Happy to discover that in the recently announced Locus Award shortlists, I’ve made the list twice – first with Neom in the Best SF Novel category and secondly with The Best of World SF: Volume 2 in Best Anthology.
Here’s the full list!
The audiobook edition of Maror is out now, published by W.F. Howes and narrated by Levi Goldmeier. You can get it on CD, or as a download from Audible/Amazon.
Maror was an Economist, Guardian and Jewish Chronicle Best Books of 2022 selection.
A multi-generational saga with cultural and political depth, drawing on the rich, often troubling recent history of Israel, for fans of A History of Seven Killings or The White Tiger.
How do you build a nation?
It takes statesmen and soldiers, farmers and factory workers, of course. But it also takes thieves, prostitutes and policemen.
Nation-building demands sacrifice. And one man knows exactly where those bodies are buried: Cohen, a man who loves his country. A reasonable man for unreasonable times.
A car bomb in the back streets of Tel Aviv. A diamond robbery in Haifa. Civil war in Lebanon. Rebel fighters in the Colombian jungle. A double murder in Los Angeles.
How do they all connect? Only Cohen knows.
Maror is the story of a war for a country’s soul – a dazzling spread of narrative gunshots across four decades and three continents.
It is a true story. All of these things happened.
BLURBS
‘Some write in ink, others in song, Tidhar writes in fire… Maror is a kaleidoscopic masterpiece, immense in its sympathies, alarming in its irreverences and altogether exhilarating’ Junot Díaz
‘One of the boldest, most visionary writers I’ve ever read creates both a vivid political exploration and a riveting crime epic. It’s like the Jewish Godfather!’ Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“I’ve rarely read such a sustained feat of narrative invention and momentum. The novel’s a masterpiece.” – Tim Pears
“Maror blends the page-turning wit of a hard-boiled detective noir with the stirring intrigue of a multi-national political epic. An ambitious achievement that weaves a tapestry of both story and statement.” – Kevin Jared Hosein
REVIEWS
“Maror is a masterpiece of the sacred and the profane … a literary triumph.” – The Guardian
“A bloody beast of a book… Maror is to Israeli history what Tarantino is to American movie culture” – The Daily Mail
“[A] wildly ambitious saga… A caustic alternative history of the dream and development of Israel.” – The Economist
“Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness… Fade[s] into oblivion compared with Lavie Tidhar’s magnificent novel Maror, a panoramic look at four decades of the dark, despicable side of Israel, of death, corruption, violence and drugs… It’s a brilliant undertaking.” – The Jewish Chronicle
“Mixing dark humor with bleak violence, Maror is a triumph.” – Hadassah Magazine
New Sci Fi Movie Uses A.I. to Depict Dystopian A.I. Future
March 23, 2023
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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?
With more questions than answers, the creative team of award-winning writer Lavie Tidhar (Central Station, Neom) and animator Nir Yaniv (LiftOff, The Voice Remains) decided to tackle the question by making a movie about A.I. while using it. Because what if the new machines just want to help? What could possibly go wrong?
Welcome to your A.I. future!
Main Page: https://www.nirtoons.com/ai
View on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99_kp4Jq_14
Written by Lavie Tidhar. Directed by Nir Yaniv. Produced in the US, 2023. Language: English. Length: 5:30min. Type: animated, dystopian sci fi.
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, and Loontown, a film noir starring Mesch and Anne Wittman, when they became curious about the new technology.
Tidhar said, “We’ve been very focused on a human-centric, do-it-yourself creation process. So we were intrigued by the A.I., but also very conscious of the discourse around it right now. We wondered how we could play with these new toys while addressing what they represent. Nir was inspired by the classic French film La Jetée, and called me up to ask if we could do something like that with MidJourney. I immediately said we could only do it if the film we made was about the A.I. – and something sparked. The result, I think, is quite unsettling. The rabbits really freak me out, and I’m the one who wrote them in!”
