Book Review | Central Station by 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 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.

***

World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar rewrites the rules of the short story collection in Central Station, an ambitious assemblage of thirteen tales tall but indubitably true that are all the more remarkable when read together.

"Substantially different versions" (p.251) of eleven of the efforts it collects were previously published, in various venues, between November 2011 and September 2014, and the handful of them that I read then impressed me immensely. 'The Smell of Orange Groves' and 'The Lord of Discarded Things,' for instance, represented intimate glimpses into the lives of a few of the disaffected folks who call the "bordertown" (p.34) at the base of the Central Station spaceport home.

In one, after decades in the Belt, birthing doctor Boris Chong returns to his roots to tend to his ailing parent, only to end up hooking up with his childhood sweetheart Miriam Jones, who's grown older in the intervening years—as has he—and adopted a boy. In the other, Ibrahim, an alte-zachen man, or "junk gypsy," (p.48) finds a genetically modified messiah in a small shoebox, and resolves to raise him himself—free of his fate as far as is possible in a place like Central Station, which is so rife with religion that it boasts a "faith bazaar." (p.23)

They were little things, those stories; lovely, and lively, and large of heart, but little, admittedly. Not so in Central Station, which generously extends the two tales I've touched on at the same time as seamlessly stitching together their characters and narratives with those of the other eleven featured here.

Book Review | The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account... and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism — a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields — to answer one last, impossible question: what makes a hero?

***

Lavie Tidhar has a theory about superheroes. About what they are and what they represent; about where they come from and why we hardly ever see any British ones. These are questions the author asks and answers on various occasions over the course of his indescribably demanding if accordingly rewarding new novel, though Tidhar's particular position is best encapsulated by the testimony given by a fictionalised version of Joseph Shuster — the co-creator of Superman alongside Jerry Siegel, who also appears — during the trial of Dr. Vomacht, the Nazi scientist whose cavalier prodding of probability resulted in The Violent Century's so-called Übermenschen.

Note that the following quote comes from near the end of the novel, but know, moreover, that The Violent Century plays so fast and loose with clarity and linearity that this is as fitting a fashion as any I can imagine to start talking about a book so bleak and mysterious that any resulting discussion of it is destined to be difficult.

— I specialise in... in a form of dynamic portraiture. [...] Of the changed. Of Beyond-Men. And women. Of... for lack of a better word, Shuster says, I like to think my work focuses on heroes.

— But what's a hero? the counsellor says, again.

— It seems to me, Shuster says, it seems to me... you must understand, I think, yes, you need to first understand what it means to be a Jew.

— I think I have some experience in that, the counsellor for the defence says drily — which draws a few laughs from the audience. On the stand, Schuster coughs. His eyes, myopic behind the glasses, assume a dreamy look. Those of us who came out of that war, he says. And before that. From pogroms and persecution and to the New World. To a different kind of persecution, perhaps. But also hope. Our dreams of heroes come from that, I think. Our American heroes are the wish-fulfilment of immigrants, dazzled by the brashness and the colour of this new world, by its sheer size. We needed larger-than-life heroes, masked heroes to show us that they were the fantasy within each and every one of us. The Vomacht wave did not make them, it released them. Our shared hallucination, our faith. Our faith in heroes. This is why you see our American heroes but never their British counterpart. Our is the rise of Empire, theirs is the deline. Our seek the limelight, while theirs skulk in shadows. (pp.246-247)

In his afterword, the British and World Fantasy Award-winning author admits to modelling this and several of the surrounding sequences on the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution, for war crimes: a tack which is typical of the way Tidhar reconfigures our own horrible history into a darkly fascinating narrative as ghastly as it is fantastical.

In the beginning, in any event, a glimpse of the end: namely the framing narrative by way of which we learn of the events of The Violent Century. In The Hole in the Wall, "a London pub, hidden under the railway arches" (p.8) of the South Bank, a man known only as Oblivion confronts a fellow called Fogg, insisting that they go together to meet the Old Man, the better to clear a couple of things up. "It's just routine," (p.14) one promises the other, but Fogg knows this is not so. He has his secrets, and he will give anything to keep them.

Thus they travel together to the Farm, where Fogg is interrogated at length by the Old Man, who has no other name. He's in charge, as he has ever been, indeed, of the Bureau for Superannuated Affairs, or the Retirement Service, if you will, which long ago promised Fogg and Oblivion — among a number of others we'll meet in a moment — the opportunity "to serve. To be something. Each of you unique. Every boy's secret dream." (p.64) Be that as it may, these dreams, as we'll see, are more like nightmares for most of the changed.

