Neom by Lavie Tidhar

Published by Tachyon Publications on November 9, 2022

Can robots have religion? A robot messiah known as the Golden Man parts the Red Sea in Neom, a sea that is polluted by the remains of smart matter. Other robots, built for war, follow the Golden Man. But will they destroy the city of Neom in the same way they turned New Punt to dust centuries earlier?

Neom is an actual place. The brainchild of a Saudi prince, Neom is a smart city (it’s advertised as a “cognitive city”) north of the Red Sea and east of Egypt in northeastern Saudi Arabia. Neom is also a science fiction novel set in the distant future. Part of the novel takes place in Neom.

The future Neom is in the same location, but it is now “a mammoth metropolitan area.” The Central Station spaceport near Tel Aviv is a short flight from Neom. Central Station is the title of Lavie Tidhar’s 2017 novel that begins the future history he continues here.

The spaceport ties Neom to the inhabited solar system. Wars have been fought. Some of the detritus of war, including talking jackals and machines that are either sentient or pretending to be, roam the desert outside of Neom. They have nothing else to do.

Residents of Neom are either privileged by wealth or serving the privileged. Mariam grew up in Neom and never left. Like other poor people in Neom, she takes on all the work she can find. She cleans the homes of rich people. Hiring a human cleaner is a status symbol, a step up from using a general-purpose household robot.

Among her other jobs, Mariam sells flowers. She sells a rose to an old robot who becomes one of the novel’s central characters. The robot had a name at one point, but it refuses to share that name with humans. The robot was constructed as a humanoid war machine but was repurposed before it gained the freedom of obsolescence.

Tidhar works seamless backstories into the novel without disturbing its flow with obvious exposition. We learn about the robot’s travels to other worlds, its interaction with other robots, and its knowledge of war and terrorartists.

Mariam also works for Mukhtar’s Bazaar of Rare and Exotic Machines. Mukhtar sometimes makes business deals of questionable legality, but the law is loosely enforced in Neom. Nasir, a law enforcement officer in Neom, spends most of his time writing tickets for littering and admiring Mariam.

Saleh is a child who managed to escape when his father was frozen in time, forever dying in an explosion that was manufactured by a terrorartist using a time-dilation bomb, “the final installation of a mad artist who took delight in destruction and death.” Saleh and his father used a portable generator to protect themselves as they scavenged the site for artifacts. Something went wrong, leaving Saleh to fend for himself. Saleh joins a caravan and makes his way to Neom, where he interacts with Mukhtar and Mariam (and eventually with the robot) as he tries to raise money to book passage to Mars, where he hopes to begin a new life.

Much of the plot surrounds the old robot’s quest to restore to life the Golden Man. The Golden Man has a heart (power source) and something the robot regards as a soul. The nature of the soul and of the Golden Man is a bit ambiguous. These are mysteries the reader is meant to ponder. I was enchanted by the story and happily mystified by its unanswered questions.

Whether robots can have a soul depends on whether souls exist and, if so, what they are and whether they are confined to humans. When fighting robots have no war to fight, they are left to wonder about their purpose. What do they do when they are too old or outdated to serve humans? One became a toilet on a spacecraft for two centuries to better understand bodily function. Some formed a monastery so they could try to understand God, to divine a purpose for their continued existence.

All of this — and much more that I haven’t touched upon — is fascinating. It draws from familiar themes of science fiction without dwelling on them, then peppers the story with new and creative ideas. The novel is short but eventful, always in motion but not driven by action. Perhaps because of its emphasis on robots, but primarily because it is such a quiet novel, Neom reminded me of Clifford D. Simak’s groundbreaking science fiction. Just as Neom is a cognitive city, Neom is a cognitive novel — a story to think about and, in the end, to appreciate as an innovative work in a genre that is too often stagnant.

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Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Published by Ecco on November 8, 2022

The nature and consequences of art are the focal points of Now Is Not the Time to Panic. An act of artistic creation changes lives, including the life of its creators.

Frances Budge, known to all as Frankie, is a wife and mother when she tells the story of the summer she met Benjamin Ezekiel Brown, known for the summer as Zeke. Frankie was sixteen, living in Coalfield with her mother and hell-raising triplet brothers. Zeke’s mother moved from Memphis to Coalfield to stay with Zeke’s grandmother after his father took up with another woman. Frankie and Zeke bonded over their status as the children of cheaters and their interest in artistic expression. Frankie wanted to be a writer. Zeke liked to draw and planned to go to art school.

