Tachyon Press, 2022, 240 p, including 2 p Map, 5 p Afterword and 26 p Beyond Neom, an A to Z. Reviewed for ParSec 5.

Another downloading from Tidhar’s fertile imagination. Science Fictional ideas and references spin off this in giddy profusion. If you want your fix of the strange and wonderful, even the downright odd, get it right here. Set in the same future as the author’s Central Station (2016,) in which humanity and its adjuncts have sprawled across the Solar System, it takes its title from a city set by the Red Sea, a city which at the moment is only the dream of a Saudi prince but in this book, as Tidhar informs us in a short foreword, is old. There is also a prefatory map of the area which is not strictly necessary for understanding or enjoyment but adds to the effect. (Tidhar seems fond of such maps, they are also found in Central Station and Unholy Land.)

This imagined Neom “was built on the premise that anything can be fixed, made good, made better,” and is policed by the shurta. Not that it needs much policing. As one character’s viewpoint has it, “the only real crime in Neom was being poor. And only the poor joined the shurta.” Wars have come and gone. In the desert beyond the city lurk UXOs, Unexploded Ordnance, aka smart bombs. In the recent past Terrorartists, mass murderers, used pain and death as their paint, people as their brushes, “the experience itself became their canvas.” Such art requires witnesses. After all, “If a bomb went off in a crowded market and there was no one to broadcast and amplify the experience, did it really go off?”

In this world people are noded at birth to be part of the communication system known as the Conversation, “that virtuality of worlds that is all around, as persistent as air.” We follow various characters – human, robot and jackal – as they make their way in and around or towards the city. For herself to survive and to pay for her mother’s care Mariam took any job she could (“Neom was a city for the rich and the rich needed the poor in order to be rich,”) and we see her in several of them, firstly when she gives a flower to the robot, who subsequently keeps bumping into her at her various employments. The boy, Saleh, goes with the Green Caravanserai carrying an artefact he has salvaged from a terrorartist event wherein his family died and which he hopes to sell. The jackal, Anubis, teams up with him in El Quesir. Shurta member Nasir is attracted to Mariam but the time somehow isn’t right. On a patrol one night in the desert he and his companions Laila and Habib come across the robot digging a hole. Its activities attract the dangerous attention of UXOs, drawn in by emanations from the golden limbs it is excavating.

All come together at Mukhtar’s Bazaar of Rare and Exotic Machines where the golden parts are to be reassembled into a golden man, with Saleh contributing its missing piece, the black hole at its heart, a beacon for robotkind, the last work of terrorartist Nasu.

As a writer Tidhar is frequently playful, allusive and self-referential. Grace notes await the attentive reader. There are sly quotations of the Laws of Robotics (here regarded as being only ever a philosophical concept,) a small black monolith in a corner gives someone a headache when they look at it, mentions of the Up and Out, his own Lior Tirosh is included in a list of admired poets. The robot points out the meaning of Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew” speech in the question, “If you wrong us shall we not revenge?” saying Shylock understood violence. There is acute observation too. “Religions propagated much like viruses. They evolved, spread, died.” His characters are sketched economically but believably.

A harsh critic would complain it all ends too soon and we don’t really see much of Neom the city, but, as Tidhar’s Afterword (in which he explicitly bows to Cordwainer Smith) says, he’s always loved future histories, so there could be more to come from this source. There is, though, a 26-page A to Z of the Central Station universe to bulk things out.

Tidhar has of late become fairly prolific. Perhaps he’s made good use of lockdown. Neom shows there has been no drop-off in quality.

Pedant’s corner:- Elias’ (x 3, Elias’s,) “Nasir feared the hole will close up on them” (feared the hole would close up,) “none were ever turned away” (x 2, none was ever turned away.) “It had voice like old sand grinding” (It had a voice like,) “Mukhtar genuinely troubled”  (Mukhtar was genuinely troubled,) distill (distil.) “‘I wish you didn’t come’” (hadn’t come,) a full stop instead of a question mark at the end of a question (x 2.) “‘The trick is finding someone who would listen’” (who will listen.) “‘One of the Monks lay in the carrot patch. Their head was bashed in’” (Its head,) “‘an when I got to’” (and when I got to,) “how they’d went out to dinner together” (how they’d gone out,) “it existed in a state of relative piece” (relative peace,) no one (no-one,) “and the figure in on the pedestal” (no ‘in’ needed.) “He shined his torch around” (He shone his torch.) “‘It’s only <em>miniature</em> black hole’” (only a <em>miniature</em> black hole’,) “the nanite algae that grows” (algae that grow,) “sank in nano-goo” (sunk,) virii (viruses?) “fell into quicksand, fell into pits” (fallen into quicksand, fallen into pits,) “she put the air condition on” (the air conditioning.) In the A to Z; “often and affectionately to Polyport” (often and affectionately shortened to/known as Polyport,) “though stories told in the Outer System” (though stories are told in,) “often moving from world to another” (from one world to another,) “where there presence” (their presence,) synthetising (synthesising,) utlising (utilising.)