Following the probability wave which made them, or rather remade them, our heroes, such as they are, were taken to the selfsame farm where the framing conversation takes place in the present day, and trained. "It is a place in which the laws of what is real seem suspended, for just a moment. It was beautiful in the daytime, the bright primary colours of blue sky and yellow sun and green grass and white stone. At night it is more of a chiaroscuro, the play of light and shade." (p.71) There, then, under the guidance of a drill instructor and a doctor — none other than Alan Turing — the changed who hail from the UK learn, little by little, to control their abilities.

And so on a lazy sunny afternoon, the Lost Boys and Girls of Never Never Land. Oblivion, Fogg, Spit, Tank, Mr Blur and Mrs Tinkle. Some we know well, some, less well. it is only the nature of things. There are others, too, though many will die in the coming war and other wars and others still are vanished, missing, location unknown: perhaps gone to their own implausible palaces of ice or bat-filled caved, hidden volcanic peaks on jungle-covered South Sea Island, forbidding chrome-and-metal skyscrapers or remote Gothic castles. Or perhaps more prosaically a cottage in Wales. The records are sealed and obscured. (p.77)

This is the calm before the storm, of course. War is coming, and from the 1940s on, it does not seem to stop. Tirelessly, Tidhar takes us through World War II, Vietnam, the Cold War and Afghanistan. But "there was only ever one war to matter, to Oblivion, to the Red Sickle, to all of them. [...] Everything else is a shadow of that war." (p.248)

A shame, then, that so much of The Violent Century is devoted to these episodic digressions. As readers, we gain little insight from said scenes, except to see our secret service set against the superheroes of other countries, from the picture-perfect poster boys who represent the United States to the long-suffering symbols of the USSR and so on. This juxtaposition certainly serves to emphasise our impression of Great Britain's Übermenschen as shady sorts, though it adds little to the either the overall narrative or the larger arcs described by our central characters.

Eventually, we do get back to what matters — the making and breaking of Fogg and Oblivion's friendship by the machinations of the Old Man — but other difficulties persist, first and foremost Tidhar's peculiar prose, moulded in the mode of Jeff VanderMeer's in Finch. The short, sharp sentences; the minimalist exposition; everything up to and including the dialogue is odd. "Words come out haltingly. Like he's forgotten speech." (p.35) It takes a lot of getting used to; progress through the book is so forth slow, leading to problems with pacing that the story's aforementioned sidesteps only exacerbate.

The Violent Century's fractured narrative does, however, have a heart, and when the author sets his sights on this, beauty both meets and beats the beast:

Through a Latin Quarter alive with revellers; Paris, City of Love, City of Lights, transforms into a magical place with one kiss, a Sleeping Beauty awakening, awash with light and love. Night transforms it into a carnival. Paris! Through open doors the smells of cooking waft out. [...] By a bakery, men queue patiently in their suits and their hats for baguette and demi-baguette; nearby they sell jambons, olives, brie and camembert; an old woman sells flowers on the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michael and Henry buys a red rose and hands it to Klara, who laughs and tosses it in the air. (p.158-159)

The effect of the narrative's darkness and density, then, is the elevation of simple scenes like this, which are rendered with incredible resonance by dint of Tidhar's stylistic decisions. That they are purposeful doesn't make The Violent Century any easier a reading experience, but sometimes... sometimes you just have to work for your wonders.

At the last, Lavie Tidhar's latest is at once a love story, a tragedy, a spy novel, a memoir of a friendship, an exposé of the horrors of war, and a very serious study of the superhero: the origins of the concept as well as its relative relevance. The Violent Century is a difficult text, yes, but one that gives as good as it gets.

***

The Violent Century
by Lavie Tidhar

UK & US Publication: October 2013, Hodder & Stoughton

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

Recommended and Related Reading

The Best Things In Life Are Free | Lavie Tidhar's Osama

In a world without global terrorism, Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden, vigilante...

Intriguing, right? Intriguing to say the least.

Osama isn't Lavie Tidhar's latest, but it's been getting a lot of attention of late, in all the right places. The British Science Fiction Association have nominated it for Best Novel alongside the likes of Embassytown, By Light Alone and The Islanders... and one other book I clearly need to read, given the company it's keeping: Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith.

Meanwhile Osama is also up for a Red Tentacle over at Pornokitsch, where Anne has given it an incredible review.

So for the last little while I've certainly been interested to see what the big deal about Osama is for myself. Alas, the limited edition wasn't and isn't cheap, but for some reason - presumably to promote it - PS Publishing have slashed the price of the e-book right down. 

In fact, at the moment, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, Osama is available to download onto your Kindles or computers for... free.

Click on through via the links above to have your copy "whispered" to you at no extra cost!

I can't yet speak to the quality of Osama myself, but I absolutely do trust the individuals and organisations who have recommended it, so I'm excited to start in on this thing now that the cost of laying hands on a physical copy is a non-issue. You really should be too.

