Search Worlds Without End

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap and data is cheaper.

When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris's ex-lover Miriam is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the data stream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin Isobel is infatuated with a robotnik--a cyborg ex-Israeli soldier who might well be begging for parts. Even his old flame Carmel--a hunted data-vampire--has followed him back to a planet where she is forbidden to return.

Rising above all is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful entities who, through the Conversation--a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness--are just the beginning of irrevocable change.

The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. It 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 Elias has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world. 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's (Unholy Land, The Escapement) newest lushly immersive novel, Neom, which includes a guide to the Central Station-verse, is at turns gritty, comedic, transportive, and fascinatingly plausible.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Lowest Heaven (2013), edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read or listen to the full story for free at Escapepod.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #244 January-February 2013, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #102 March 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (2014), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2013, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, #130, July 2017. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton. The story was incorporated in the novel Central Station (2016).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #62 November 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton, and Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace. The story appears in slightly rewritten form in the novel Central Station (2016).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Roich Horton and Sean Wallace, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is in a slightly edited form incorporated in the novel Central Station (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story was later incorporated in the fixup novel Central Station (2016).