Head of Zeus, 2022, 445 p.

After tackling Arthurian legend in By Force Alone Tidhar turns his reworking of the many and varied Matter of Britain onto that of Robin Hood. The book’s title is a little inappropriate, though, as that gentleman is not its principal focus. To be sure we have Maid Marian, Will Scarlett, Sheriff(s) of Nottingham, Much, Alan-a-Dale and, later, Little John and a Friar Tuck, but we also have the Lady Rowena, Isaac of York and his daughter Rebecca, plus Guy of Gisbourne (all taken from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe – as Tidhar acknowledges in his afterword – but altered here) to contend with. Not to mention a riff on Frankenstein wherein a simulacrum of Jesus is animated from (authenticated) relics collected by a man called Gilbert Whitehand. And the other Hood, Little Red Riding. This is not quite the familiar tale, then. Emphasising this, the forest is the domain of the fae and Nottingham is festooned with images of The Green Man.

We start off in the time of anarchy where Stephen and Maude (not the historical Matilda, note) are vying for the crown of England and Will Scarlett takes part in a robbery of the London headquarters of the Knights Templar. This London is your typical fantasy city modelled on an imagined Dark Age, with ale-houses, cutpurses and rogues of various kinds and a casual attitude to life. How realistic this depiction is of day-to-day existence in such a place is another matter. However, “Men have murdered women with impunity since the beginning of time,” is sadly still an apposite observation.

From thereon, Knights Templar not being ones to cross, Will has to look out for his life. After his companions in the raid start to die off in inventive ways he decides to light out for Nottingham, barely surviving a multiple stabbing because his intended assassin has a soft spot for him. In this tale women are as hard-edged and ruthless as the men. Sometimes more so. But sweet and demure they are not.

We also have two characters who may be transgender – or at least cross-dressing. Alan a Dale, who plays a harp made from the bones of his sister and is seeking vengeance on the man who killed her, sometimes manifests as Alanah Dale and there is a priest called Birdie who is in touch with the fae and discovered to have breasts and female genitalia.

Rowena is far from the character found in Ivanhoe. She is a hard-nosed dealer in dwale, the drug of choice in Nottingham, and subject to as much double-dealing and betrayal as drug baronesses ought to be accustomed to.

Many of the men have returned from the Crusades and subject to the usual ex-servicemen grouses, “Nobody gives a shit about returning soldiers.” There is a constant background drip of information on events in the Holy Land and the fortunes of the various Kings of the times.

The characters tend to speak in a down to earth demotic style as of our times, which is anachronistic as far as the setting goes but this is fantasy; in that respect perhaps anything goes. There was a nice aside on the origins of dietary custom evolving from the Church’s ban on meat on Fridays. The common people soon worked out that fish was not meat and so indulged themselves, “everybody likes a loophole.” One of the Sheriffs has a side line in procuring piscicultural delicacies.

Tidhar can certainly illuminate character and spin a story but we also have here an abundance of allusion. I confess I admired the reflection of a prisoner on discovering himself to be incarcerated, “Then I awoke and found me here on the cold cell’s hide,” (a Spoonerism will always get me, one based on a Tiptree quote from Keats still more so) but the book is over-stuffed with this sort of thing. At times it seems as if no reference cannot be elaborated on. A meeting with a Jack and his friend Jill calls up a description of that male name’s connotations – some steal from giants, others go down hills, or bring frost, or light up like a lantern. Some even go around murdering people. But the page or so riffing on the Rumpelstiltskin story was surely unnecessary.