The creative process was far from automated, as director Yaniv explains: “I generated around 1800 images, not counting permutations and bizarre tricks needed to convince Midjourney to give me the required result. I added a lot of visual interference, numerous sound effects. Early in the process I reached the conclusion that current music generators won’t give me what I needed. As a composer, being also the director and editor of the film can be a huge advantage. I had most of the soundtrack done at about the midpoint of the editing process. To add creepiness to the A.I. voiceover, I actually created two versions, one male and one female. What you hear in the film is a combination – imagine shouting and have that echo return to you in a different voice!”
Opting to release Welcome To Your A.I. Future online, the team has no further plans to use A.I. again. Tidhar’s next novel, The Circumference of the World, will be out this fall while Yaniv’s own The Good Soldier is scheduled for late 2023 release. They are currently at work on The Radio, a hand-made children’s animation film, with numerous (human) musicians involved in the production.
For more information, visit https://www.nirtoons.com/ai
Head of Zeus is delighted to be publishing Adamaby Lavie Tidhar, the second literary novel from author of Maror, which was named ‘a literary triumph’ (Guardian), ‘startlingly refreshing’ (Daily Mail) and ‘an earthquake of a book’ (Crime Time). It was a Guardian and Economist Book of the Year.
CEO and Publisher Nicolas Cheetham acquired UK & Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights for Adama for Head of Zeus from John Berlyne at The Zeno Agency Ltd. The novel will be published in hardback and ebook, under the Apollo fiction imprint, on 14 September 2023.
‘I water this land with the blood of my men’
Ruth’s family were in Budapest when the Nazis came.
Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks them.
With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else’s. So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream.
But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies, sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder.
Lavie Tidhar said, ‘There’s a dark joy in going back to one’s strange childhood, to discover the truths behind the façade, of how a map is redrawn and villages erased, done by people who will do anything in pursuit of their ideals. It was another deep dive into the well of real historical events, discovering for myself life in the Displaced Persons camps in Germany where my own mother was born, of the British-ruled world my grandparents moved in and the wars my parents’ generation fought. It is a book, I think, of just what happens when people try to make their dreams come true.’
Nicolas Cheetham said, ‘Adama (land) follows the critically acclaimed Maror (bitter herbs) as the second book in a hugely ambitious, asynchronous trilogy charting the genesis and evolution of the State of Israel. Where Maror spanned 1974–2004, Adama reaches back to 1946 and the aftermath of World War Two. Like Maror, Adama crosses decades and continents, but draws on Lavie’s own experience growing up on a kibbutz to tell the four-generational story of one woman’s determination to build a better world – whatever that may take.’
Lavie Tidhar was born just ten miles from Armageddon and grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He has since made his home in London. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rome Prize. He co-wrote Art and War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction, and a former columnist for the Washington Post.
Ah, it’s the obligatory End of Year post. Isn’t it time for 2022 to be over already?
Previous posts: 2021, 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 (but who’s keeping track).
Well, it was a beast of a year. Did some film work – that was fun. Wrote a beast of a novel. Wrote too many short stories. Published too much. The usual. Let’s get this over with, shall we?
Novels
Maror came out in hardcover from Head of Zeus in August. You should read it. It’s also one of the Economist‘s best books of 2022, so that’s nice. The Guardian called it “a masterpiece of the sacred and the profane [and] a literary triumph.” So. You know. Did I mention you should read it?
Neom came out in trade paperback from Tachyon in November. If you liked Central Station… etc. Publishers Weekly say that “fans of literary sci-fi are sure to be enchanted by the imaginative worldbuilding and tenderly wrought characters.” There’s also a limited edition for collectors due from PS Publishing.
The Hood, meanwhile, came out in paperback from Head of Zeus. I don’t think anyone read this one which is… a shame, really. It’s great.
Oh, and there’s a new edition of my debut novella, An Occupation of Angels, published in paperback by Jabberwocky.
Anthologies
The Best of World SF: Volume 2 came out in hardcover from Head of Zeus in October. It’s huge.
The Best of World SF: Volume 1 came out in paperback in the meantime. It was also published in an Italian edition, which was nice.
Awards
Not much to report on this front.
