Lavie Tidhar continues to be a little bit of an enigma for me as a reader. His Central Station stories have given me a setting I enjoy: a space station backdrop for stories that aren’t exclusively science fiction. His Judge Dee stories present mysteries being solved by an aristocratic vampire and his ever-hungry familiar, Jonathan. I like when a trope character, like a vampire, is given stories outside their genre.

But I didn’t connect with 2022 release, The Escapement. The setting was less solid, its characters less interesting. Unfortunately, I had some of those problems with The Circumference of the World too. The plot slips around between three character who are affected by a science fiction novel that may or may not exist and has spawned a world-wide cult. (Take that L. Ron Hubbard.) I never felt like I was on solid ground with the plot and didn’t really want to spend all that much time with the characters. That said, I finished the book. It was fine. I will of course read more of Tidhar’s works. The Circumference of the World, though, isn’t an enthusiastic recommendation from me.

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book. I found the intermix of languages to be too immersion breaking and confusing, and I wasn't a fan of the specific type of prose and descriptive language used. Obviously these are completely an individual preference, and I would still encourage other people to check it out.

A book that creates a whole religion. A book that reviews who we are in this universe, from a very small born in a tiny island from the Pacific to the inmensity of the cosmos. Hugely ambitious and succesful in just 300 pages. Highly recomended.

Lavie Tidhar's new novel is a fiendishly ramified mixture of narratives. In late 90s London, Delia Welegtabit's husband, Levi, has disappeared. Levi may or may not have owned a copy of the elusive novel Lode Stars, upon which pulp legend Eugene Charles Hartley apparently founded a religion (no, definitely NOT that one, despite one of the categories Amazon has filed this book under). A London gangster and his pliant police stooge want the book and engage second hand book dealer, Daniel Chase, to find it.

That's the first layer. We also learn about Delia's early life on the island of Vanuatu (also visited by Hartley) and about Hartley's career and life - part of this is told through letters to and about Hartley by various early SF luminaries - Tidhar rendering many different voices here, all totally believably.

We also read an extract from The Book itself, the story of (another) Delia seeking her lost father deep in space, the setting keying into a mythology that Hartley either believed or invented. It's all about the destination of humankind, which is to both swept into a black hole at the centre of the galaxy and preserved as information. All of these narrative levels interact, with coincidences, names and versions of names, apparent timeslips and repeated themes (shadows, eyes). Some of these might be explained by Hartley's authorship of Lode Stars and his making allusions to the works of his contemporaries: others - less so.

Gangster Oskar Lens's career as a black market dealer in the failing Soviet Union features too, as does the London second-hand book scene ('My highest ambition had always been to open my own bookshop on Cecil Court'). It's a bewildering ride through 20th century history and the birth of modern SF (taking in the rise of modern conventions, as well as gatherings in a Holborn pub) something Tidhar has deep knowledge of (it was fun to spot allusions, especially in the Lode Stars extract, to names, themes and artefacts from various genre classics: I'm sure I missed many). It is though much more than that, touching on questions about the nature of reality and the meaning of life as well as - perhaps - commenting on how the SF writer of a religion may be affected by that and, possibly, escape the trap he's set himself.

There is some lovely wordplay here ('Dewey-eyed librarians') as well as nice pulpy (but culturally appropriate) language ('Paperbacks started back at me from the shelves without saying a damn thing', 'My aunt had died of cancer. She wasted away like a cigarette.') as well as starkly beautiful language ('I felt the press of stars overhead, and they were cold, and bright, and indifferent.')

I really enjoyed The Circumference of the World. As a book, it is a thing of its own, not like anything I'd come across before, but a great read crammed with ideas and glorious writing: there is simply so much material here, I think some writers could and would make 3 or 4 books of it but we have all that concentrated in a short novel. Somehow that compression means that - like matter spiralling into a black hole - everything here simply lights up, bathing the reader with its intense radiation.

An amazing read, strongly recommended.

This book is about a disappearing book, black holes, nearly-immortal humans, and a legendary but fictional science fiction writer, Eugene Charles Hartley, who keeps company with other writers from the “Golden Age” of science fiction. Hartley wrote a book—that no one can find anymore—and established a religion. The mystery at the heart of The Circumference of the World: was Hartley enlightened or deluded?

