Mars Machines – the Complete Series

Throw your mind back to February 6th, 2020, and everything was going great. I was at Forbidden Planet to launch issue #1 of Adler, with artist Paul McCaffrey, and it was a lot of fun. There was some talk of this virus but I’m not sure anyone was taking it seriously. We went to the pub after and I got to chat to writer Elizabeth Hand about a problem I was having – finding a voice actor for a couple of animation projects I was working on with my friend Nir Yaniv. Liz, as it turned out, had a friend who might be willing to help. I sent over the Loontown demo we had, all 30 seconds of it, and voila – the great Anne Wittman was on board, joining Russell Wilcox and Digger Mesch in our mad quest for a balloon noir film and an animated series about a toaster and a coffee pot on Mars. Russell I’ve known for some twenty years, so I browbeat him into it. Digger joined us from LA – his amazing gruff voice is both the world-weary Muldoon in Loontown and the toaster in Mars Machines. We were lucky to have them. But I digress…

Go forward ten days – I was supposed to jet off to Dublin where, as improbable as it sounds, I was to headline Dublin Comicon on St. Patrick’s Day (alongside RoboCop and the evil dad from Harry Potter!). All I have left from that is the jpeg:

Yup, that’s me in the corner, as R.E.M. wrote.

Of course, I didn’t go to Dublin. Ireland shut down that very weekend, the UK following two weeks later. Nir was in LA. No one, I’m sure, can remember much from those two years that followed–

Only, somehow, at some point, we got on with it. The actors selflessly recorded their lines, many of them deeply ridiculous, all of which I wrote simply to give Nir something to do. Somehow, the pandemic was over, and our projects were done…

Loondown went on the festival circuit and picked up a few official selections and an award but, I gotta be honest, the staid world of film festivals was not, perhaps, ready for the genius of a balloon noir movie (though how great it is is a hill I’ll happily die on). As for Mars Machines, we did the rounds but it was too weird and handmade to land anywhere. In the meantime we’d done a couple more short films: Welcome To Your A.I. Future for New Scientist was a fun one, while The Radio is currently doing the festival rounds – it has just picked up an Official Selection for the Atlanta Children’s Film Festival.

So, four years after the start of the pandemic, we released Mars Machines for streaming on YouTube. You can now binge the whole 7 episodes, 35mins of it right here. Or start with Episode 1!

I was lucky – all I had to do was write it. Nir and the actors did everything else. It’s nominally set in the Central Station universe, if you’re keeping score. I hope you give the series a try!

And, while I never made it to Dublin Comicon after all, Nir and I finally reunited in London last year…

We argued for a week over the name for our micro-studio before agreeing on Positornish. Agreeing on dim sum was much easier!

The Radio

Our latest animated film, The Radio, is an official selection of the Atlanta Children’s Film Festival! Check out our other animated offerings over at Positronish.

The Best of World SF: Volume 3 nominated for a BSFA Award

Delighted to discover that The Best of World SF: Volume 3 is nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in the Best Collection category.

The Best of World SF: Volume 3 is currently in hardback, published by Head of Zeus / Bloomsbury. Volumes 1 and 2 are now out in paperback.

Thank you to all the wonderful writers in this volume!

Christopher Priest

I grew up reading science fiction, so for me, from the beginning, Christopher Priest was one of those distant, enormous figures who couldn’t possibly be mortal, somewhere beyond the sea where those writers lived on their Mount Olympus. We had his early books in translation. I didn’t get on much with The Space Machine, and struggled with the ending of Inverted World (Ned Beauman is very funny about Priest and endings in the LRB from about a decade ago). A Dream of Wessex (translated as “The Dream in Castle Maidan”, if I remember right, and by Emanuel Lottem, whose own obituary I had to write only recently), however, left what seems in hindsight an indelible mark on my young writer’s mind.

