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A review by oleksandr
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
3.0
This is a (post-)cyberpunk SF novel without a clear plotline, but with chapters (each from a new perspective), linked in a time-chain. The book was nominated for Literary and Arthur C. Clarke Awards and won John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
There is a space port in Tel-Aviv, called the Central Station. A lot of humans, robot and gods live there, both in the real world and a virtuality. The story starts with a strange boy, who by his will power / magic / whatever changes the reality around, e.g. “A thin, glittering membrane, like a soap bubble, appeared between his fingers, the boy secreting power and manipulating atoms to form this thing, this protective snow globe, capturing within it the single drop of rain. It hovered between his fingers, perfect and timeless.”
He is waiting there every Friday with his caretaker, Mama Jones, for his father, for he has to return before Shabbat. He continues to wait even despite the fact that he knows that he is vat-grown, lab-born. And this time he is successful, for a man comes from the space. Enter Boris Chong, a man with a Martian symbiont/parasite on his head that share his emotion, one from a big family, whose progenitor made them remember all memories of their ancestors, not only the important ones, but grocery lists… as story goes by (it is hard to say that it is progresses) we see more and more glimpses of this universe: robots, which fought in a long forgotten conflict and are now begging on the streets for spare parts; data vampires; people, who work is virtual games for a living; god-makers; collectors of garbage; messiahs.
There are some allusions to a lot of other SF works, from nine billion names of god to [b:Dune|39776179|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523123959l/39776179._SY75_.jpg|3634639], to [b:A Princess of Mars|40395|A Princess of Mars (Barsoom, #1)|Edgar Rice Burroughs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332272118l/40395._SY75_.jpg|1129624] to [b:The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|827|The Diamond Age Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|Neal Stephenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388180931l/827._SY75_.jpg|2181158] and to works of the author himself, including published after this book. The mix is interesting, it is, as others noted, somehow similar to [b:The Quantum Thief|7562764|The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur, #1)|Hannu Rajaniemi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327950631l/7562764._SY75_.jpg|9886333], which I ranked highly. What made for me this book worse than the novel by [a:Hannu Rajaniemi|2768002|Hannu Rajaniemi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300203018p2/2768002.jpg] is that there is no story, just gems and pebbles, thrown across the pages.
There is a space port in Tel-Aviv, called the Central Station. A lot of humans, robot and gods live there, both in the real world and a virtuality. The story starts with a strange boy, who by his will power / magic / whatever changes the reality around, e.g. “A thin, glittering membrane, like a soap bubble, appeared between his fingers, the boy secreting power and manipulating atoms to form this thing, this protective snow globe, capturing within it the single drop of rain. It hovered between his fingers, perfect and timeless.”
He is waiting there every Friday with his caretaker, Mama Jones, for his father, for he has to return before Shabbat. He continues to wait even despite the fact that he knows that he is vat-grown, lab-born. And this time he is successful, for a man comes from the space. Enter Boris Chong, a man with a Martian symbiont/parasite on his head that share his emotion, one from a big family, whose progenitor made them remember all memories of their ancestors, not only the important ones, but grocery lists… as story goes by (it is hard to say that it is progresses) we see more and more glimpses of this universe: robots, which fought in a long forgotten conflict and are now begging on the streets for spare parts; data vampires; people, who work is virtual games for a living; god-makers; collectors of garbage; messiahs.
There are some allusions to a lot of other SF works, from nine billion names of god to [b:Dune|39776179|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523123959l/39776179._SY75_.jpg|3634639], to [b:A Princess of Mars|40395|A Princess of Mars (Barsoom, #1)|Edgar Rice Burroughs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332272118l/40395._SY75_.jpg|1129624] to [b:The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|827|The Diamond Age Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|Neal Stephenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388180931l/827._SY75_.jpg|2181158] and to works of the author himself, including published after this book. The mix is interesting, it is, as others noted, somehow similar to [b:The Quantum Thief|7562764|The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur, #1)|Hannu Rajaniemi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327950631l/7562764._SY75_.jpg|9886333], which I ranked highly. What made for me this book worse than the novel by [a:Hannu Rajaniemi|2768002|Hannu Rajaniemi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300203018p2/2768002.jpg] is that there is no story, just gems and pebbles, thrown across the pages.