming, black gods kiss, british fantasy award, fantasy, lavie tidhar, science fiction

Lavie Tidhar, author of the forthcoming Tachyon book CENTRAL STATION, received British Fantasy Award nominations for his novel

A MAN LIES DREAMING and the collection BLACK GODS KISS.

For the full list of of nominees visited the British Fantasy Awards page.

Congratulation to Lavie and all the other nominees.

Tachyon Publications

a man lies dreaming

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