The Escapement was a runner-up for the Philip K. Dick Award, which was nice. Probably my favourite recent novel, to be honest and, like The Hood, somewhat under-read.
The Best of World SF: Volume 1 was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Anthology. Also nice.
The Candy Mafia was nominated for Mississippi’s Magnolia Book Awards in the 3rd-5th Grade category, and won the Alabama Camellia Children’s Choice Book Award for Grades 4-5 Fiction. Nice!
Games
I wasn’t as much into mobile game making as last year. I released Impossible Marbles, though, and a beta of Yeti Falls.
But to be fair I was working on a lot of animation projects this year instead.
Short Stories
Ah, now we get into the meat of it all. Faaaar too many of those!
Next Year
Not slacking off, sadly!
The Circumference of the World is finally coming out (probably my most-delayed ever book). Tachyon will publish in trade paperback. I’m really happy with the final draft of this.
Adama, the next lit novel, will be out in hardcover from Head of Zeus.
Not to mention The Best of World SF: Volume 3!
And there should also be a new children’s book coming.
Also various editions of books scheduled for France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Poland and so on.
Short stories-wise, there are stories forthcoming in Asimov’s, F&SF, Apex, and a bunch of anthologies.
I could go on, but let’s stop there and take the rest of 2022 off…
It was publication day yesterday, and Neom is now available in all good shops! The audio edition comes out next week, and the collectors’ edition from PS Publishing should be out by the end of the year. Japanese and Polish editions are also forthcoming. It was fun to go back to the wider world of Central Station for a little while! Do check it out if you’re that way inclined.
I will be signing copies of Neom at Forbidden Planet, London, on the 24th! 6pm-7pm Thursday.
Machines roam the desert in search of purpose; works of art can be deadlier than weapons, and improbable love transcends the sands of time. From the multiaward-winning universe of Central Station, a complex desert-city of the future’s inhabitants rediscover passion while at the brink of revolution.
The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. Neom is a tech wonderland for the rich and beautiful; an urban sprawl along the Red Sea; and a port of call between Earth and the stars.
In the desert, young orphan Saleh has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world from Central Station. But the desert is full of mechanical artefacts, some unexplained and some unexploded. Recently, a wry, unnamed robot has unearthed one of the region’s biggest mysteries: the vestiges of a golden man.
In Neom, childhood affection is rekindling between loyal shurta-officer Nasir and hardworking flower-seller Mariam. But Nasu, a deadly terrorartist, has come to the city with missing memories and unfinished business.
Just one robot can change a city’s destiny with a single rose—especially when that robot is in search of lost love.
BLURBS
“This is Tidhar at his best: the crazily proliferating imagination, the textures, the ideas, the dazzling storytelling. A brilliant portrait of community and its possibilities.”
—Adam Roberts, author of Purgatory Mount
“Yet again, Lavie Tidhar’s future world of Neom is exciting and distinctive, his characters complex and fascinating, and his themes powerful and thought-provoking. He is the best sort of science fiction.”
—Kij Johnson, author of The River Bank
“Always expect the unexpected with Lavie Tidhar, and this welcome return to the sprawling space-operatic world of Central Station delivers oodles of poetry, action, memorable characters, wonderfully bizarre landscapes and wild imagination. No two books by Tidhar are ever the same, but each is a revelation.”
—Maxim Jakubowski, author of The Piper’s Dance
“Neom is a real place. A completely batshit crazy place. Nonetheless, Lavie Tidhar, standing on the shoulders of Vance, Smith, and Ballard and others, imagines stories set in that place, a city in a wasteland near the Gulf of Suez, in a future filled with robots and AI and terrorartists and young boys and talking jackals and a wonderful, terrible solar system packed with life.”
—Jonathan Strahan
“Vivid and techno-mythological, Neom infects you with something special that transcends all the incidents and terrors—a shimmering current of guarded optimism.”
