Central Station

Lavie Tidhar

Tel Aviv has become a central space port in a post-singularity solar system in this cyberpunk novel. Though light on plot, it is dense with imaginative mind-bending concepts such as data vampires, post-mortality packages and robot religions – with some humorous nods to Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide, thrown in for good measure. Great fun for all lovers of world-building fiction and virtual reality games players.

Extract

A group of disgruntled house appliances watched the sermon in the virtuality – coffee makers, cooling units, a couple of toilets – appliances, more than anyone else needed the robots’ guidance, yet they were often wilful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both with their owners and with themselves. And: 'Your companion is oddly mute,' the elevator said. 'Her readings are very strange. She is not entirely human, is she, Mr. Jones.'

'Which of us ever is,' Achimwene said.

Parallels