Pedant’s corner:- “off of” (just ‘off’, no ‘of’ please,) “are at each others’ throat” (throats,) “the plague comes and goes like the tides into London” (‘the’ plague. In 1145? There were earlier plagues but ‘the’ Plague came to England in 1348. Okay it’s an altered history but “Plagues come and go like the tides” would avoid this particular anachronism.) “In the Jewry a mob of good Christians attack shops” (a mob attacks.) “He think of Joan” (thinks,) ass (arse,) supressed (suppressed,) “with bones wove in their hair” (woven.) “Perhaps this bides well for the knight” (bodes well,) Raynard (elsewhere Reynard.) The rest of the men were knights and unsavoury looking civilian” (civilians.) “There’s a tapestry on the wall behind him that look like he’d” (that looks like,) “‘no matter whence it comes from’” (OK, it was in dialogue but ‘whence’ = ‘from where’, so, ‘whence it comes’.) Greensleeves (as a tune this is supposed to have been written by Henry VIII [born 1491] though it is most likely later. Another anachronism, then.) “The gate open” (opens.) “The small monk’s shoulder’s fall (shoulders,) Rebeca (x1, Rebecca,) “gristly corpses” (grisly, I would think,) “shakings his head” (shaking.) “In his time Rome had not yet even bothered to turn its attention to this shitty little island” (Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in 55 BC. Before his time, then,) dwarfs (dwarves,) “Little Boy Blues” (Little Boys Blue,) Poitier (Poitiers?) “A solider learns to sleep where he can” (soldier.)

Tachyon, 2018, 264 p, plus Mem>iv p Preface, 3 p Historical Afterword, and 2 p Afterword by Warren Ellis.

Taking as its inspiration an expedition by Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and Nahum Wilbusch into Africa in 1904 seeking out a possible homeland for the Jews, and Herzl’s own utopian novel Altneuland (Tel Aviv in Hebrew: and yes it did give its name to that city) which he set in a peaceful Jewish state in Palestine with equal rights for Arabs, Unholy Land imagines what it could have been like if both had come into being. It is also a meditation on the treacherous call of home.

Here, that homeland in Africa, on the borders of Uganda and Kenya, came to pass. It is called Palestina and viewpoint character Lior Tirosh, a writer of crime novels, was brought up there. When the novel starts, he is making the journey from his present home in Berlin, on the suggestion of his agent with the hope he might write something on the political situation there. Unlike in the similarly (though unhistorically) inspired The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, there are tensions between the Jewish settlers and the original inhabitants, paralleling the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Israel of the reader’s reality. A wall is being built to keep terrorists out. (Of course, as one character says, it serves equally well to keep Jews in.) Tirosh himself witnesses a suicide bombing of a bus.

This aspect of the novel is an Altered History where the Holocaust never happened and (in an aside) Hitler was assassinated in 1948. There are too, allusions to stories Tirosh either has written or might write which, in our universe, Tidhar has actually written – Osama and one featuring Hitler as a private detective. The sections following Tirosh are told in the third person but it soon becomes apparent that these passages are being written by a Special Investigator Bloom who also contributes first person sections to the book. To complicate things further there is a third strand, written in the second person, describing the calling back to service of a special agent, Nur Al-Hussaini, who, like Bloom, has travelled between various realities via what Bloom calls a crosshatch and she a sephirot, places where the boundaries between the worlds blur and crossover can occur. Depending on which reality you inhabit the city Bloom ruminates on can be thought of as Jerusalem, Ursalim or Yerushailam.

Of this unsteady landscape Bloom says, “people think of reality as immutable: solid and reassuring, that it is true merely because it is there.” But, “The world is the sum of what it could be, what it might have been and how it could have been.” Of his calling he says, “There are always borders, and there are always those who guard them lest they fracture.” Tirosh experiences the blurring slowly, in the end all but forgetting his connection to his world and agent in a quest to find Deborah, a niece who has gone missing from Palestina.

It is a measure of Tidhar’s skill as a writer that this all makes sense as you read it. Jewishness is obviously of salient importance to him (naturally enough, since he is an Israeli.) The place of Jews in this world is problematic at best. He puts this into Bloom’s thoughts, “That is the condition of being a Jew, I sometimes think – to always be one thing and another, to never quite fit. We are the grains of sand that irritate the oyster shell of the world.”

As well as being an intensely readable thriller if you care to look at it that way, Unholy Land pleads the case for somewhere, in one of the realities, being a place where that last sentence no longer holds.