I have a vague recollection of meeting Priest at an early SF convention I went to, one of those fleeting encounters, when one is inevitably too shy to say anything anyway. Then came Osama, my 2011 novel, and waking up confusedly one day to messages about Priest’s extraordinary tirade about the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Priest did not approve of that year’s shortlist (to put it mildly), eviscerating several of the nominees and instead suggesting several alternatives for the prize, including Osama.

I found the whole piece very funny (admittedly, I wasn’t – yet – on the receiving end of Priest’s ire), and for a while my agent introduced me as the guy who wasn’t nominated for the Clarke, which was also very funny. The piece caused a furore in the small world of science fiction, and drew some welcome attention to Osama, which was rejected by numerous publishers before landing with the small but loyal PS Publishing. (When I won the World Fantasy Award for it later in the year Priest e-mailed his congratulations, concluding “I always knew people would see the light in the end.”)

As a consequence of this, I got to meet Priest several times over the next couple of years, and exchanged a few e-mails here and there. I was also, as a reader, extremely taken with the novels he was producing in this later stage of his career, beginning with the marvellous The Islanders (2011), of which I have an inscribed copy. I also caught up with much of his earlier fiction at that time (the only one I never managed to get to grips with is The Separation). I have a very fond memory of Priest wandering into a convention hotel in Heathrow Airport shortly after his Clarke Award piece. He strode in like a gunslinger, clearly delighted at the fury he’s caused. He was a delight in person, smart, funny, engaged, always full of funny stories (the one about meeting Michael Caine at the premier for The Prestige is endlessly funny). It occurs to me that my repeat here of both “delight” and “funny” would have caused him consternation. To make up for the kind words for Osama, Priest took equal delight in eviscerating my next novel, The Violent Century. I was, needless to say, incredibly flattered. (“Tidhar’s style is not half bad when he can be bothered to write properly” is perhaps the nicest thing he has to say in it). Every time since, when I’ve had occasion to use “alright” instead of “all right” in a book I would tell myself I’m only doing it to upset him.

Sadly for me, Priest shortly moved to Scotland and I stopped attending UK convention, so I didn’t get to see him, though I kept up with his books, which is all that matters in the end. Our last e-mail exchange must have been while I was working on A Man Lies Dreaming. Priest had a huge World War II library and I was in need of some recommendations. It seems appropriate, with our shared interest, that my last e-mail to him is just titled “Hitler?” and my final note is simply:

i can’t even figure out if hitler really only had one testicle… historians are split on that score and the only hard evidence is the russian autopsy report, which could well be fake. it would have been useful to know for sure… 🙂

I never did figure out the Hitler testicle question, but I did finish A Man Lies Dreaming which, I guess, owes some of its origin to that long-ago read of A Dream of Wessex and its constructed realities or, at least, I’d like to think so as I’m writing this now.

Priest’s legacy is hard to envision. He never much broke America. His last few books in the UK were published with little to no fanfare, the book market changing in fundamental ways around him. He seemed more popular in France than he was in his home country. I sometimes think simple longevity is the hardest thing in the world for a writer to achieve, and Priest did that, for decades of first-rate work. I can only hope his work continues to be celebrated into the future. Many of the obituaries mention his work as writer, editor and occasional polemicist (his epic book-length takedown of Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions anthology being a case in point). He was also, as it turns out, and very quietly, an agent on behalf of many deserving writers, and was the guy who sold William Gibson’s Neuromancer to Gollancz in the UK.

I was sad to hear of his death this month. I still have Airside to read, and I’d like to do a deep dive into his short fiction one day soon, as I’m obsessed with the one he wrote about Richmond Bridge.

Needless to say, I adored him.

End of Year: 2023

Previous posts: 2022, 2021, 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016

Somehow it’s that time of the year again! It’s been another busy one. Writing-wise I finished a new literary novel – it will be out next year – and sort of snuck in most of a short SF novel just for fun. Publishing-wise, this is what I had out:

Novels

Adama came out in hardback from Head of Zeus. It’s one of the Times’ best books of the year, which is nice.