Frankie tells the story to the reader because Mazzie Brower, an art critic, has discovered the role that Frankie played in the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Mazzie has only uncovered part of the story but she plans to write what she knows. Frankie will need to decide how much of the full story she is willing to reveal to a national audience.

Frankie and Zeke decided to spend the summer making art. Frankie remembered a copy machine that her brothers stole and stashed in their garage. The two teens decided to make and distribute a letter-size poster. Frankie wrote two sentences: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. Zeke added drawings of shacks with collapsing roofs and beds occupied by children in twisted sheets. Two giant hands with withered fingers almost grasp the children but the hands are suspended in motion, never quite able to touch them. Frankie and Zeke each contributed drops of blood to the poster, drops that looked like stars when the poster was copied. They made hundreds of copies and surreptitiously hung them on walls, telephone poles, and bulletin boards. They vowed to keep their roles as creators a secret. They wanted to observe the public reaction, if any, to their art without sullying the reaction by revealing themselves.

Frankie had no idea what the sentence meant when she wrote it. Zeke didn’t know what the drawing meant. True art, the novel suggests, comes from the heart or soul, not just from the mind. That’s why it doesn’t always turn out to be what the artist envisioned.

The story also suggests that what art means to the artist may be less significant than what it means to its audience. A local reporter, who happens to be dating Frankie’s mother, believes the posters are nefarious. His reporting is fueled by a preacher who imagines the posters originated with a satanic cult. Within a few weeks, the mysterious posters have gained national attention. Kids in other cities are making and hanging their own versions of the posters. As they do when they recognize something that speaks to them, people arrive at interpretations of the words and art that are relevant to their own lives, interpretations that never consciously occurred to Frankie or Zeke.

Events get out of hand in Coalfield when a couple of kids who were screwing in the woods claim they were kidnapped by the satanic cult to explain why they didn’t come home. Fat old men get beered up and patrol the streets with guns. Tragedies ensue on a couple of fronts, leading to national headlines about the Coalfield Panic. Frankie and Zeke feel vaguely responsible for the unintended consequences of their art, although Zeke is mostly worried about going to jail.

Apart from its commentary on the unexpected forces that art can unleash, Now Is Not the Time to Panic is remarkable for its insightful portrayal of two lost kids, each damaged by a cheating father, who are drawn to each other yet terrified of the prospect of having sex. They can kiss for hours, but they channel their sexual energy into art. “We’d kissed and our prudish brains couldn’t handle it, so we invented some mantra that would unlock the mysteries of the universe.”  Zeke shows signs of a manic-depressive disorder. Frankie has a fear of intimacy, yet her larger fear is that she’ll lose Zeke when the summer ends.

Frankie and Zeke have the kind of relationship that cannot last but is perfect for its moment, a relationship that can never be forgotten, that defines part of the life that follows. As they are making the poster, Frankie has the sense that she “would trace my whole life back to this moment, my finger bleeding, this boy’s beautiful and messed-up mouth on mine, a work of art between us. I knew it would probably fuck me up. And that was fine.” Near the novel’s end, as Frankie thinks about speaking to Mazzie Brower, we learn how the poster has affected the next decades of Frankie’s and Zeke’s lives.

Kevin Wilson tells the story in understated prose that is perfect for a novel that undersells its drama. Wilson proves that prose doesn’t need to be flashy and a story doesn’t need to be histrionic to be spellbinding. In a series of carefully crafted scenes during a single summer and a few additional days in the present, Wilson delivers more intensity and insight than most writers manage with twice as many words.

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Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

Published by Ace on October 4, 2022

After aliens made First Contact with humans, they allowed three humans to visit Station Eternity. One is Adrian Casserly-Berry, the ambassador from Earth, chosen not by humans but by the aliens. He happened to be the first human they met.

The second is Mallory Viridian, who doesn’t want anything to do with other humans because people tend to die in her presence. Why Mallory is a murder magnet is explained late in the novel. The explanation isn’t particularly convincing, but it is better than offering no explanation for a series of amazing coincidences. After all, the willingness to suspend disbelief in unlikely explanations is a condition that science fiction demands of its readers.

