“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

Praise for Central Station

John W. Campbell Award Winner

Neukom Literary Arts Award Winner

Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalist

NPR Best Books

Barnes and Noble Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

Locus Recommended Reading List

“Beautiful, original, a shimmering tapestry of connections and images.”

—Alastair Reynolds, author of the Revelation Space series

“A dazzling tale of complicated politics and even more complicated souls. Beautiful.”

—Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie and The Grace of Kings

★ “Readers of all persuasions will be entranced.”

—Publishers Weekly

★ “A fascinating future glimpsed through the lens of a tight-knit community.”

—Library Journal

“If Nalo Hopkinson and William Gibson held a séance to channel the spirit of Ray Bradbury, they might be inspired to produce a work as grimy, as gorgeous, and as downright sensual as Central Station.”

—Peter Watts, author of Blindsight and The Freeze-Frame Revolution

“It is just this side of a masterpiece—short, restrained, lush—and the truest joy of it is in the way Tidhar scatters brilliant ideas like pennies on the sidewalk.”

—NPR Books

“A mosaic of mind-blowing ideas and a dazzling look at a richly-imagined, textured future.”

—Aliette de Bodard, author of The House of Shattered Wings

“Tidhar weaves strands of faith and science fiction into a breath-taking and lush family history of the far future.”

—Max Gladstone, author of Three Parts Dead

Selected Books by Lavie Tidhar

Novels

The Bookman (2010)

Osama (2011)

The Violent Century (2013)

A Man Lies Dreaming (2014)

Central Station (2016)

Candy (2018)

Unholy Land (2018)

Adler (2020, graphic novel series with Paul McCaffery)

By Force Alone (2020)

The Escapement (2021)

The Hood (2021)

Maror (forthcoming, 2022)

Anthology Series

The Apex Book of World SF, Volumes 1–3 (2009–14)

Neom

Lavie Tidhar

Map

The city of Neom in these pages is old.

The city of Neom today remains mostly the dream of a Saudi prince, a futuristic wonderland backed by a marketing video.

You can go visit it, though. Neom Bay Airport (IATA: NUM, ICAO: OENN) is real and there’s even a weekly flight from Riyadh.

There’s not much else there right now, but then again, who knows? In time there might be flowers and, if so, a robot might come to the souq one day to buy a rose.

1. The City

Beyond Central Station, that vast spaceport that links Earth with the teeming worlds of the solar system, there is a city. The city lies past the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran, in the old Saudi desert province that was once called Tabuk. The founders of the city called it Neom.