—David Brin, author of Existence, Earth and The Postman
“Lavie Tidhar’s Neom is a deliciously inventive wild ride through a future Middle East full of unexpected wonders: dutiful jackals, traumatized robots, terrifying terrorartists, caravans of elephants and great slinkying robotic khans, preserves for wild mechas and monasteries that are also singularities. But more than that, the world of Neom is deeply, richly lived in: the past and the present and the future are not just unevenly distributed, they are marbled together—tiny slithering tadpole robots adapted to the fused-glass desert around an ancient crash site, okra and tomatoes frying in a pan, rogue sandworms and grandmothers doing Tai Chi in an urban park, the Oort cloud and milkshakes, Martian soap opera Bedouin actors, a Bazaar of Rare and Exotic Machines equally excited by Atari Pac-Man cartridges and city-obliterating superweapons. It is this eye for detail, this deft touch intermingling now and someday, that makes Neom’s future so vividly real: not just human or gritty or lived-in, but full to bursting with the variety and complexity that characterize life. It is a world anchored by its characters: the bright ambition and yearning of the orphan Saleh, the sensible pragmatism and inexhaustible humanity of the capable housecleaner/flower vendor/receptionist/Tamagotchi shelter volunteer Miriam de la Cruz . . . and the robot, who is obsolete and dangerous, full of grief and mystery and philosophy, and whose obstinate mission beckons us ever forward through Neom’s pages. . . .”
—Benjamin Rosenbaum, author of The Unraveling
WHAT THEY SAY
“Fans of literary sci-fi are sure to be enchanted by the imaginative worldbuilding and tenderly wrought characters.” – Publishers Weekly
“Tidhar is a unique voice in science fiction … [Neom is] an enrapturing conglomeration of philosophy, psychology, and storytelling… Old and new fans alike will adore this fascinating new addition to Tidhar’s future Earth universe, and science fiction buffs would do well to put Tidhar on their radar of must-read authors.” – Library Journal
“Extraordinary and compassionate.” – Foreword (starred review)
“Neom is a treasure, and Tidhar says that there are so many more stories from this complicated world. Every new one is a compelling chapter in this future history that reflects so much about who we are and the basic things we yearn for.”
—SciFi Mind
“Lavie Tidhar’s Neom is a stunning return to his world of Central Station, twinning the fates of humans and robots alike at a futuristic city on the edge of the Red Sea.”
—Green Man Review
“This was superb and I’m in awe of Tidhar’s vision. He’s conjured up a futuristic city that feels simultaneously ultramodern and also run down. The rich histories of the region and its cultures are seamlessly interwoven into the fabric of this fully-realized world.”
—The Speculative Shelf
The second annual instalment to the ‘rare and wonderful’ (The Times) The Best of World SF Volume 1, this collection of twenty-nine stories, including eight original and exclusive additions, represents the state of the art in international science fiction.
Navigating around the globe, The Best of World SF Volume 2 features writers from Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Grenada, India, Iraq, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, The Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Each story has been selected by World SF expert and award-winning author Lavie Tidhar. Taking us into space – Mars at first, then the stars – and then back to a strange, transformed Earth via AI, gods, aliens and the undead, the collection traces the ever-changing meaning of the genre from some of the most exciting voices writing today.
This is not a retrospective of what science fiction around the world used to look like. This is a snapshot of what some of it looks like now. And it’s never been more exciting.
BUY IT FROM
Published today in hardcover and e-book! Pick up a copy from Amazon, Waterstones, W.H. Smith or elsewhere!
600+ pages, 152,000 words, this historical epic sweeps over four decades of a nation’s dark underbelly. What can I say – I like it!
Hear me talk about the book on Radio 4’s Open Book.
LoveReading say:
“Radiant with all the brutally elegant atmosphere of crime noir, and the richly nuanced complexity and style of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, it’s a genre-busting novel that will catch your breath … At once illuminating, thrilling and thought-provoking, this tale of corruption, killings, sacrifice and the souls that make up a nation is a symphonic feat of fiction.” – Order from LoveReading
This has been a lot of hard work behind the scene, and today I’m delighted to share the cover and table of contents for The Best of World SF: Volume 2! Published by Head of Zeus in hardcover and e-book in September (UK and elsewhere) and November (US), this is big 175,000 words anthology! Cover design by Ben Prior. It makes a gorgeous set with the first volume!