I wanted to grasp the meaning behind this novel… In a way, this is itself the book that disappears upon being read. Reading it, I felt as bewildered as some of its characters, like there was something just there, just beyond my grasp: the same feeling I had reading Heinlein’s (awful) A Stranger in a Strange Land, in some ways—which I think would really please the author, as this novel feels like an homage to Heinlein.

Still, this was a speedy and intriguing read. There are many delicious layers, interesting worlds, and connections to make. I only wish I had a book club with which to make those connections. I’m going to leave it to those who understand its references and perhaps Tidhar’s style to interpret the novel; but I am very glad I read it, as it has left me with ideas that will no doubt send me down worm- (not rabbit) holes.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Tachyon Publications for the ARC.

This is a story within a story with another storyline thrown in there. I don’t think I was in the right headspace to truly enjoy this book. There are good parts, but brining it all together fell a little short for me, and that probably on me more than anything. If you do pick this up, be ready to bend your brain in some weird ways

"What is a man but a sum of his memories.”

The story surrounds of finding a cult sci-fi book called The Lode Stars. All the copies of this book have disappeared through time and the book since then have become a myth. We follow first a set of characters led by Delia. We also get to know the life of the infamous author and bits of the book, and interestingly, the main character of the book was also called Delia.

The book contains different sections and follows a set of characters with different time frames from 1900s to thousand years in the future. The POVs changed interchangeably from 1st person to 3rd person which can be confusing, but as a whole it was ingenious. It is a pretty short book with concise text and storytelling without losing its soul and essence. I guess it all comes to the author’s proficient writing skills.

This is quite a different book than I expected. I didn’t like it at the first but grew to like it after finishing it, when I connected all the dots and understood its philosophical underlying message.

Lavie Tidhar delivers a homage to science fiction in the form of a self-referential narrative, providing us with numerous entertaining parallels and references. It's a fragmented story, composed of various perspectives, and leaves the reader free to interpret the ending in many ways, which can both please and displease. He skillfully blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination, to the point where by the end, one doubts where they are! Is it a book within a book within a book?

This book is wild. Part story (a strange story, but still, recognisable fiction), part satire and a lot about humanities search for meaning, it's fun and confusing and I loved it. There is philosophy and (I think) making fun of Scientology. This book reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut, in the ridiculous ride that still touched my heart. It's hard to explain why this is so good, but its not a long book, so I recommend reading it and making your own, confused decisions.
I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley.

*3.5 stars rounded up

Lode Star, an elusive novel written by the pulp science fiction writer Eugene Charles Hartley, draws together an unlikely group of people: a mathematician, a book dealer, a mobster and a woman searching for her missing father and husband.

But what is Lode Star? Is it a guide to immortality as those from the religious group the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes believe? Did Hartley create this religion because he truly discovered the secrets of the universe or is he just a common conman?

This is a hard book to review. I’m very conflicted in my feelings. Some parts fascinated me, others bored me. Some parts had imaginative world building, other parts felt flat and it was hard to picture what was going on.

Here are a few things to consider when deciding if this book is right for you.

First, it has an unusual structure. For a very short book, just over 250 pages, it has quite a few perspectives. There’s also a book within a book and letters. I really like books with unusual structures, but I felt like the order in which the story was told could have been restructured to capture my interest better, especially in the beginning.

Second, it’s heavy on the philosophy and low on the character building. A lot of science fiction is written this way- I’m thinking of The Three Body Problem here- and I can enjoy stories like that, but sometimes I wanted to connect with the character a little more. I did enjoy the theory questioning if we live in reality or if we’re just reimagined and recreated pieces of data from something long ago dead and gone.

The middle section of the novel focused on the mobster character, Oskar Lens, and his background. I really had to push to get through this section, but I can see other readers enjoying in much more than I did.

Lastly, since most the book is fairly abstract, it might not get interesting for you until the last third of the book. The book within a book sections were my favorite! It finally had the inventive worldbuilding I’ve come to expect from Tidhar. It was also very meta at the end and made me think that if I reread the book I would enjoy and appreciate it more.

