We’re very happy to report that Lavie Tidhar‘s CENTRAL STATION has been nominated for a 2020 Xiyung Award for Best Translated Fiction! The novel — which has won and been nominated for a whole host of other awards, including the Campbell Award — was translated by Chen Yang, and is published in China as 中央星站, by 中信出版集团 (Citic), here’s the synopsis…
基因孩子、节点人类、增强元人类、数据吸血鬼、机械改造人、弃物之王、造神艺术家…
特拉维夫、中央星站、耶路撒冷、汤圆城、月球港、波吕港…
地球、火星、美茹河星、谷神星、土卫六、初始太空、混沌宇宙…
在不太遥远的未来，一场世界范围内的大离散过后，二十五万 人滞留中央星站。
城市破败，科技失控，生命廉价，数据泛滥，地球沦为宇宙中的垃圾场。
在遭受战争、离散、数据和科技入侵、“人”的定义饱受质疑。
生活在这里的各色“人类”继续着他们的进化…
CENTRAL STATION is published in English by Tachyon Publications. Here’s the English-language synopsis…
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. 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.
Tachyon also publishes Lavie’s acclaimed UNHOLY LAND and THE VIOLENT CENTURY.
Here’s is just a small selection taken from the aforementioned critical acclaim that CENTRAL STATION has received since it was released…
‘CENTRAL STATION is full of the worries and aspirations of a new generation of science fiction people. This is not a simple science fiction novel, but a projection of a multi-ethnic coexistence world, a true fable for the present and the future.’ — Wu Yan
‘Roles and characters are evidenced, stories are linked to stories, and through a community perspective that connects to each other, we are like a shuttle in the central station of Tel Aviv to get a glimpse of a glorious, chaotic future. It is the perfect combination of literature and imagination.’ — Hao Jingfang (Hugo Award-winning author)
‘Lavie Tidhar used CENTRAL STATION to reshape a wild, dreamy and homesick future of Tel Aviv, and also reshaped our understanding and expectation of science fiction.’ — Chen Qiufan
‘A dazzling tale of complicated politics and even more complicated souls. Beautiful.’ — Ken Liu
‘Magnificently blends literary and speculative elements in this streetwise mosaic novel set under the towering titular spaceport… Tidhar gleefully mixes classic SF concepts with prose styles and concepts that recall the best of world literature. The byways of Central Station ring with dusty life, like the bruising, bustling Cairo streets depicted by Naguib Mahfouz. Characters wrestle with problems of identity forged under systems of oppression, much as displaced Easterners and Westerners do in the novels of Orhan Pamuk. And yet this is unmistakably SF. Readers of all persuasions will be entranced.’ — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
‘The stories include some of Tidhar’s most beautiful prose, and his future Tel Aviv is among the most evocative settings in recent SF… Somehow, CENTRAL STATION combines a cultural sensibility too long invisible in SF with a sensibility which is nothing but classic SF, and the result is a rather elegant suite of tales.’ — Locus
‘A fascinating future glimpsed through the lens of a tight-knit community. Tidhar changes genres with every outing, but his astounding talents guarantee something new and compelling no matter the story he tells.’ — Library Journal (starred review)
‘It is just this side of a masterpiece — short, restrained, lush — and the truest joy of it is in the way Tidhar scatters brilliant ideas like pennies on the sidewalk.’ — NPR
‘Tidhar’s prose draws the reader in, bringing this world to life with ease… characters are never sacrificed in favour of the technology; in fact, the two of them combine seamlessly to create a unique vision, one that will leave the reader thinking long after the final page. Not only intelligent, it’s emotional too, telling of loves lost and those only just begun, of those wishing to escape their past and those hoping to bring it back… Tidhar is reminiscent of an early William Gibson, not just in sharing that short and punchy style, but in his ability to create a world where the speculation is believable enough to fit seamlessly into the narrative; somehow, despite being set centuries into the future, it feels just around the corner… cement[s] Lavie Tidhar as one of science fiction’s great voices, an author who creates scenarios and characters that feel destined to become classics, ones that readers will be happy to revisit time and time again. It’s a compelling collection that mixes the epic and the intimate, one that succeeds at being profound, incredibly moving and, quite simply, stunning.’ (10/10) — Starburst
‘CENTRAL STATION is without question the best assemblage of short stories I’ve read in recent memory. Sublimely sensual, emotionally moreish, and composed with crystalline clarity irrespective of its incredible complexity.’ — Tor.com
Lavie’s latest novel, BY FORCE ALONE, was published recently by Head of Zeus in the UK, and is due to be published by Tor Books in August 2020 (North America).