Pedant’s corner:- “a row of cars … were queued up” (a row was queued up,) “for the people seek retaliation” (for the people to seek,) “and its fruit were skulls” (its fruit was,) “the lay of the land” (lie, it’s ‘lie of the land’,) “over an irritant embedded it in the host body” (no need for that ‘it’,) “when a different peoples had to share the same land” (omit the ‘a’,) “‘you are nought but the ephemera’” (nought = zero, the number, and is not equivalent to ‘nothing’: ‘you are naught but the ephemera’,) “body wracked with painful coughs” (racked.)

Neom is a forthcoming novel from the hand of Lavie Tidhar. It is the latest book I have received from ParSec for review.

You may have noticed from my sidebar I have only just finished reading the same author’s Unholy Land, a review of which I shall be posting here soon.

I don’t normally read books by the same author in close proximity to each other but in this case it is incumbent upon me.

Tidhar has been remarkably prolific of late. I note six of his recent books (seven including this) I have yet to catch up with. One is on my tbr pile but will be waiting a while now.

Head of Zeus, 2020, 510 p.

Why would an Israeli author better known for exploring Middle-Eastern or Jewish themes and concerns and the byways of Altered History turn his attention to the (so-called) matter of Britain? For that is what Tidhar has done in By Force Alone, a retelling of the story of King Arthur from a novel angle – what would it really have been like to contest for kingship in a bygone age, to gain, hold and wield power by force alone? I suppose the tale is well enough known, though, and, as Tidhar’s Afterword shows, it has always been fair game for reploughing and reinterpreting.

Here we have all the familiar names of Camelot and the knights of the Round Table, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Morgause, Galahad, Mordred etc, but seen in a downcast light. Forget any notion of parfit, gentil knyghts (especially as that was a phrase which Chaucer no doubt devised cunningly.) The characters here are earthy, human, venal, demotic in speech, prone to all the vices known to man and few of the virtues, their surroundings mostly squalid, their motivations base.

By Force Alone is told in an urgent present tense, its background is England before it was England, in the Dark Age aftermath of the Roman withdrawal. A “wild country, a host of warring tribes who scrabble for scraps in the ruin of civilisation,” with a new religion, Christianity, on the ascendant. Most of the characters are Brythonic Celts but offstage sundry Angles, Saxons and Jutes are making inroads into the territory of southern Britain, mainly by peaceful settlement but bringing their harsh, guttural Anglisc tongue with them.

Arthur is engendered in the usual way, Uther Pendragon disguising himself with Merlin’s help to resemble the lady Igraine’s husband and so impregnate her, but the resulting child is whipped off by Merlin to a foster home in Londinium, where, growing up, he learns the dark arts of street fighting and survival. Joseph of Arimathea features as the trainer of Lancelot in martial arts and his inductor into membership of the Inner Circle of the Venerated Secret Brotherhood of the Seekers of the Grail. Joseph’s conviction that the Grail was to be found in Britain brings Lancelot somewhat reluctantly to its shores.

In what in retrospect is an odd interpolation Tidhar brings in elements of SF with the appearance of a falling star – which can be read as a descending spaceship or, more prosaically, Halley’s Comet, but its later reascent militates against that – and the growing up round its landing/crash site of the Zone, where strange things happen, odd creatures appear, food rots instantly or stays unaccountably preserved and where those who frequent it tell newcomers, “Don’t touch anything.” Merlin spends his time thinking about this apparition and Lancelot conceives it as the location of the grail. In this context that streak of light in the sky might be considered as an avatar of the Star of Bethlehem.

We all know how things will end but finding out what happens is not the driving force for the reader to continue. This tale of Arthur may be, as the text has it, “just a sad, simple tale of violence and greed,” but it is the telling of it that matters, the slants it takes – Guinevere as a sort of bandit, a leader of Amazons up for a scrap as much as anyone else in this, Arthur as almost feckless – and uncaring that he is cuckolded by Lancelot – Galahad an administrator supreme.

The text is replete with allusion and quotation, including Kurt Vonnegut’s recognition of the inevitability and ubiquity of death (three words not unfamiliar to readers of this blog) and even a riff on the “choose” rant from Trainspotting, not to mention a scene depicting musings on an Antikythera mechanism. Some readers may find this sort of thing distracting but others that it adds to the flavour, a reminder that this is a commentary on its sources as well as a skewed recapitulation. Repetition too is an ingredient, especially of the three words of the title which describe the way in which Kings in these circumstances win and keep their crowns.