The Circumference of the World came out in trade paperback from Tachyon. There’s also a limited collectors edition in slipcase from PS Publishing. It’s on the Guardian, Publishers Weekly and New Scientist’s best books of the year, which is also nice.

Maror came out in paperback. Unholy Land came out in Spain and in mass market paperback in France (following a trade edition earlier). There’s a new US e-book edition of By Force Alone. The Escapement came out in Italy (I had fun launching it there).

There are new editions forthcoming of Neom in Japan and Poland, By Force Alone also in Poland, Central Station in France, Maror in Germany, and some other stuff.

Anthologies

The Best of World SF: Volume 3 was published in hardcover. It rounds up the series to over 500,000 words of global fiction.

The Best of World SF: Volume 2 came out in paperback.

Collections

HebrewPunk came out in a new edition!

Awards

Neom was nominated for the Locus Award and the Dragon Award.

The Best of World SF: Volume 2 was nominated for the Locus Award.

Film and TV

There was some good movement on TV options ((i.e. books sold for TV adaptation) this year, which was nice. I also wrote two short animated films that were released this year. You can check out more on Positronish. I also now have an IMDB page.

Loontown

Imagine The Wire crossed with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, add a healthy dose of classic film noir, and you’ll come close to this absurdist sci fi fable about lonely balloons with big dreams. Picture Humphrey Bogart reincarnated as a balloon detective hot on the case of a missing shipment of helium (“street name H”), and this might be the movie for you!

When Mordy “The Mouth” is gruesomely – and literally! – popped in an alleyway, it’s down to world-weary detective Muldoon to solve the case. His quest quickly takes him up against a mysterious gangster just out of prison (a “twelve stretch in Blimpsville”), a seductive femme fatale named Red (who he helplessly falls for), and an inevitable meeting with destiny.

Welcome to Your A.I. Future

What do you do when artificial intelligence starts taking over your life? Should you fear these new technologies, or should you embrace them? With the rise of ChatGPT, MidJourney and their cousins, it can feel like A.I. is taking over the world. What place is there still for the human creative spark? And can we learn to live with, or must we fight against these new creations? As featured in New Scientist.

Short Stories

I had 11 short stories published this year. This is the only fun part of the job!

• The Ghasts. Dark fantasy. In Uncanny.
• Unboxing. Horror. In Apex.
• “The Ghost Fair”. What I call “Neo-Neanderthal Cyberpunk”! In Asimov’s.
• “Zoo Station”. SF. In Asimov’s.
• “Prospecting”. Mars-set SF. In Robotic Ambitions: Tales of Mechanical Sentience, ed. Lesley Conner and Jason Sizemore.
• The Blaumilch. Mars-set SF. At Clarkesworld.
• “The Station Master”. Mars-set SF. In The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
• “Teddington Lock”. In Reports From The Deep End, ed. Maxim Jakubowski.
• “The Rainmaker”. A rare Violent Century story. In Multiverses, ed. Presston Grassmann.
• “A Visit to Kensington Gardens”. In The Other Side of Never, ed. Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane.
• The Locked Coffin: A Judge Dee Mystery. At Tor.com. The latest Judge Dee vampire mystery!

Next Year

Which is, really, almost upon us anyway.

Six Lives is the next literary novel. There. You heard it here first.

The Children’s Book of the Future, co-written with Richard Watson and illustrated by Cinthya Alvarez, will be out in all English-language territories, followed by various translated editions. And yes, this is unbelievably cool. I wish I could really show you how cool it is!

Lots of other stuff in various stages, so we’ll see!

And hopefully release the animated webseries Mars Machines in 2024. It’s 7 episodes with a total runtime of around 35min. It’s very cool. More weird animation projects in the works…

The Station Master

Loontown Released!