If you’ve enjoyed Tidhar’s novels in the past, I’d give this one a try. I’m glad I read it and tried something a bit outside my comfort zone.

*Thanks to Tachyon Publications and NetGalley for the gifted digital arc. All opinions are my own.

A slightly confounding (in a good way) and fascinating ode to classic sci-fi, The Circumference of the World is a lyrical blend of homage and invention.

Eloquent and beautifully written, the novel introduces a complex concept that was fun to tease out. Despite the variety of characters in the short novel, all were interesting and the story moved at a great pace.

As someone who reads (and reviews) a lot of classic sci-fi, these aspects of this story were a pleasant surprise. I was not expecting a good chunk of the novel to be a story written as a classic sci-fi (that rang closest to Samuell Delany in style, if I had to pick) and fictional communication between real classic sci-fi writers.

I do wonder how much people who aren’t acquainted with that genre and 50s/60s sci-fi writers would get out of it. To be honest, despite having read books by pretty much all the authors included in the novel, I wasn’t super into that part of the story. This could be because I enjoy classic sci-fi as a relic of the past (despite or perhaps because of their sometimes problematic elements and, often, bad science. They're hilarious!), so attempts to create one in our day and age is like cooking stew over a stove versus a firepit. The modern version might be better crafted, but that's not really why I'm eating it. I'm not saying that part of the story wasn't well done, it just didn't work for me.

I also wasn’t entirely sure what “the point” was in terms of the various other tangents. Delia, yes, but Chase and the mobster I wasn't sure about. We’re given a sci-fi writer who supposedly created a religion - was that a bit of a dig at Scientology? - as well as a very lofty concept of the world being a construct. As I understood it, the idea was something akin to our existence being a memory, the last fleeting essence of humanity as we’re pulled into a black hole? It’s possible I misinterpreted it though.

Either way, those who enjoy classic sci-fi will likely enjoy this book, as would anyone who prefers cerebral sci-fi.

Once upon a time in the ancient era when childhood was about to bleed into pre-adolescence, we used to question if someone “liked” another person or “liked liked” them, our eyes wide in anticipation of the stressed or unstressed response. For the past half-dozen or so novels I’ve read by Lavie Tidhar, the reply each time was a no-brainer: a breathy, intense, “I like like.” With his newest, Circumference of the World, for the first time I can say agreeably enough, “I like it.” Which I absolutely did — it has a great premise, moves apace, plays with a number of genres, and throws in a slew of cameos from the so-called Golden Age of science fiction. But while I enjoyed it enough — certainly enough to recommend it — the novel didn’t have the same impact as his other works. Which, you know, still leaves the guy at 7-1 (with 7 being great or near-great and 1 being enjoyable). Not a bad record.

The premise at the heart of Circumference of the World is that, as one character says, “We’re all just complexes of information, of data.” Which is innocuous enough, but it goes further, arguing that “we were all not ourselves but reconstructed memories . . . matter swirling inside a black hole … God’s eyes into the universe.” More frighteningly, creatures existed beyond the event horizon — “eaters [that] fed on the reconstituted identities of those lives whose broken atoms had … been sucked into the lode star.”

This concept originates with the pulp sci-fi author Eugene Hartley, a very thinly veiled L. Ron Hubbard, who wrote a book called Lode Stars which is allegedly a sort of protective talisman (an “occlusion”) to ward off the Eaters. Beyond the book, Hartley also founded the church of God’s All-Seeing Eyes, which has since become a sprawling, possibly malevolent institution. The church also allegedly bought up all copies of Hartley’s book, though it's also speculated there are other reasons the book has disappeared so that it is mythically impossible (and possibly dangerous) to find.

