The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
256 pages, Paperback
Published September, 2023 by Tachyon Publications
Now I don’t want to be accused of Hyperbole in two Lavie Tidhar book reviews in a row. Well, three if you count the glowing 10th-anniversary review and Podcast interviews I did over at Dickheads for the World Fantasy award-winning Osama. It has only been three months since Neom kicked my butt and snuck into my top five reads last year. To say I loved the vibe of the book is an understatement.
The Circumference of the World is one of those novels that is a love letter to the genre. It benefits from nerdy insider knowledge of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. An era I have studied deeply, having within weeks of reading this read Fredrick Pohl’s autobiography, I don’t know how this book would work for somewhere that doesn’t know that Pohl went to Poker games at Horace Gold’s apartment before taking over Galaxy magazine from him. Lavie Tidhar knows this stuff and while he has always created science fiction that lovingly feels like it was lost from that era this novel is a mirror to the golden age.
I didn’t read the back cover copy and went into it cold. My only hesitation in recommending this novel is that some of the genius will be lost on some modern readers. The in-jokes, the sly statements on the Golden Age, and in particular L.Ron Hubbard. Long after The Hubbster started a religion movies and fiction have made satire of the old pulpster who grew tired of writing Science Fiction and created his religion. Long before Paul Thomas Anderson made The Master with Hollywood resources Philip K. Dick mocked the new religion in the 50s with a short story called The Turning Wheel. Tidhar has pink-beamed his way into Dickian fiction before with Osama and Neom.
While this novel has a feeling of an earlier era, it comments on the era when Phil was collecting pulps. That said the novel opens with a modern feeling, Delia Welegtrabit lives in the South Pacific, isolated a bit she discovers a love for math and science that came from reading a lost Science fiction novel Lode Stars she pulled off the shelf, and is told it doesn’t exist. The book which inspired a cult, is not acknowledged to exist for high-ranking people in the cult and once Delia’s husband Levi starts looking for the murders gangsters come into their lives.
Lode Stars the book in question was written by our Hubbard stand-in Eugene Charles Hartley, while The Master does a character study of the Hubbard stand-in, in this novel is not Hartley but the magic of the book the power of Science Fiction being explored here. It all takes on a meta-shift as early as page 18.
“The cover of the book depicted a swirling clouds of stars, sucked inexorably in nebula whorls, towards a malevolent black eye that dominated the centre of the page.
The title, Lode Stars, was etched above it.
The book was published in America, in 1962. Its Heroine was herself, Delia
The name of the author was Eugene Hartley.”
Hubbard has been fictionalized by his fellow science fiction writers like Anthony Boucher since 1940’s Rocket To The Morgue. This fictional take is the founder of the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes and is a fascinating character study for sure. I feel like the text of the golden age and what the novels and fiction say about the era in this case. The novel starts in a world where Lode Stars was a novel and as it continues the walls of reality disappear and we end up in the charming feeling of this lost novel, Tidhar enjoying every second of writing as Hartley. In the Lode Star part of the book he is writing a delightfully old-school fake novel filled with easter eggs for Herbert, Van Vogt, Asimov, and PKD.
"She saw the window of the Solar Spice and Liquors Company, An Isher Weapons shop, and an outlet of the respected Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation." Even Stanley Weinbuam's SF Hall of Fame-worthy Martian character Tweel gets a shout-out.
Tidhar is writing outside a traditional narrative as the main character of the novel is the book inside the book. From London with the collectors trying to find it and the powerful moment of the Russian prisoners who happen the book. The Prisoners had no idea the Soviet Union fell and were so accustomed to prison that they were afraid of the world and Levi didn't want to leave without Lode Stars.
The walls of reality are at question. This why Dickheads don't mind if his novels feel real? Martian Time-Slip is surreal and impossible, that is not the role of that novel. The Circumference of the World is a question in the form of a science fiction novel. How does the genre relate to our ideas of reality?
"Because you see," Levi said, "None of this matters, this expansion into space and living longer, and building machines that could think - none of this matters if none of this is real. If we are ourselves but copies, echoes of who we once were. In that case," He said, still smiling, delighted with the notion and himself."
This novel is a powerful work of meta-fiction, we can compare it to PKD, which is a compliment around here but it is a pure product of Lavie Tihar's genius. His blend of imagination, genre history and ability to blend into thought experiments is what makes him one of my favorite modern writers. This novel is not for everyone but for the people in the crosshairs this is bullet straight the science fictional parts of the brain. I loved it.
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