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 literally 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 is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik—a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts. His father is terminally-ill with a multigenerational mind-plague. And a hunted data-vampire has followed Boris to where she is forbidden to return.
Rising above them 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 alien entities who, through the Conversation—a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness—are just the beginning of irrevocable change.
At Central Station, humans and machines continue to adapt, thrive...and even evolve.

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.
But there must always be an account...and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.
Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism, - a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields - to answer one last, impossible question:
What makes a hero?

Lavie Tidhar was in Dar-es-Salaam during the American embassy bombings in 1998, and stayed in the same hotel as the Al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi. Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 London, King’s Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks—experiences that led to the creation of Osama . In an alternate world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante... Joe’s quest to find the man takes him across the world, from the backwaters of Asia to the European Capitals of Paris and London, and as the mystery deepens around him there is one question he is trying hard not to ask: who is he, really, and how much of the books are fiction? Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want? Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he’ll find in New York and, finally, on top a quiet hill above Kabul—nor for the choice he will at last have to make... In Osama , Lavie Tidhar brilliantly delves into the post-9/11 global subconscious, mixing together elements of film noir, non-fiction, alternative history and international thriller to create an unsettling—yet utterly compelling—portrayal of our times.

Ten acclaimed writers imagine the future of art across space and time. In this volume from the Twelve Tomorrows series, Deep Dream, ten writers imagine the different ways in which art forms might evolve, devolve, shift, and transform in the decades and centuries to come. They consider how the rapid progress of technology will interact with different mediums of art or give rise to new ones, and what the lives and inner worlds of different kinds of artists might look like in the future as they adapt to rapidly shifting eras amidst anthropogenic global threats like climate change and fascism. Contributors include award-winning authors and artists from around the world, with a strong focus on South Asia; three of the contributors are from India or Sri Lanka. Readers will also find in this collection American science-fiction legend Bruce Sterling and Egyptian counter-cultural cartoonist, visual artist, and writer Ganzeer, as well as artist Diana Scherer, one of the pioneers in bio tech art. The volume also includes an interview with noted science fiction publisher and editor Neil Clarke, who discusses the future of art and the ways in which the science fiction short fiction market has responded to the introduction of AI-generated fiction and art. Contributors Samit Basu, Vajra Chandrasekera, Neil Clarke, Aliette de Bodard, Ganzeer, Cassandra Khaw, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Archita Mittra, Sloane Leong, Bruce Sterling, Wole Talabi, Lavie Tidhar. Artwork by Diana Scherer.

Now collected into a single volume, editors Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene bring you the groundbreaking anthologies Jews vs Zombies and Jews vs Aliens, which pose the two most important questions asked in the past 2000 years: what happens when the Chosen People meet aliens... or the living dead? With authors ranging from Orange Prize winner Naomi Alderman to The Big Bang Theory's writer/producer Eric Kaplan, and from BSFA Award winner Adam Roberts to BFS Best Newcomer Sarah Lotz, the stories range from the light-hearted to the profound. "If you will it, it is no dream!" as Theodor Herzl said: and no doubt he had just these anthologies in mind. Jews vs Aliens and Jews vs Zombies are the must have anthologies of the year.

Twenty-nine new short stories representing the state of the art in international science fiction. The future is coming. It knows no bounds, and neither should science fiction.

They say the more things change the more they stay the same. But over the last hundred years, science fiction has changed. Vibrant new generations of writers have sprung up across the globe, proving the old adage false. From Jamaica to Japan, from Bolivia to Bahrain, from Italy to Iraq, they draw on their unique backgrounds and culture, changing the face of the genre one story at a time.

Prepare yourself for a journey through the wildest reaches of the imagination, to visions of Earth as it might be and the far corners of the universe.

In The Best of World SF , award-winning author Lavie Tidhar acts as guide and companion to a world of stories, from never-before-seen originals to award winners, from twenty-six countries and seven languages. Because the future is coming and it belongs to us all.

26 new short stories representing the state of the art in international science fiction, selected by Lavie Tidhar.

21 counties: France, China, Singapore, Botswana, Nigeria, India, Japan, Italy, Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad, Spain, Mexico, Finland, Israel, Iceland, Russia, Ghana, South Africa, Sweden and Malaysia.

