What do you think?
Rate this book
275 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 2016
A group of disgruntled house appliances watched the sermon in the virtuality — coffee makers, cooling units, a couple of toilets — appliances, more than anyone else, needed the robots’ guidance, yet they were often willful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both with their owners and with themselves.I think my favorite creation was Carmel, the data vampire, inflicted with the Nosferatu Virus, driven to suck data from the necks of humans who have the ubiquitous data node. Like the Shambleau of old, she is feared and hunted down by humans, but the digital Others have a particular role in mind for her.
"There’s no afterlife but the one we build ourselves.”Central Station is one of the most breathtakingly, bewilderingly, mindbendingly imaginative stories I've read in some time. In terms of sheer breadth and volume of ideas, it reminds me of Hannu Rajaniemi, but Tidhar's style is far more lyrical and dreamlike. The story takes place in in a future Tel Aviv, now the site of Central Station. Adaptoplant neighborhoods blossom and twist around each other. Robotniks, the lost souls of forgotten wars, wander the streets and beg for spare parts. These soldiers, once resurrected to fight again and again as cyborgs, were shunted aside and now survive by selling the Crucifixation drug that once gave them a euphoric sense of faith in their cause. Babies created with gene-ripped Armani-knockoff blue eyes send a few prayers to St Cohen of the Others. Data vampires prey on the unwary, stripping them of exomemory. And surrounding it all is the ubiquitous Conversation, the universal talk of humans and robotniks and aliens and the almost omnipotent artificial intelligences of the Others, all connected through a web of virtual reality so dense that it permeates the real.
"Life was half-completed plots abandoned, heroes dying halfway along their quests, loves requited and un-, some fading inexplicably, some burning short and bright."
"There comes a time in a man’s life when he realises stories are lies. Things do not end neatly. The enforced narratives a human impinges on the chaotic mess that is life become empty labels, like the dried husks of corn such as are thrown down in the summer months from the adaptoplant dwellings, to litter the streets below."
“Consensus reality is like a cloth... It is made of many individual strands, each of which is a reality upon itself, a self-encoded world. We each have our own reality, a world made by our senses and our minds. The tapestry of consensus reality is therefore a group effort. It requires enough of us to agree on what reality is. To determine the shape of the tapestry, if you will.”If you're looking for a unique speculative fiction story that rejects straightforward character-driven narrative, Central Station is definitely worth a look. It's almost hallucinogenic, a lyrical poem to a far future, with substance hidden in the shadows.
Central Station is a "fix-up" novel of previously published short stories by Lavie Tidhar — stories which were always intended to be drawn together into a whole novel. It hints at huge changes and shifts for humanity while intimately focusing on the individuals; it's about a transformed human experience in the solar system, but stays in a single city. And it harks back to the feel of a golden age of SF with a distinctly retro vibe that is rich and imaginative. It manages to evoke the past and the future simultaneously, making me feel a sense of longing and familiarity with a history of pulp SF I've not even read! (And just look at that cover art from Tachyon — it's perfect!)
This is the first work I've read by Lavie Tidhar, and I can't wait to read more. I was so happy to come to Central Station without any expectations, encouraged by only a few brief anticipatory remarks from others. I not only thoroughly enjoyed Central Station, I also enjoyed going in blind and letting its atmosphere sink in.
So what is Central Station about? It's a series of stories about the people who live in Tel Aviv, near the space port Central Station. There are the street vendors, the artist birthing and killing a god while the locals gather to watch, a data vampire who came down the gravity well and set up house with a book collector, an Oracle who speaks to the Others, and and not-entirely-human children from the birthing centers... They're all here for a reason — gathered, returned, those who never left — in the shadow of Central Station, where people come and go from the stars.
"I don't want to go to the stars,' Vlad said. 'Going away seldom changes who we are."
(How's that for a quote that condenses the oft-repeated story of humans exploring the stars and themselves?!)
These stories can stand on their own, but meld together into an overall bigger narrative that works seamlessly. The chapters were originally published as short stories from 2011 to 2015 (and then "substantively" edited to combine them) and then a few chapters are original to final work.
In each chapter you experience a part of the story from a different character's viewpoint. Every person is a secondary character in someone else's story. I love this structure! It gave me chills and reminded me of reading Charles de Lint or Angelica Gorodischer for the first time. I mean, yes, it's totally different from works by those authors, but I just had the sense I was reading something different and impressive. The way the story was told pulled me in just as much as the story and characters itself.
Frankly, I do think it's strange that the publisher's description only names Boris, when other characters and women like Miriam ("Mama Jones") and Carmel (the data vampire) are just as important as him. And don't forget the robo-priest, R. Brother Patch-It, or the alte-zachen man! There's a plethora of fantastic types of people and places and things in Central Station. The world was solid; its depth was established with only brief mentions and small infodumps when necessary. Sometimes hints are better than long treatises, because half the fun is for the reader to fill in the blanks in their own mind and to use that imagination muscle to envision the bustling, colorful Tel Aviv transformed in the future with a space port looming above!
The lushness, the alien-ness, but organic feel of the setting of Tel Aviv, with the gamespace and the Conversation flickering in and around, reminded me of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. The idea that this is on Earth but felt actually alien to me was fantastic and refreshing: this is a futuristic imagining of a part of the world that is already unknown to me, but remained human and real.
The truth is I loved reading this book so much but it's hard to explain why, because it was so personal. It triggered some wonderful memories of other books and reading experiences and this intangible thing I seem to be pursuing in my own personal reading journey. Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a book while reading it for the first time? Because that's what it felt like. I also appreciated the subtle nature of the story itself: there may not be a decisive-enough conclusion to the tale for some readers, but I didn't need one. There are hints and implications and I saw where the story could go... it was the journey itself and the characters that I devoured.
(Originally published on my blog, www.koenix.org)
A group of disgruntled house appliances watched the sermon in the virtuality - coffee makers, cooling units, a couple of toilets - appliances, more than anyone else, needed the robots' guidance, yet they were often wilful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both with their owners and themselves.The easiest way to describe it would be "gorgeous sci-fi fever dream." I have a long-standing love for weird, trippy books and for slice of life, so I could hardly have stumbled upon a more perfect match for my tastes. And before I scare anyone off: it's strange, yes, but never confusing.