All of this is revealed not at the start but gradually throughout the novel. Instead, we open up with Delia Welegtabit, a young girl on the island of Vanua Lava whose family (possibly) had a copy of Lode Stars. Later, living in London and working as a mathematician, Delia enters into a relationship with another mathematician, Levi, who is desperate to make a mark in his field (at 30 he’s in the danger zone of washing out) and latches onto the ideas in Lode Stars, becoming more and more obsessed with finding a copy. When he disappears, Delia hires Daniel Chase, a used book dealer to track him down, and the book moves from a Tales of the South Pacific to a gritty realist work and now into a noir/mystery/gangster novel, as Chase finds himself entangled with Oskar Lens, a former Russian mobster (now independent) and also the world’s biggest Hartley fan/collector., as well as a firm believer in Hartley’s philosophy, though not of Hartley’s Church.

The book continues to morph (or expand) into other genres, as we enter far-future science fiction via an excerpt from Lode Star (with a character also named Delia) and semi-biography as we see Hartley’s career and his interactions (either in-person or, adding the epistolary genre, via letters from/to/about Hartley) with a who’s-who of early sci-fi, including but not limited to Heinlein, Judith Merrill, Asimov, John W. Campbell, Bradbury, A.E. Van Vogt. We even get a cameo appearance from Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Hartley writes at one point about himself and his fellow authors: “We were more than writers, we were prophets of a new age. We could see the future, we could imagine it and give it shape.” Humble Hartley was not.

As one would expect from Tidhar, he handles all these genres, and the switches between them, handily, as the reader moves effortlessly from genre to genre, POV to POV, style to style, from time to time. Everything is vividly portrayed: Delia’s early island life, the seediness of Levi’s life in London, Chase’s face blindness condition, Lens’ time in a Soviet penal camp, the Golden Age parties and relationships (Campbell in particular comes alive, while Tidhar has some fun with Heinlein’s constant advocacy of nudism). The sci-fi story, meanwhile, is full of wonderful moments and images, such as a hive-mind character who takes the form of, what else, a swarm of golden bees. It can be moving at times (one of the far-future characters is on a grief-filled quest after the death of her father), chilling at others (particularly Lens’ segments) and laugh-out-loud funny at others (“I didn’t have the heart to tell him [Heinlein] no one wanted to see his dick flopping around, thank you all the same).

But while Tidhar juggles everything smoothly and with aplomb, and crafts singular sentence with his usual mastery, I think what worked against the book for me was the book’s brevity; “everything” includes so much that I felt some of the storylines, though not all, didn’t fully meet their potential, and for those that did, such as the far-future one, they were so good I wanted more. While Lens and Delia (the future one more than the present-day one) came vividly, fully alive, the other characters felt more thinly constructed. I also felt more could have been done with the basic premise, real or not, regarding people as collections of information, the universe as a simulation, etc. Finally, while I found the Golden Age cameos entertaining, that was as far as they went. All of that creating my aforementioned sense of enjoying the book, but not being moved by it or immersed within it. Mind you, I make no complaints about enjoyment or consider entertainment an unworthy goal or result. As I said, I’m still recommending this book. I’m just not, you know, “recommending recommending” it.

Several people, including a mathematician, a former crime boss, and a bookseller, are searching for a pulp sci-fi book that inspired a religion. A book that disappears after it's been read and many believe does not exist at all. There is also the possibility that everything being presented is just memories being consumed by beings that live beyond the event horizon of black holes. It's a weird premise for a weird book.

The way the moments and characters come together is interesting but doesn't necessarily form a traditional plot. Instead it creates a complex vignette with character's stories wandering in and out. Fortunately, it works.

The book within the book revolves around a theory of God outside the universe looking in via the light captured by black holes. This premise is reflected in each character through some facet of a parental relationship, especially with regard to disappointment. While we don't spend a lot of time with any individual character, we get a narrow window into the inner life of each one. Eventually we get to see how the writer himself relates to and is changed by what he has written.

All of these threads culminate in a final encounter that transcends both stories, offering a meta juxtaposition of solace or disappointment for the reader to choose.

Altogether a fun and interesting experimental story that I look forward to rereading.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this as an ebook through NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: I liked this but didn't love it as much as some of Tidhar's other books. It gets pretty abstract at points and can be a bit hard to follow. It is interesting food for thought and beautifully written though.