Merlin’s thoughts perhaps at times speak to Brexit, “A shared identity, Merlin thinks. A story to unify all these warring tales, so that Britons now and in centuries to come could tell each other that they share a thing. That they are one. And to be one, as Arthur understands implicitly, you must be defined against an other,” and his reflection that “this island’s just a piece of Europe with the landbridge submerged,” and, “It doesn’t really matter, this matter of Britain. Just another way to pass the time.” Later Sir Pellinore muses, “And who’s to say whose land this is, really? Land’s just land.” (Which may – or may not – be a reflection by Tidhar on his Israeli background.)

It is the characters that make By Force Alone. The humans feel like flesh and blood people. The wizard (who doesn’t himself believe in magic) or the fae folk are all as they are in fantasy tales, instruments of darkness to tell us truths, to betray their victims in deepest consequence. (That allusiveness can be catching.) Warnings, all.

The novel is a vigorous, vibrant retelling of “the glorious age of Camelot” rendered more powerful by focusing on the individuals rather than the appurtenances or overall architecture of the tale. In a curious way this demystification of the myth almost makes it more memorable.

Pedant’s corner:- “fifteen hundred heads of cattle” (usually ‘head of cattle’,) “moat pleasantly” twice within the space of a line, and “most pleasant” another line later, Nennius’ (Nennius’s – all of the names here which end with the letter ‘s’ are given possessives with s’ rather than s’s,) “ he lays back, sated” (lies back,) mithraeums (the Latin plural would be mithraea,) ass (in a narrative like this, set where it is, that just seems so wrong. The correct word is arse,) Morgana (is used once for Morgan, but it was Merlin thinking it and will have been an allusion,) “a money changers’” (a money changer’s.) “And he resents her that” (for that?) “…. Kay says Shrugs” (should have a full stop after ‘says’,) “off of” (off, just ‘off’s no ‘of’ required,) fit (fitted.) “It gauges out eyes” (gouges out, surely/) “he flies across a darkening skies” (omit ‘a’ or have a singular sky,) “‘The Angles and the Saxons’ growing influence’” should have apostrophe for Angles as well as Saxons.) “Previous stones. Coin” (Precious stones, I think.) “They are a tribal peoples” (either, ‘They are a tribal people,’ or ‘They are tribal peoples,’ the latter preferably, given that ‘they’.) The army of mutatio scatter” (scatters.) “Lancelot expands little energy” (expends.) “Lancelot is shook” (shaken.) “‘That’s none really of your business’” (has odd syntax – ‘that’s really none of your business’ is more usual,) “The trees don’t sway unless the king commands” (this was in Orkney, traditionally thought to have no trees. When I was there I saw none worth the name,) parlay (parley,) sat (sitting, or, seated,) the town of Wormwood has a sign saying Pop 971 853 (so populated? In the Dark Ages?) epicentre (centre,) “and the water turn to dull reflection” (turns,) “nought but an illusion” (naught.) “A veritable rain of arrows flies down from the enemy’s archers then and hit him” (‘rain … flies down’, therefore should be followed by ‘hits him’,) snuck (sneaked.) In the Afterword; Tidhar says Britain was unified once more by the end of the Wars of the Roses. (It wasn’t. England – with Wales – might have been; but Scotland was politically separate till much later,) ditto “the Norman conquest of Britain” (the Normans conquered only England – until within 200 years the Plantagenet Edward I had also subdued Wales – though their influence spread into Scotland with dynastic marriages and the like.)

The remainder of my larger SF paperbacks. These are on the lower shelves of the old music cupboard. Looking at these photos two of the books seem to have wriggled away from alphabetical order. (I’ve fixed that now.)

Stanisław Lem, Ken Macleod, Cixin Liu, Graham Dunstan Martin, Ian McDonald:-

China Miéville, a Tim Powers, Christopher Priest:-

Alastair Reynolds, Robert Silverberg, Norman Spinrad:-

Lavie Tidhar, Kurt Vonnegut, Gene Wolfe, Ian Watson, Roger Zelazny, (well half of one is):-

Large SF paperbacks this week for Judith’s meme at Reader in the Wilderness.

I keep these in an old music cupboard I inherited from my great-uncle. I’ve got so many of these they have to be double-parked, so you can’t actually see the first and third shelves shown here when the cupboard is opened. Stacking some on their sides gives me an extra 4 cm of space. Click on the photos to enlarge the pictures.