Imagine The Wire crossed with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, add a healthy dose of classic film noir, and you’ll come close to this absurdist sci fi fable about lonely balloons with big dreams. Picture Humphrey Bogart reincarnated as a balloon detective hot on the case of a missing shipment of helium (“street name H”), and this might be the movie for you!

When Mordy “The Mouth” is gruesomely – and literally! – popped in an alleyway, it’s down to world-weary detective Muldoon to solve the case. His quest quickly takes him up against a mysterious gangster just out of prison (a “twelve stretch in Blimpsville”), a seductive femme fatale named Red (who he helplessly falls for), and an inevitable meeting with destiny.

Filmed in and around Los Angeles, in locations including the famous alleyway from They Live and Chinatown’s LA River, the film mixes live action backgrounds with animated characters.

With Loontown, the creative team of award-winning writer Lavie Tidhar (Central Station, Neom) and animator Nir Yaniv (LiftOff, The Voice Remains) have created a movie they describe, tongue firmly in cheek, as the “Citizen Kane of Balloon Noir movies”!

Main Page: https://www.positronish.com/loontown

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opOgR4ly1zw

View on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTri2ecoEKQ

Written by Lavie Tidhar. Directed by Nir Yaniv. Produced in the US, 2023. Language: English. Length: 17:55min. Starring Digger Mesch, Anne Wittman, Kenneth Jay, Nathan Osgood, Al Lubel, Russell Wilcox and Katie Snyder. Type: animated, dystopian sci fi, film noir.

The team has been working on a series of hand-made animation projects, including the forthcoming web science fiction series Mars Machines starring Digger Mesch and Russell Wilcox, described as “an existential buddy comedy set in a kitchen on Mars”, and The Radio, a children’s animated short currently in production.

Loontown has just concluded a festival run, picking up several official selections and awards, and is now available to view free online.

For more information, visit https://www.positronish.com/loontown

Adama Publication Day!

It’s Adama‘s official publication day today! Here is the official Bloomsbury Page.

There is no adama without dam – no land without blood.

In 1946, a young Ruth begins building a new life in Palestine, haunted by the death of her family in Europe and driven by youthful ideals in a land hostile to her presence. Her sister, Shoshana, survives in the Displaced Persons camps of Germany and joins her in Palestine, but dreams of escaping to distant America.

Her lovers, Dov and Israel, die in war and misfortune, and her children try to serve the land Ruth bled for, only to find their own tragic ends or means of escape. As one generation begets another, their lives become entwined into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies, of revenge, forbidden love and murder.

A sweeping historical epic following four generations of a single family as they struggle to hold on to their land and each other.

Adama is an unstoppable masterpiece …  Tidhar is a magician, a time-traveler, a historian, a comedian, a raconteur, a subversive, a truth teller and also one of the finest writers around.  If history is a nightmare we’re all trying to wake up from, then Adama is a trumpet blast that rings out the past and into the future.Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Word by word I was drawn deeper and deeper into this incredible book – a story of inheritance, loss, longing and what could have been. Lavie Tidhar’s prose is beautiful, his characters lacerating and heartbreaking by turns. I loved it.Catriona Ward, Sunday Times best-selling author of Sundial

This violent, shadowy history of a kibbutz family makes for a propulsive, decades spanning noir saga. I couldn’t put it down.Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Best-selling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet was the Night

A family of Israeli kibbuitzniks pay in blood and grief over several generations for the liberty of their newly founded state through wars, treachery and love. A brutal but compassionate and compelling view of the compromises required to sustain a nation, with smugglers, gangsters, idealists, soldiers and crooked cops caught in the web of history.Maxim Jakubowski, Anthony and CWA Dagger Award winning author and anthologist of Black is the Night

Israeli literature has long been dominated by veteran heavyweights David Grossman and the late Amos Oz. The prolific Tidhar has previously stuck to science fiction, but he is fast emerging as the leader of a new wave of Israeli literature, thanks to his risky, exhilarating experiments with tone and genre… In Tidhar’s hands the kibbutz is no rose-tinted utopian community, but a harbinger of savage dislocation and violence. It’s not an easy read, but Tidhar’s imagination is both Old Testament through and through, and sick with a 21st-century disenchantment. – The Daily Mail

Launching the giant Trilogies Bundle!