The book is broken into different parts that follow different characters. At first we follow is Delia, a math professor whose husband, Levi, goes suddenly missing after obsessing over a book called Lode Stars. Then we follow Daniel Chase, a young book dealer that Delia comes to for help when her husband goes missing. Next we hear from Oskar Lens a mobster obsessed with finding Lode Stars. Then we also hear from Eugene Hartley himself as he writes Lode Stars and then back to Delia but this is Delia as shown in the book Lode Stars as she journeys back to Earth.

The theory that goes throughout the book is around a religion that was created from the Lode Stars book that speculates that everything in the world is a construct and nothing is really real anymore. There is some theory that the world is being recycled through black holes (I may have misunderstood this theory, it's a bit ambiguous). The story kind of twists around itself as we journey through space and time and reality to mostly end up back where we started.

I enjoyed the beautiful writing and found this very readable. However, it can be hard to follow at times and ends up being a bit ambiguous. It's one of those books that I think you have to read through a few times to really understand everything that is happening here. I enjoyed it but I didn't love it and I probably won't pick it up again.

My Summary (4/5): Overall this was interesting and provides some intriguing food for thought. However, it's also a bit twisty, turny...hard to follow...and ambiguous. Some of the theories explored here are unique and interesting, but it takes some effort to try and understand what happens in the end. This isn't my favorite Tidhar book, I liked "The Escapement" better. However, it did feed my itch for a unique and different read...which is something Tidhar excels at.

I need to declare reviewer-failure. I read this book, and finished it while I was away from my laptop. I proceeded to read another book - and forgot to review this one. Then, another book.

As a result, I can't recall enough about this book to write a review. I'll accept if you ban me from future reviews form you as a publisher (though I hope you won't; I'm pretty reliable usually).

I will say that my highlights suggest that this was not a trivial novel; lots of interesting ideas that took time to develop & explore. But, I can't recall enough detail to write a good review - just enough to rate it 4 stars.

Apologies.

The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar

What a trip this book was! I have heard the name Lavie Tidhar for years but had never read anything by this author - I didn’t even know his gender. But I had always heard good things so when I saw a book by him on NetGalley, I requested and received an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The description talked about a mystery involving a science fiction book that didn’t exit that held the secrets of the universe. Sounded interesting, I thought, I’ll give it a go.

Wow! I can’t remember the last book I read like this that wasn’t written by Phillip K. Dick! The book was trippy and weird, leaving me wondering what really happened in it in all the best ways.

Each section is from the point of view from a different character - the wife of the missing mathematician, the face-blind bookseller, the erudite ex-Bratva thug, and so on. Each section is in a different writing style and tone that fit the character. A large chunk towards the end is told in epistolary format, advancing the story through fictitious correspondence of golden age science fiction writers.

I’m still not exactly sure how it ended, but I keep thinking about it, so I guess I liked this book! Give it a shot and you may like it too.

The Circumference of the World es una novela estructurada en varias partes que parece que no tienen nada que ver pero que en realidad siguen el hilo conductor de las obsesiones de su autor. Lavie Tidhar no deja pasar la ocasión para exponer su querencia por la historia de la ciencia ficción en la edad de oro, en este libro en el que siempre está presente un trasunto de L. Ron Hubbard. Aunque el personaje inventado por Tidhar no cumpla punto por punto las andanzas que ya nos mostraron en Astounding, en general los puntos fuertes de la narración son extremadamente coincidentes. Y claro, no deja de ser apasionante ver cómo los escritores que definieron el género en su momento aparecen como secundarios en la historia.


El autor israelí va cambiando de personajes, de voz narrativa y de género en cada sección del libro casi sin solución de continuidad. Queda de la mano del lector aceptar este juego de espejos e identidades, con unos toques que no desentonarían en una obra de Philip K. Dick.

Desde la literatura pulp al género noir pasando por la autobiografía, Lavie Tidhar va cambiando la narración de una manera asombrosa y sin fisuras, más allá de la extrañeza de ver que las historias que va narrando quizá no reciban un cierre perfecto, pero creo que es parte del propio artefacto literario que nos propone.

El fetichismo del autor por los libros antiguos también está muy presente en la obra, tanto en la búsqueda de una novela de la que se desconoce si existió realmente o si queda alguna copia como en las visitas de uno de los protagonistas de uno de los relatos a las librerías de viejo de la ciudad, con unas descripciones que prácticamente nos hacen oler las encuadernaciones de los libros. Sobre el libro en sí, tampoco se sabe si es un elemento físico o un sistema protector o simplemente una entelequia.