14 women / 12 men.

Stories:

'Immersion' by Aliette de Bodard
'Debtless' by Chen Qiufan
'Fandom for Robots' by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
'Virtual Snapshots' by Tlotlo Tsamaase
'What The Dead Man Said' by Chinelo Onwualu
'Delhi' by Vandana Singh
'The Wheel of Samsara' by Han Song
'Xingzhou' by Yi-Sheng Ng
'Prayer' by Taiyo Fujii
'The Green Ship' by Francesco Verso
'Eyes of the Crocodile' by Malena Salazar Macia
'Bootblack' by Tade Thompson
'The Emptiness in the Heart of all Things' by Fabio Fernandes
'The Sun From Both Sides' by R.S.A. Garcia
'Dump' by Cristina Jurado
'Rue Chair' by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo
'His Master's Voice' by Hannu Rajaniemi
'Benjamin Schneider's Little Greys' by Nir Yaniv
'The Cryptid' by Emil H. Petersen
'The Bank of Burkina Faso' by Ekaterina Sedia
'An Incomplete Guide...' by Kuzhali Manickavel
'The Old Man with The Third Hand' by Kofi Nyameye
'The Green' by Lauren Beukes
'The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir' by Karin Tidbeck
'Prime Meridian' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
'If At First You Don't Succeed' by Zen Cho

From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain”, the planet Venus has loomed large in the imaginations of science fiction writers. Here, that steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation is explored in sixteen all-new stories collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and editor Gardner Dozois.

What if there are other timelines, other histories, other Jews? Would they still have a covenant with the one God, or would they know strange gods? Would they have survived banishment, pogrom and Holocaust? What if the Holocaust had not occurred? Or what if it had succeeded beyond Hitler's darkest dreams?

Some of the world's greatest speculative fiction authors explore these roads not taken, and many others, in Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history fiction.

Contributors include Jack Dann, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, Jane Yolen, Lavie Tidhar and Benjamin Rosenbaum, among many others!

CONTENTS

NOVELLAS
"The Dark Ride" by John Kessel

NOVELETS
"Interludes with the Gunwright" by Jonathan L. Howard
"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 51: The Great Fish" by James Morrow

SHORT STORIES
"Integral Nothings" by Robert Reed
"The Diamond Family Glitters” by H. Pueyo
"A Little Knife Music” by Jenn Reese
"N-raptured” by Justin C. Key
"Hard!" by Van Aaron Hughes
"Litter Witch” by Susan Palwick
"Wild Geese” by Lavie Tidhar
"The Piper” by Karen Joy Fowler

POEMS
"Annabel Digs Her Own Grave” by Gretchen Tessmer

DEPARTMENTS
"Books To Look For" by Charles de Lint
"Books" by Elizabeth Hand
"Games: Yakuza!" by Marc Laidlaw
"Films: Ending Things The Kaufman Way" by Karin Lowachee
"Science: How Fast Are We Going?" by Jerry Oltion
"Plumage From Pegasus: You Make the Best of What's Still Around" by Paul Di Filippo
"Coming Attractions"
"Curiosities" by Thomas Kaufsek

CARTOONS
from Ali Solomon, Arthur Masear, and Kendra Allenby

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2021 , Volume 140, No. 1 & 2, Whole No. 753.
C. C. Finlay, editor
Cover art by Kent Bash

THERE IS NO LAND WITHOUT BLOOD, AND I WATER THIS LAND WITH THE BLOOD OF MY MEN.

Ruth's family were in Budapest when the Nazis came.

Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks her.

With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else's.

So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream.

But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies; sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder.

A sweeping historical epic following four generations of a single family as they struggle to hold on to their land and each other.

The next novel from Lavie Tidhar, the award-winning author of THE VIOLENT CENTURY.

Deep in the heart of history's most infamous concentration camp, a man lies dreaming. His name is Shomer, and before the war he was a pulp fiction author. Now, to escape the brutal reality of life in Auschwitz, Shomer spends his nights imagining another world - a world where a disgraced former dictator now known only as Wolf ekes out a miserable existence as a low-rent PI in London's grimiest streets.

An extraordinary story of revenge and redemption, A Man Lies Dreaming is the unforgettable testament to the power of imagination.