These include a J G Ballard, Iain M Banks, Chris Beckett, Eric Brown, Ursula Le Guin and Ian McDonald:-

Annoyingly, even these large paperbacks do not all come in one size. The upright ones to the right here are smaller than the previous books. More McDonald, Tim Powers, Kim Stanley Robertson, Adam Roberts, Hannu Rajaniemi, a lesser Robert Silverberg, Kurt Vonnegut:-

More Ballard, Banks, Beckett and Brown. Lavie Tidhar, Neil Williamson and another step down in size:-

John Crowley, M John Harrison, Dave Hutchinson, Stanisław Lem:-

Hodder, 2014, 347 p.

This is at once an unusual but also common tale, innovative in style but not so much in plot. (Then again, there are only supposed to be seven of those.) The narrative is conducted in large part via short, verbless sentences, sometimes only one or two words long, at times almost reading like a description of a film playing out before the reader’s eyes, telling us what we would be seeing on the screen. Now and then an authorial voice slides in, adopting the first person plural, as if the reader is a cinema audience relating the story to itself. The narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time from 1926 to the present day, allowing Tidhar’s characters to be active at various points in the unfolding of the violent mid- to late twentieth century, even the early twenty-first. Scene changes are akin to cinematic dissolves, though each is “captioned” with its time and place in its chapter heading. Throughout, direct speech is not set within quotation marks – which does lead to the occasional phrase requiring a reread.

The plot begins (and periodically unwinds) like an echo of le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Henry Fogg called in by his old oppo, Oblivion, to meet the Old Man, boss at his former employer, The Bureau for Superannuated Affairs, to be questioned about his past evasions.

The background is that sometime in 1932 Dr Joachim Vomacht pushed the button on his machine and unleashed a quantum wave. As a Dr Turing (Alan, we assume) tells the British altered, recruited to a training area in Devon, “To observe an event is to change it. On the quantum level. When Vomacht pressed the button, everything changed. The Vomacht wave was a probability wave. The wave made genetic changes at a subatomic level… For most the change was undetectable ….. But perhaps a few hundred became … you.” The changed, dubbed Übermenschen, have superpowers and are named appropriately. Fogg conjures fog out of the air or any smoke available, Oblivion destroys things, Spit conjures up and projects bullets from her mouth, Mr Blur … blurs, Tank is built like one, Mrs Tinkle can make time retrace itself. Corresponding Übermenschen exist in other countries. The US has Tigerman, the Green Gunman and Whirlwind; the Soviets, the Red Sickle and Rusalka; Germany, Schneesturm and Der Wolfsmann.

The crux of the plot is Sommertag, Vomacht’s daughter Klara, who can pass through doors into a perfect summer’s day, an attribute Fogg finds irresistible despite her being an enemy citizen when they meet. His defence is that, “‘It,’” (the Vomacht wave,) “‘fused into her somehow. It kept her pure.’”

Tidhar appears to have gone to great lengths to make sure that history in this story is unchanged from what the reader knows happened – apart from the appearance of rocket men on the Russian Front (unless this is a WW2 manifestation of which I had not previously heard, a singular unlikelihood) and the Potsdam Conference being held one year later than it was, still with Churchill attending rather than Attlee as it would have been in 1946 (and as it was for the latter part in 1945) – the rise of the Nazis, World War 2, the Cold War, Vietnam, September 11^th all take place here as they did in our time. It is as if the comic books were true and those superheroes were present to take part in events but without affecting anything substantial, participants but not decisive.

One scene in Afghanistan involves Sheik Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden calling the changed ‘abominations’ while the Americans (who regard him as, “The rich spoiled son of a rich and powerful family…. Playing soldiers in the desert,”) are trying to use him against the Soviets – and thereby sow the seeds for the Twin Towers whirlwind. Of that 11^th September our (plural) narrator tells us, “That day we look up to the sky and see the death of heroes.”

A Russian says, “We should have learned from your history. The British. Three wars and you lost every one. You can’t win a war here. You couldn’t, we can’t, and whoever comes after us is going to lose too. This land hates invaders,” and warns, “This bin Laden. This Saudi. Kill him now. Kill him when you have the chance, or he will turn on you.” Easy to say in a book published over ten years after an event but many did give out warnings at the time.

The Violent Century is admirably plotted and well paced, with an atmosphere of menace throughout, I’m puzzled as to why this wasn’t on any award shortlist for its year.