Pre-order: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-World-SF-2-ebook/dp/B09KM9VBQP/
US: https://www.amazon.com/Best-World-SF-2-ebook/dp/B09KM9VBQP/
Table of Contents:
1 Nadia Afifi, The Bahrain Underground Bazaar (7700 words), Bahrain
2 Lavanya Lakshminarayan, The Ten-Percent Thief (1300 words), India
3 Frances Ogamba, At Desk 9501 (5000 words), Nigeria *Original
4 Isabel Yap, Milagroso (4300 words), The Philippines
5 Saad Z. Hossain, Bring Your Own Spoon (4700 words), Bangladesh
6 Yukimi Ogawa, Blue Grey Blue (5200 words), Japan
7 Xing He, Your Multicolored Life, (8300 words), trans. Andy Dudak, China
8 Nalo Hopkinson, The Easthound (5900 words), Jamaica
9 Pan Haitian, Dead Man, Awake, Sing to the Sun! (3300 words), trans. Joel Martinsen, China *Original
10 Jacques Barcia, Salvaging Gods (4000 words), Brazil
11 Edmundo Paz Soldán, The Next Move (5400 words), trans. Jessica Sequeira, Bolivia *Original
12 Dilman Dila, The Clay Child (5800 words), Uganda *Original
13 Natalia Theodoridou, To Set at Twilight In a Land of Reeds (3700 words), Greece
14 Bef, The Beast Has Died (5600 words), trans. Brian L. Price, Mexico
15 Alberto Chimal, Twenty About Robots (2900 words), trans. Fionn Petch, Mexico
16 Wole Talabi, The Regression Test (4000 words), Nigeria
17 William Tham Wai Liang, Kakak (4800 words), Malaysia
18 Usman T. Malik, Beyond These Stars Other Tribulations of Love (3200 words), Pakistan
19 Julie Novakova, A Flaw In The Works (8600 words), trans. by author. Czech Republic *Original
20 Cassandra Khaw, When We Die On Mars (3100 words), Malaysia
21 Karen Lord and Tobias S. Buckell, The Mighty Slinger (9700 words), Barbados/Grenada
22 T.L. Huchu, Corialis (7100 words), Zimbabwe
23 Clelia Farris, The Substance of Ideas (3100 words), trans. Rachel S. Cordasco, Italy
24 Agnieszka Hałas, Sleeping Beauties (6000 words), trans. by author, Poland *Original
25 Samit Basu, Waking Nydra (7400 words), India *Original
26 Neon Yang, Between The Firmaments (20300 words), Singapore
27 Bo-Young Kim, Whale Snows Down (3300 words), trans. Sophie Bowman, South Korea
28 Hassan Blasim, The Gardens of Babylon (8000 words), trans. Jonathan Wright, Iraq
29 K.A. Teryna, The Farctory (11350), trans. Alex Shvartsman, Russia *Original
ISBN: 978-1-61696-382-8 print; 978-1-61696-383-5 digital formats
Published: November 2022
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Digital Books
Machines roam the desert in search of purpose; works of art can be deadlier than weapons, and improbable love transcends the sands of time. From the multiaward-winning universe of Central Station, a complex desert-city of the future’s inhabitants rediscover passion while at the brink of revolution.
“Can we just all admit now that Lavie Tidhar’s a genius?”
—Daryl Gregory, award-winning author of Spoonbenders
The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. Neom is a tech wonderland for the rich and beautiful; an urban sprawl along the Red Sea; and a port of call between Earth and the stars.
In the desert, young orphan Saleh has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world from Central Station. But the desert is full of mechanical artefacts, some unexplained and some unexploded. Recently, a wry, unnamed robot has unearthed one of the region’s biggest mysteries: the vestiges of a golden man.
In Neom, childhood affection is rekindling between loyal shurta-officer Nasir and hardworking flower-seller Mariam. But Nasu, a deadly terrorartist, has come to the city with missing memories and unfinished business.
Just one robot can change a city’s destiny with a single rose—especially when that robot is in search of lost love.
Lavie Tidhar 