The third is Alexander “Xan” Morgan, a former member of the military who was assigned to mortuary duty. Xan has claimed asylum on the station, where he was apparently taken by accident after he either killed someone or avoided being killed. The military believes he went AWOL and various parts of the government want him back or dead.

Several alien species inhabit the station. Members of a prominent species appear to be made from rock. Others look like they are covered with bark. Some resemble wasps. They all consider themselves superior to humans and they’re probably right. The station is sentient, as are the alien shuttles, but the station needs to be in a symbiotic relationship with a member of a different species to function. An alien named Ren has bonded with the station. The station loses its mind when Ren is murdered.

Fortuitously, Mallory’s talent is the intuitive investigation of murders. Since so many murders occur when she is nearby, the talent comes in handy. Her distaste for being around murder victims and their killers explains why she prefers a nearly human-free station to life on Earth. Unfortunately for her but to the reader’s benefit, other humans arrive on a shuttle during a moment of crisis. Some of them are connected to the humans who are already on the station.

Mallory’s aunt Kathy is one of the station newcomers. She’s hoping to bring Mallory home. The reader knows that Mallory isn’t going anywhere until she solves Ren’s murder.

Calliope Oh is ex-military, having briefly served with Xan. They share a shameful secret. Oh is a civilian because her approach to military service was more creative than the military could stomach. She’s recruited as a military contractor for a mission that involves Xan.

Xan’s brother Phineas is a gay trans rapper who performs as Salty Fatts. He’s recruited to accompany Oh, but he needs to talk to Xan anyway about Xan’s recent inheritance.

Lovely Brown played the violin until she lost a finger in a knife fight. Her grandmother wins a trip for two to the space station. She brings Lovely in the hope that alien technology will restore the missing finger, although she also has an ulterior motive for making the trip.

During the first half of the novel, the story pauses frequently to tell the reader the backstory of every significant human character. It is fortunate that the backstories are interesting because the plot doesn’t really get underway until the backstories have all been established. Once it starts rolling, it combines action with so many seemingly random events that readers might need a flowchart to keep track of the plot and the relationships between the characters.

While the human characters are well developed, the aliens are standard fare. Life on Earth is largely neglected, apart from some references to fear of aliens. The plot includes so many twists and turns that the reader might become lost. On several occasions, I asked myself “why did that happen?” Maybe those questions were answered by the novel’s end, but I asked the question too many times to be certain that the story resolved my uncertainties.

Although I did not solve the murder mystery, I stopped trying long before the reveal. In fact, I often forgot that a murder mystery was driving the plot. The story entertains despite its maddening lack of focus. The characters kept me engaged even when I felt in danger of losing the plot.

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Racing the Light by Robert Crais

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on November 1, 2022

Josh Schumacher does a podcast (Josh Shoe in Your Face) with the help of his friend Ryan Seborg. The podcast focuses on conspiracy theories, aliens, and the other nutcase attractions that the mainstream media supposedly hide from the public. The content is nutty but the podcast is well executed. Some of the better episodes featured interviews with a porn star whose professional name is Skylar Lawless. Skylar is making art from text messages. After she snooped through text messages of a local politician who hired her for sex, she learned a secret that she can’t be allowed to share.

When Josh goes missing, his wealthy mother (who has some secrets of her own) hires Elvis Cole to find him. Since her son depends on his generous mother for a regular cash infusion, she is convinced that he would not willingly drop out of contact with her. Cole isn’t certain that she’s right, but he agrees to take the case.

As a private investigator who lives in the rational world, Elvis knows that most podcast conspiracy theories are utter nonsense. His search for Josh leads to evidence of an actual conspiracy involving political corruption and real estate development. It isn’t as sexy as hiding aliens in Area 51 or putting tracking devices in vaccines, but it’s the kind of thing that causes actual harm to the public.

Murders ensue and characters the reader should care about are placed in danger's way. Saying more about the plot would spoil it, but I can say that Cole’s footwork leads him from clue to clue as he comes to understand why Josh has disappeared. He encounters plenty of jerks and a few decent people while crisscrossing LA in his entertaining quest to find the absent podcaster.

Racing the Light isn’t an action novel — this is a novel of detection rather than shootouts — but series regular Joe Pike shows up when Cole needs muscle. Action fans will be pleased that muscle becomes necessary in one of the final scenes.

Racing the Light advances Cole’s previously unsuccessful relationship with Lucy and her son Ben. Good novels are about people, after all, and fans of the series who have developed some affection for Cole will be pleased to know that his life might be improving.