Pedant’s corner:- Antennas (antennae.) “Facing the bar counter are a row of barstools.” (Facing the bar counter is a row of barstools,) barkeep (not a British usage. We say ‘barman’ or maybe ‘landlord’,) “air separating into nitrogen and hydrogen” (that’s a neat trick, there’s very little hydrogen in air, only what is the relatively low proportion of air comprised of water vapour.) “None of us choose what we become” (None of us chooses,) King George IV (George VI, as he was correctly designated later,) “the moans reach a crescendo” (a climax perhaps; a crescendo is a build-up, not a culmination,) eldrich (eldritch,.) “None of them have been properly introduced yet” (None of them has been properly introduced.) “None of them are.” (None of them is,) Roberts’ (Roberts’s,) “none come” (none comes,) “do this hundreds of time” (of times.) “Millions more watched the ceremony around the world in a special broadcast by the BBC.” (Millions around the world watched the Coronation ? In 1953? Before communication satellites? I don’t think so.) “The only thing in motion are his eyes” (‘thing’ is singular so cannot have a plural verb form; ‘the only things in motion are his eyes,) Johnny Rivers’ (Rivers’s,) a missing question mark after “What do I know”, another question mark ought to replace a comma later on, “we’re not in the army here, Bob, Bob says, Yeah, yeah,” (a full stop instead of a comma after the first ‘Bob’) “Incoming!” (British troops do not shout this. They yell, ‘Take cover!) “Goddamned” (nor do British folk say this.)

Tachyon, 2016, 277 p.

Central Station is a giant spaceport situated between Arab Jaffa and Jewish Tel Aviv. The incidents of the book occur under its shadow but the station itself is curiously absent from the narrative, we do not see inside it as such, it is merely a backdrop.

The book is filled with a multitude of Science-Fictional concepts, a kind of mind-vampire known as strigoi; robots yearning to be human; characters with augmentation; a third essential component of a human along with sperm and egg, the node seed, enabling people always to be in connection; a family, the Chongs, with memories passed on from generation to generation. The text is also sprinkled with references to previous works or authors of SF. There is an Elronite Centre for the Advancement of Humankind, mentions of Louis Wu, Jubjub birds, sandworms, the Up and Out, Mother Hitton, Shambleau, Glimmung, all of which will be decoded easily by aficionados. And the cover is not without its button-pushing charms.

The setting is a welcome antidote to the mainly US-centred concerns of the genre up to recent times and Tidhar deserves appreciation for championing SF from outwith the usual sources.

However, there is something disjointed about the book as a whole, no ongoing narrative drive, as there is little by way of plot. This is perhaps due to the book’s prior incarnation as a set of stories sharing the same milieu (and characters,) published in different outlets between 2011 and 2013 – with two original to these pages. This is not an objection that could be levelled at the same author’s Bookman Histories nor the other novels of his I have read, Osama and A Man Lies Dreaming, but it is a hindrance to full engagement with the text. There is, perhaps, just too much going on, not enough exploration or development of the individual ideas to give a completely satisfying whole.

He is an author to look for though.

Pedant’s corner:- On the map at the beginning; chryogenic (cryogenic.) Otherwise; Mama Jones’ (Mama Jones’s,) a missing full stop at the end of a piece of direct speech, automatons (strictly, automata,) Venusian Fly Trap (this being SF it might be Venusian but the earth-bound version is a Venus fly trap.) “She had hid” (she had hidden, plus a later instance of “had hid”,) sunk (sank,) a greengrocers’ (a greengrocer’s,) moyel (I’ve only seen this before as moyle,) “could convert food and drink into energy” (um; no. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only transformed from one kind into another. Food and drink already contain [chemical] energy, bodies convert that to heat, movement, electricity etc as required,) lacrimal apparatus (lachrymal,) “a simulacra” (one of these is a simulacrum, several instances,) a full stop where a question mark was required, “reversed engineered” (reverse engineered,) mazal tov (several instances yet later is in the more familiar form “mazel tov”.)

Fifteen novels make it onto this year’s list of the best I’ve read in the calendar year. In order of reading they were:-

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
The Stornoway Way by Kevin MacNeil
The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone
The Untouchable by John Banville
Swastika Night by Katherine Burdekin writing as Murray Constantine
Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Imagined Corners by Willa Muir
This is Memorial Device by David Keenan
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer
Psychoraag by Suhayl Saadi

That’s six by women and nine by men. Six were SF or Fantasy, counting in The Underground Railroad, (seven if the Michael Chabon is included,) seven were by Scottish authors.