Over in Germany, Maror has picked up the #1 slot on the Krimibestenliste – a list of the best crime novels of the year, selected for Deutschlandfunk Kultur by a group of reviewers and crime fiction experts from across the German-language media landscape in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Maror is currently out in Germany in hardback, e-book and audio. The paperback edition will be out in 2025.
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Another customary end of year post. Hard to keep track, but I’ll do my best!
Novels
Six Lives came out in hardback from Head of Zeus. It’s a historical literary novel tracing the six lives of an extended family from the mid-19th century to the present. Quite good, I think. Got picked up for LoveReading’s Best of the Year list, which was nice. Paperback out next year.
And… that was my only original novel out this year (though not the only book – see below). Slacking, I know, though it’s not me, it’s publishing. Plenty of books in the pipeline, I promise you. Anyway–
Adama came out in paperback from Head of Zeus. So did The Best of World SF: Volume 3, which was surprisingly nominated for a BSFA Award, as well as a Locus Award.
Maror came out in hardcover in Germany, where it garnered considerable coverage, including a full spread interview with me in Der Speigel, and a number 1 spot on the Krimibestenliste. The audio book is out just now, and the paperback is coming out next year.
Central Station came out in France, and Neom came out in Japan and Poland.
Children’s Books
The Children’s Book of the Future! My second foray into children’s books after 2018’s Candy, this is a collaboration with my futurist friend Richard Watson, accompanied by fantastic art by Cinthya Alvarez and published by DK. It came out in all English-language territories this year (UK, US, Australia, etc) and already had a Hong Kong edition out.
Animation
Mars Machines was released in its entirety on YouTube – it’s a 7-episodes absurdist SF comedy clocking it at a whopping 35min for the entire run.
The Radio completed a successful international festival run and was just released on YouTube.
Both were written by me and directed by Nir Yaniv under our Positronish label.
Film and TV
One novel still under option for TV, and I recently sold a horror film – details if and when, etc etc.
Short Stories
I only had 7 new stories published this year.
“Fairies”. Horror. In Off the Flesh. This is a sort of high-end anthology from HarperCollins.
Judge Dee and the Executioner of Epinal. At Reactor (formerly tordotcom). The last, for now, of the Judge Dee stories (but keep your eyes peeled and your fangs sharp for more Judge Dee stuff in the pipeline).
Still Listening. A short-short for Nature.
“Sunsets”. SF. In Asimov’s.
The Feast Night of Vengeful Ghosts. SF. In The Darklands.
“The Quietude”. SF. In Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art from MIT, edited by Indrapramit Das.
The Robot. SF. In Uncanny.
Next Year
Golgotha, the stand-alone yet concluding novel of the Maror Trilogy, will be out next year from Head of Zeus. It’s pretty good, if I say so myself.
No One Hears The Last Shot, a collection of my crime stories, will be out from PS Publishing.
Maror should be out in Japan; Neom and The Vanishing Kind in France; Adama in Germany; The Children’s Book of the Future in China, Spain and Germany; and I’m not sure which my next book in Poland is. The Best of World SF: Volume 1 should be out in China too at some point.
And, well, there are various other plans! As usual.
New Children’s Animation Explores Value of Friendship in Heart-warming Tale
December 5, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Coming off a successful festival run, Nir Yaniv and Lavie Tidhar’s gentle fable The Radio is now available on YouTube. Abandoned in a garden, a lonely radio tries to connect with the visiting animals and flowers who pass through before finally finding a friend, in this musical animation for children of all ages.
The creative team has been behind recent animation projects Loontown, Mars Machines, and Welcome To Your A.I. Future (all 2023) under their Positronish Productions label, and are currently in pre-production on animated sci-fi movie Io.
The Radio was screened around the world at festivals in Singapore, Bulgaria, Finland, Los Angeles, Texas and Atlanta and was nominated for a HEFFI Award for Best Animation and for an Independent Shorts Award.
Main Page: https://www.positronish.com/the-radio
Trailer: https://youtu.be/s1kNpPxJnA4
View on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz2tj0dAvuE
Produced in the US, 2024. Language: English.
Length: 9:55min. Format: DCI 4K.
Directed by Nir Yaniv
Written by Lavie Tidhar
Starring Anne Wittman, Hila Plittman, Russell Wilcox, Katie Snyder, Digger Mesch and Supernova Mesch.
Original Soundtrack by Ron Freund
Shot, animated and edited by Nir Yaniv
For more information, visit https://www.positronish.com/the-radio
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This Friday saw the launch of a new literary project I’ve been working on with Jared Shurin – Shelfies!
Shelfies is a free weekly newsletter and site, where we ask people to share some of their favourite books with us while letting us snoop in their bookshelves. Simple! You can sign up now to get our weekly mailing.
Our first guest is Australian author Kaaron Warren, who shelfie below. Check it out!
Six Lives is out in hardcover and e-book, with a very cool, multi-narrator audiobook edition to boot.
This is a new historical/literary fiction novel, tracing six connected lives from the mid-19th century to the present day. I like it!
Six lives, connected through blood and history, each rooted in the dirt of their inheritance, look to the future, and what it might hold.