Still, this is a detective novel. Most of Robert Crais’ effort goes into the development of a credible but offbeat plot and interesting characters. Sadly, we don’t see much of the porn star, but Josh’s sincerity and professionalism make him a likable character despite his tenuous connection with reality. Josh’s cantankerous neighbor adds comic relief to a plot that, unlike some Elvis Cole novels, is never heavy. People use the term “beach read” dismissively, but Racing the Light is the kind of novel that allows a reader to escape daily worries by focusing on a fun and absorbing story.

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Foster by Claire Keegan

Published by Grove Press on November 1, 2022

The mother in a large family is about to have another baby. The parents can barely feed the children they already have. They ask a childless couple to take one of their daughters until her mother gives birth. Only after the girl has lived with the Kinsellas for part of the summer does a neighboring gossip reveal why the couple is childless.

The girl is initially ambivalent about staying with strangers. She doesn’t know how long she will stay with the Kinsellas or whether her parents will want her back. Her father doesn’t say goodbye to her when he drops her off. Like the other adult men she has observed, her father says little of consequence. He talks about the weather, exaggerates the size of his crop of hay when he talks to John Kinsella. “He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true.”

Like the girl’s parents, the Kinsellas are farmers. Unlike her parents, they are making a go of it. John and Edna welcome the girl into their lives. Edna gives the girl a hot bath, cleans her nails, digs wax out of her ears, does all the things her mother is too busy to do. John helps her with her reading and corrects her when she substitutes “yeah” for “yes.” When the girl’s complexion begins to improve, Edna says “All you need is minding.” Every child needs minding if they are to stay safe and reach their full potential. Edna has become protective with no child of her own to mind, which might explain her failure to understand how the girl’s parents could leave her with strangers.

Edna would like to give the girl’s mother some money, but the girl knows that her proud father would object. Her father drinks. He lost their red heifer gambling. Her parents have given little thought to educating her. Her clothes are hand-me-downs. She isn’t the victim of abuse, but to some extent, she has been neglected.

Visiting the Kinsellas opens a new world for the girl, a world where reading is valued, where she can wear clothing that fits. John challenges her to run to the mailbox every day and is proud when she becomes faster. Having adults pay attention to her, to encourage her, makes the summer away from her family pass quickly. In the Kinsella home, she has “room and time to think.” She would rather stay than return home.

As Colm Tóibín has done in his fiction, Claire Keegan emphasizes the malicious gossip that characterizes life in rural Ireland (and for that matter, in much of small-town America). When a neighbor has a chance to talk to the girl alone, she pries into the details of the Kinsellas’ life and tells her the secret John and Edna have kept to themselves. The girl wonders at the neighbor’s smug, self-satisfied laughter when she reveals a family tragedy that is none of the girl’s business, nor the neighbor’s. The Kinsellas keep their grief to themselves, but they have not let it overwhelm their ability to live or to care about others.

Foster is a spare story. Much in the novella is left unsaid. The relationship of the Kinsellas to the girl’s parents is unclear. We learn little about the girl’s siblings. We don’t even know the girl’s name. She has no reason to tell us those things. She instead narrates her thoughts, fears, and discoveries. She describes unfamiliar events (John is asked to dig a grave for a neighbor; she sees her first dead body at the wake). She learns that people are different from each other. Edna differs from the gossipy neighbor because, as John explains it, Edna “wants to find the good in others, and her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.”

From John, the girl learns that there are times when it is better to practice silence. “Many’s the man lost much just because he missed the perfect opportunity to say nothing.” The girl makes good use of that advice when she next sees her parents.

The novella’s ending, like life, leaves the reader wondering what will happen next. It doesn’t seem likely to be good, at least in the next few minutes that will follow the story’s end. On the other hand, the girl’s life has likely been changed, set on a path of undreamt possibilities, because strangers were kind to her. Perhaps she has a sense of what her life could be. John tells her that women are good with “eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before men even get a whiff of it.”

The eventualities are left for the reader to ponder. Everything that comes before the reader’s imagination takes over is told in a young, gentle voice. The girl senses the importance of events. She overlooks nothing but understands less than the adult reader. This is a coming of age story told by a girl who isn’t prepared to understand what might come next. The girl will need to think about what she has learned before it all makes sense to her. The joy of Foster is that the same is true for the reader.

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