I love putting together bundles for Storybundle, and this time we’re doing our biggest yet! The giant Trilogies Bundle has a whopping 27 books for $33! That’s nine complete trilogies, including my 1000pp The Bookman Histories books!

Check it out!

Published Today!

It’s been a journey! But The Circumference of the World is published today, and it looks fab!

Caught between realities, a mathematician, a book dealer, and a mobster desperately seek a notorious book that disappears upon being read. Only the author, a rakish sci-fi writer, knows whether his popular novel is truthful or a hoax. In a story that is cosmic, inventive, and sly, multi-award-winning author Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) travels from the emergence of life to the very ends of the universe.

Delia Welegtabit discovered two things during her childhood on a South Pacific island: her love for mathematics and a novel that isn’t supposed to exist. But the elusive book proves unexpectedly dangerous, attracting the attention of Oskar Lens, a Russian mobster in the midst of an existential crisis. When Delia’s husband goes missing, she seeks help from Daniel Chase, a young, face-blind book dealer.

Lode Stars was written by the infamous Eugene Charles Hartley, legendary pulp science-fiction writer and founder of the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes. In Hartley’s novel, a doppelganger of Delia searches for her missing father in a strange star. But is any of Lode Stars real? Was Hartley a cynical conman on a quest for wealth and immortality, creating a religion he did not believe in? Or was he a visionary who truly discovered the secrets of the universe?

WHAT THEY SAY

“Tidhar wins it all with this magnificently original mind-bender of a novel about a missing husband and a mysterious book that disappears as soon as you read it. The Circumference of the World is two parts Philip K. Dick, two parts Brothers Strugatsky, and six parts blow your f**king mind.”
—Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Brilliant and bizarre, Lavie Tidhar’s The Circumference of the World is many things—but fundamentally it is a love letter to the Golden Age of science fiction, whether or not it deserves it (it does), as well as a love letter to its writers, whether or not they deserve it (they don’t. Well, mostly.).”
—Molly Tanzer, author of Vermilion and Creatures of Will and Temper

“Ingeniously constructed and stylistically protean, this seven-course banquet of a novel glisters with the Golden Age of science fiction, even as it nourishes our neurons with a marvelous thought experiment: what if an amalgam of Philip K. Dick and L. Ron Hubbard had founded a religion that, against all odds, provided a gateway into ultimate reality?”

–James Morrow, award-winning author of Shambling Towards Hiroshima

“I always have been partial to dangerous books, and to fictions about dangerous books, and the one at the swirling center of this exhilarating tour de force is a doozy—just like every book by Lavie Tidhar.”

— Andy Duncan, three-time World Fantasy Award winner

REVIEWS

“A mind-bending existential adventure… This is a knockout.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Inquisitive, daring, and rich with possibilities, The Circumference of the World is a speculative masterpiece.” – Foreword (starred review)

“This novel is one wild ride… A compelling story of obsession and greed that will make readers think about the nature of reality. Readers who fell hard into the metafiction of The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge or the you-are-there gossip of Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee will likely be as obsessed with this book as the characters are with Lode Stars.” – Library Journal

“Tidhar’s rich portrayal of the pulpy golden age of science fiction, distinctive characters, and nimble turns of phrase make for a cool confection.” – Kirkus

By Force Alone Newly Available in the US!

The brand-new e-book edition of By Force Alone is now available! Published in the US in e-book by Jabberwocky, it boasts a brand-new cover by Sarah Anne Langton.

Kindle edition here.

Behold!