THE GUANO MERCHANT
In 1855, Edward Feebes travels to the guano islands of South America, to investigate an irregularity in the accounts of the House of Feebes & Co.
THE BLACKMAILER
In 1912, post-mortem photographer and reluctant blackmailer Annie Connolly plots her escape from Ireland to America on board the Titanic.
THE IDEALIST
In 1933, idealistic Edgar Waverley faces a choice of the heart when he becomes embroiled in a country house murder.
THE SPY
In 1964, hapless KGB agent Vasily Sokolov makes his career conjuring valuable information from worthless detritus.
THE MOVIE STAR
In 1987, actor Mariam Khouri looks back at ‘Black Dirt’, the movie that lifted her from the streets of Cairo.
THE HEIRESS
In 2012, Isabelle Feebes attempts to break with her poisonous heritage once and for all. Can she forge a new life for herself in the New World? Can you ever truly escape your past?
WHAT THEY SAY
“Tidhar’s writing is alchemical, smouldering with his characters’ passions, ambitions and frustrations as it shifts genres, from murder mystery to spy thriller, and more… Spellbinding and smart, measured and fierily evocative, Six Lives is an immensely satisfying achievement.” – LoveReading
“I was blown away… Perhaps the adage write what you know doesn’t apply to Tidhar, because he veers away from Israel to tell stories that span 150 years and moving between Peru, Ireland, Egypt and more. Each section focuses on a different character, loosely linked by a watch and other small connections. Despite covering subjects as diverse as the Victorian guano trade, the KGB’s Cairo operations, post-mortem photography and an Agatha Christie-esque English country house murder, Tidhar manages to brilliantly realise each one.” – The Jewish Chronicle best summer reads 2024
I’m just back from China, so I missed the official publication date, but it’s out! It’s alive! The Children’s Book of the Future, co-written by me and futurist Richard Watson, and illustrated by the terrific Cinthya Alvarez, is out now from DK!
See some of the nice things people have said about it!
“Teleported my brain to worlds of wonder and delight!” – Samit Basu, author of The City Inside and The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
“Eye-opening, funny and visually delightful! Perfect for young readers and families to explore together, The Children’s Book of the Future is a must-have for anyone who dreams of what tomorrow might bring.” – Chen Qiufan, author of The Waste Tide and AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
“Finally, a book about the future for those who will live in that future! From exploring our solar system to finding other inhabitants in nearby star systems, this a book about and for those who will be the first earthlings to journey beyond our planet.” – Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute.
“Amazing and astounding: a kaleidoscope of marvellous and inspiring futures. This is a book to lose yourself in.” – Prof. Adam Roberts, FRSL, award-winning author of The Thing Itself and Stealing for the Skies
“Read this book with your kids, and let hope become a verb.” – Prof. Roger Steare, FRSA, the Corporate Philosopher.
“Marvellous! This is going to inspire children, and I dare say a number of adults, all around the world to dream big! Entertaining, informative, and a feast for the eyes—the future in this book belongs to everyone, and is filled with hope!” – Lavanya Lakshminarayan, author of Analog/Virtual: And Other Simulations of Your Future
“A timely and important book.” – Professor Arthur I. Miller, author of The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity
“The only thing wrong with the Children’s Book of the Future is that it didn’t exist fifty years ago! If it had, I’d have gulped it down. Right here and now, though, one couldn’t ask for a more vibrant, engaging and downright fun guide to the world of tomorrow. It’s unfashionably optimistic and I love it for that. Lavie and Richard have done the future proud.” – Alastair Reynolds, astrophysicist and best-selling author of Revelation Space and Eversion.
“Our children hear many reasons to be afraid of the future, and not many to be hopeful. The Children’s Book Of The Future is a beautiful, ideas-packed introduction to a world to look forward to – a world we can all help to make.” – Sumit Paul-Choudhury, former New Scientist editor-in-chief and author of The Bright Side
“Ours is an age of anxiety, and a book like this is the cure. It’s a joyous reminder of the wondrousness of possible high-tech futures. Sure, we like to make nightmare scenarios out of cloned Neanderthals, cities populated by robots, sentient undersea computers and visiting aliens—but what if these really did come to pass, and they were just really nice to human kids? It’s hopepunk without the cheesiness, and with a whole lot of cool science and history to boot.” – Ng Yi-Sheng, Singapore Literature Prize winner and author of Lion City
“Inspiring and thought-provoking” Professor Roberto Trotta, author of Starborn
“I read and enjoyed The Children’s Book of the Future so much. This book is a hopeful, timely and exhilerating panorama of our future for young readers. It will engage the imagination of all children, not only those with an interest in science and technology, with its colourful and inclusive illustrations and succint, well-researched snippets of information.” Gita Ralleigh, Author, The Destiny of Minou Moonshine.
Maror was published in Germany last month to some great reviews, followed a flurry of radio spots and interviews and culminating in a two and a half page spread feature on me in Der Spiegel:
It also – briefly! – became the 28th most sold book on Amazon Germany!
Quite a nice feeling, really…
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…
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.
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!
Lavie Tidhar 