The announced finalists for the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards includes Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION.

Books that imagine futures far and near, nudged or driven by science but still bound by the human experience, have been named to the shortlist for the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards.

Included within the list of 11 finalist books in the speculative fiction genre are novels, a graphic novel, young adult work, and collections of stories. The finalists comprise a mix of first-time and established authors.

“These books run the gamut in form, context, and outlook. We see irony, adventure, humor, and loss,” said Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute. “Whether describing a cloned space crew, the future of sexual relations, or everyday life in a changed environment, the Neukom shortlist is filled with essential reads that address the complexities that the future may bring.” The shortlist was prepared by Rockmore and Dartmouth colleagues Alexander Chee and Tarek El-Ariss.

2018 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards Shortlist of Books:

• “After Atlas” by Emma Newman (Roc, 2016)
• “Best Worst American” by Juan Martinez (Small Beer Press, 2017)
• CENTRAL STATION by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon Publications, 2016)
• “Children of the New World” by Alexander Weinstein (Picador, 2016)
• “Made for Love” by Alissa Nutting (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017)
• “New York 2140” by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit, 2017)
• “On the Edge of Gone” by Corrine Duyvis (Amulet/Abrams, 2016)
• “Six Wakes” by Mur Lafferty (Orbit, 2017)
• “Telling the Map” by Christopher Rowe (Small Beer Press, 2017)
• “Using Life” by Ahmed Naji (UT Press, 2017)
• “Void Star” by Zachary Mason (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017)

The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College will announce the winners of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards from among the shortlist in May.

Awards will be presented for a debut work and an established author in the genre of speculative fiction. Each award winner will receive a $5,000 honorarium that will be presented during a Dartmouth-hosted panel to discuss the genre and their work.

Tammy Sparks at BOOKS, BONES & BUFFY mentions the Campbell Award-winning novel among Top Ten Speculative Fiction Books Set In Another Country.

Israel – CENTRAL STATION by Lavie Tidhar

CENTRAL STATION is a series of interconnected stories that center around a community in a futuristic Tel Aviv, and I loved the unusual format and profound emotional connections between the characters.

Currently STORY BUNDLE is featuring The World SF Bundle, curated by Tidhar.

Over ten years ago I came up with the crazy idea of an anthology collecting speculative fiction stories from around the world. The resultant collection – The Apex Book of World SF – came out in 2009 and has since spawned a series of books, with the fifth volume coming out later this year. Over the course of that decade I encountered some brilliant writers, and was able to watch what had once seemed impossible – overseas writers flourishing in the genre world – come to seem a matter of course.

While translation continues to pose a significant barrier, many new enthusiasts have contributed to surmounting the problem. In this bundle we have a comprehensive anthology of translated Spanish speculative fiction, Castles in Spain, as well as a wonderful novel from Japan, A Small Charred Face, made possible through the Haikasoru imprint dedicated to translated Japanese speculative fiction. In addition, we are offering all four of the current Apex Book of World SF anthologies, in which you may encounter many writers new to you, many of them translated from the original languages.

Warren Ellis attempts to destroy Tidhar.

I attempted to destroy Lavie Tidhar’s brain yesterday by affirming that, yes, THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE is a dystopia, and in fact is a post-nuclear-apocalypse story about the Strategic Reserve ghost fleet.

The Strategic Reserve is one of Britain’s finer urban myths.  It holds that a ghost fleet of pristine steam locomotives is stored in a secret base under Box Tunnel, in the west of England, ready to be deployed on the rails in the event of nuclear EMP frying the electric lines. In the aftermath of atomic war, the steam trains would roll out of Box Tunnel to serve the survivors, eating fire and breathing soot.

Episode 259 of THE VIRTUAL MEMORIES SHOW is a discussion with Tidhar.

“You must be doing something right if you’re pissing people off. I just wish it was easier to piss people off.”

Science fiction author Lavie Tidhar joins the show to talk about the five topics that Israeli novelists are allowed to write about, his affinity for pulp fiction tropes, when it’s okay to make fun of Hitler (which he does at great length in A Man Lies Dreaming), why he finds utopias sinister (hint: he was raised on a kibbutz), how to build a career on ambitious failure, the eye-opening experience of editing world anthologies of SF, the difference between having fans and having readers, the distracting joy of Twitter, why not getting published in Israel felt like a reverse-BDS movement, and what it’s like never knowing which shelf a bookstore will decide to put his books. Give it a listen! And go buy A Man Lies Dreaming (among other works of his)!

“No one is doing what I’m doing, looking at big historical processes — like the Holocaust and 9/11 — but doing it through this particular pulp lens and through alternate history.”

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

Cover and image by Sarah Anne Langton