Book Review: The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

A masked terrorist has brought London to its knees: there are bombs inside books, and nobody knows which ones. On the day of the launch of the first expedition to Mars, by giant cannon, he outdoes himself with an audacious attack. For young poet Orphan, trapped in the screaming audience, it seems his destiny is entwined with that of the shadowy terrorist, but how? Like a steam-powered take on V for Vendetta, rich with satire and slashed through with automatons, giant lizards, pirates, airships and wild adventure, The Bookman is the first of a series.

***

Orphan loves Lucy. He loves her "the way people do in romantic novels, from the first page, beyond even the end," and when The Bookman kicks off, he's either about to propose to her, or else bed the little strumpet. One way or another, as Orphan admits to Gilgamesh, a broken old poet making ends meet on the street and father-figure to the young scallywag in lieu of his actual parents, "tonight... is the night."

But the only oaths Orphan makes that night are oaths of vengeance. Attending the grand launch of a Martian probe, the Bookman makes his mythical presence felt; his vehement objections to the interstellar expedition in question known. In absentia, he detonates a bomb which destroys the probe and incinerates, in collateral, Orphan's one true love. As soon as he regains his health and his wits, the boy's intent is set. For his campaign of anarchic terror, for his wanton disregard of human life, for taking away the very thing that made Orphan whole, the Bookman must pay.

So begins "emerging master" Lavie Tidhar's first novel, which pits one boy against a conspiracy of - would you credit it? - royal lizards which reaches to the stars and back. Now The Bookman could have been brilliant. During its first third, I fully believed it would be. Tidhar's beguiling short fiction, collected together in Hebrewpunk a couple of years ago, certainly is, but the demands of a short story versus those of a full-length novel are divergent, and Tidhar approaches The Bookman from an odd angle: as if it were a collection of loosely-related shorts rather than a single, cumulative experience, he introduces new characters (cobbled together from the annals of factual, as well as fictional, history) and new concepts (which is to say lazily repurposed steampunk tropes) in every chapter, none of which he fleshes out to any real extent.

The bigger picture is what's missing in The Bookman. Every encounter feels isolated, digressionary at best. It doesn't help that Orphan careens through the narrative like a headless chicken, chauffeured frustratingly unawares - and as we experience the text from his perspective, so too are we - from one conflict to the next by a rotating array of supporting characters. The boy's like a wind-up toy. Tidhar alludes to Orphan being but a pawn in some greater game, and that's fine, but at no point does he strive to rise above the myriad manipulations of the likes of Prime Minister Moriarty and the titular Bookman; he is so at the mercy of his every opponent that one becomes rather exhausted by of the rollercoaster of resolve rebuffed and recovery Tidhar has built for Orphan to ride along.

The Bookman is not without its strengths. Specifically, its beginning will reel you in like a bird on a wire, and on a related note, Tidhar's turn-of-phrase can be quite captivating. His stylistic intervention is, however, regrettably intermittent - prevalent particularly in the early-going and at presumably pivotal moments later in the game. For instance:

"This is the time of myths. They are woven into the present like silk strands from the past, like a wire mesh from the future, creating an interlacing pattern, a grand design, a repeated motif. Don't dismiss myth, boy. And never, ever, dismiss the Bookman."

Purplish, perhaps, but pretty all the same. Lyrical and impactful. Were there more such prose, I would heartily recommend The Bookman to you on account of its style, if not its substance, of which, sadly, there's something of a lack.

***

The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

UK Publication: January 2010, Angry Robot
US Publication: September 2010, Angry Robot

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

The Way of Things

That sound you hear? Or rather, the sound you don't; the absence, let us say, of the one-man hubbub-band you'll find here on The Speculative Scotsman most days - well. It isn't radio silence. It's the sound of me being published.

Can I hear a hell yeah? :D

Now the canny amongst you may have spotted my review of The Way of Kings already. It went up yesterday, over at Strange Horizons, an online magazine I've been reading for years. Years! The notion that one day the esteemed editors might see fit to publish a review of mine alongside criticism from the likes of Yellow Blue Tibia author Adam Roberts and fiction from (this week alone) Lavie Tidhar... well, it was an idle one at best.

But there I am, right there on the front page of Strange Horizons, and damn it all, I couldn't be happier. So it's a pleasure to break the news to those of you who've been tolerating my burbling since I kicked TSS off on new year's day, eight months ago. The latecomers, too. I couldn't - I wouldn't - have thought to submit a thing to professional forum I hold in such high regard (and I'm hardly alone in that) were it not for your support. So thank you.

Now then. Clicky here, if you will, and see what I had to say about Brandon Sanderson's designs on The Wheel of Time. You might need snacks; it's a long 'un.