NEOM, the second novel in Lavie Tidhar‘s Central Station series, is now available in Russia! Published by Fanzon/Эксмо as Неом, it was translated by Полити Мажуноной. As you can see, the publisher has used the Takeshi Oga artwork, first used for the Japanese edition of the novel. Here’s the synopsis…
Финалист премий «Локус», «Дракон» и Сэйун!
Лучшая книга по версии Gizmodo, Foreword Reviews, Antick Musings и The Speculative Shelf!
Город под названием Неом — это хаотичный мегаполис и техноутопия на берегу Красного моря, последняя остановка перед Центральной Станцией — перевалочным пунктом между Землей и космическими колониями.
В пустыне мальчик-сирота по имени Салех присоединяется к торговому каравану, надеясь заработать возможность покинуть планету. Но среди песков скрываются механические артефакты: некоторые загадочны, другие опасны и не все они разумны. А недавно ироничный безымянный робот откопал одну из главных тайн региона — останки Золотого человека.
Тем временем в Неом прибывает Насу — художница-террорист, потерявшая память и не завершившая свою последнюю миссию.
И, возможно, одна-единственная машина — с розой в руке и утраченной любовью в сердце — способна изменить судьбу целого города.
Fanzon/Эксмо also publishes CENTRAL STATION in Russia — Центральная станция.
CENTRAL STATION and NEOM are published by Tachyon Publications in the UK and North America. Here’s the English-language synopsis for NEOM…
Today, Neom is a utopian dream—a megacity of the future yet to be built in the Saudi desert. In this deeply imaginative novel from the award-winning universe of Central Station, far-future Neom is already old. Sentient machines roam the desert searching for purpose, works of art can be more deadly than weapons, and the spark of a long-overdue revolution is in the wind. Only the rekindling of an impossible love affair may slow the inevitable sands of time.
The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. It is a tech wonderland for the rich and beautiful, an urban sprawl along the Red Sea, and a port of call between Earth and the stars.
In the desert, young orphan Elias has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world. But the desert is full of mechanical artefacts, some unexplained and some unexploded. Recently, a wry, unnamed robot has unearthed one of the region’s biggest mysteries: the vestiges of a golden man.
In Neom, childhood affection is rekindling between loyal shurta-officer Nasir and hardworking flower-seller Mariam. But Nasu, a deadly terrorartist, has come to the city with missing memories and unfinished business. Just one robot can change a city’s destiny with a single rose—especially when that robot is in search of lost love.
Lavie Tidhar’s (Unholy Land, The Escapement) newest lushly immersive novel, Neom, which includes a guide to the Central Station universe, is at turns gritty, comedic, transportive, and fascinatingly plausible.
Here are just a few of the many great reviews NEOM has received…
‘World Fantasy Award winner Tidhar takes readers back to the fascinating far-future world of 2016’s CENTRAL STATION in this gentle narrative about self-fulfillment and one robot’s quest to reunite with a lost love… Tidhar offers a heartfelt exploration of artificially intelligent beings’ struggles to find existential meaning while being restrained by both coding and form. Fans of literary sci-fi are sure to be enchanted by the imaginative worldbuilding and tenderly wrought characters.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘Tidhar’s narrative takes on a gentle, ruminative air, and while that helps establish the atmosphere of a convincing, lived-in city, veteran SF readers will also find plenty of playful and affectionate Easter eggs… Neom easily joins the list of SF cities we’d like to visit.’ — Locus
‘This is Tidhar at his best: the crazily proliferating imagination, the textures, the ideas, the dazzling storytelling. A brilliant portrait of community and its possibilities.’ — Adam Roberts, author of Purgatory Mount
‘This was superb and I’m in awe of Tidhar’s vision. He’s conjured up a futuristic city that feels simultaneously ultramodern and also run down. The rich histories of the region and its cultures are seamlessly interwoven into the fabric of this fully-realized world.’ — The Speculative Shelf
‘Always expect the unexpected with Lavie Tidhar, and this welcome return to the sprawling space-operatic world of CENTRAL STATION delivers oodles of poetry, action, memorable characters, wonderfully bizarre landscapes and wild imagination. No two books by Tidhar are ever the same, but each is a revelation.’ — Maxim Jakubowski, author of The Piper’s Dance
‘NEOM is a real place. A completely batshit crazy place. Nonetheless, Lavie Tidhar, standing on the shoulders of Vance, Smith, and Ballard and others, imagines stories set in that place, a city in a wasteland near the Gulf of Suez, in a future filled with robots and AI and terrorartists and young boys and talking jackals and a wonderful, terrible solar system packed with life.’ — Jonathan Strahan
‘If you are not familiar with the work of the award-winning Lavie Tidhar, this is a great place to start. Before picking up NEOM, I had not read his CENTRAL STATION, which makes use of the same extensive future history. Hence, I must warn you: immediately upon finishing Neom, you may find yourself smitten with the need to plunge into the idea-dense milieu of Central Station. Here’s hoping Tidhar will treat us to more visits to absolutely anywhere in his astounding future, whether that’s on or off our home planet.’ — Analog (July/August 2023)
‘NEOM is a thoughtful, beautifully written story about what we have, what we want, how we achieve our desires, and what, and whom, we are willing to risk for our own benefit.’ — Los Angeles Public Library