Gibson’s work set the tone for modern SF back in the ’80s, a gritty neo-noir future made up of dot-matrix imagery and droning modem dial tones. The novel has been compared to Gibson’s Neuromancer, and while they are very different animals, I made the same comparison myself while reading it. Central Station follows the ways these characters are connected-by geography, history, family, and love-a great web of intersecting lives, connected by technology yet transcending both the physical and digital realms. Hot on his trail is a feared Shambleau, a data vampire, who takes up with Boris’ ex-lover’s brother, an antiquarian whose lack of a node leaves him isolated from the Conversation. Boris’ father is terminally ill with another of the war’s side effects, a multigenerational mind-virus, while his mother is rising in rank within the Church of Robot. His cousin is in love with a robotnik-a decaying cyborg soldier, reanimated to fight in some long-forgotten war, begging for spare parts or acquiring them by dealing religious narcotics.
His old flame is now raising a strange yet familiar child who can tap into the Conversation with a mere touch… and whose similarly familiar friend exists only within the Conversation itself. The aging Boris Chong has returned home from Mars, one of many who left Earth to explore the mysteries of the outer belt. Tidhar’s novel-a fixup constructed from a dozen or so short stories-follows the footsteps of a few people living under Central Station’s shadow.
It is the transhuman future, a complex hybrid of beauty and decay… a world as brilliant in its originality as it is startling in its familiarity.
The city’s sprawl is unchecked, packed with hundreds of thousands of people both real and digital, all blended together in one Conversation-the digital network and stream-of-consciousness that cascades all noded life-forms into one stream of endless data. The towering spaceport of Central Station rises over the old city of Tel Aviv, a melting-pot of Arab, Jew, and the multicultural thousands who flocked there in the wake of a worldwide diaspora. Tachyon Publications – 2016 – cover by Sarah Anne Langton.
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