The Circumference of the World es un libro al que hay que dedicarle mucha atención en la lectura, para ir descubriendo cada capa que Tidhar ha urdido para asombro del lector. Si conoces algo más de su corpus publicado, creo que te gustará aún más, pero como lectura independiente es perfectamente disfrutable.

If you love a novel of ideas, and are a fan of Mid-Century pulp science fiction, and are up for unconventional story telling, this inventive novel will knock your socks off.

An albino woman from a Pacific island is losing her husband to his obsession over a book, a book that can’t be found but is rumored to hold the answer to life’s biggest questions about the nature of reality.

The book is The Lode Star, written by Eugene Hartley, a pulp fiction sci-fi writer who turned his ideas into a religion. The book is about a woman named Delia who crosses the universe to find her missing father. Hartley believed that all of what we call real and reality are only reconstructed memories from matter swirling inside a black hole through which the eyes of God watches us.

Tidhar was inspired by golden age sci-fi writers and draws from esoteric scientific theories. This wildly inventive novel is quite a trip! From Delia’s early life on a South Seas island to searching for her missing husband, to the fictional Delia’s otherworldly journey, the novel proves again the power of story.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Lavie Tidhar is clearly a fan of the golden age of science fiction. This is the pre-war and post-war period when some of the most iconic and influential works in the genre were released. His most recent book The Circumference of the World riffs on, tries to emulate and interrogates both the works and the authors of that era.
The book opens with a short prelude from an unseen narrator that mentions a number of characters including Delia Welegtabit, Daniel Chase and Oskar Lens and claims that none of it matters as time is omnidirectional. It then drops into the world of Delia Welegtabit, born in the South Pacific, now Living in London with a mathematician who is obsessed with a missing book by a famous science fiction author and then goes missing himself. This leads to the second part of the book which focusses on a face-blind detective called Daniel Chase and then to the third which tells the story of Russian gangster Oskar Lens. All of these stories circle around a mysterious book science fiction book from the 1950s called Lode Stars around which a cult-like religion has formed. Following these characters the book turns in on itself, reproduces a fragment of the missing book and then does more weird stuff.
Tidhar does all of this while riffing on the science fiction world of the 1950s and 60s. Authors like Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Pohl and Heinlein, among others, all get mentions or walk on parts. John Campbell and his Astounding Science Fiction magazine, where many of these writers got started and found fame also has a part to play. And it is hard not to imagine that Tidhar is also commenting on the creation and rise of Scientology, a religion created by a science fiction author based on his own work.
Tidhar can often be a little oblique but is always interesting and unique. And while The Circumference of the World is far from his most accessible work, with its causation loops almost demanding a reread, it has plenty to recommend it to science fiction fans. As the introduction warns – time is omnidirectional, but thankfully Tidhar has full control over how the narrative is delivered to ensure that it always makes sense. The joy in this is more in the milieu than the plot. It comes from not only recognising the cameos of famous authors but picking out all of the sly references to their works of classic science fiction, works that continue to influence the genre.

I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

⭐⭐⭐ and a half.

I had so much hope... The whole premise was pure sci-fi brilliance - the idea that the secrets of the universe and 'why' exist in a singular novel called 'Lode Stars', coded in among the text, and upon reading it, it ceases to exist and disappears from your possession - thus begging the question if it really exists at all - and seeing what lengths people will go to to obtain its knowledge.

However.

It's written in a very literary style, which would be ok if it didn't change character viewpoints in each part of the novel - the narrators voice takes the story from A to B, then Daniel takes it from B to C, Oskar from C to D etc. I would have preferred if it was one or the other: either the style and one narrator, or the different narrators and a contemporary writing style.

I'd love to see it written by someone else, maybe Murakami - and see where they take it!

Perhaps I've missed the point, and I did know Tidvar prefers that style going in, but it was a contender for a Book Club book until I found out it wasn't hitting the Australian market - and now I'm glad we've gone with something else!