Author shares Lav of sci-fi with anthology 13 years in the making

Jewish Telegraph, June 2021

IT has taken science fiction author Lavie Tidhar 13 years to see his latest project fully realised.
The Best of World Sci-Fi: Volume One (£25) was recently published by Head of Zeus.
But Lavie, who was raised in northern Israel, came up with the idea of an anthology of fellow authors’ short stories in 2008.
“I recently found the original document that had the title in it,” he told me.
“I managed to pitch it to a small press in America and did five volumes, as The Apex Book of World SF, over 10 years, on a non-existent budget and without distribution.
“Then finally, after trying and failing to pitch it to various publishers, Head of Zeus picked it up and gave me the budget to do it properly. So it only took 13 years. Who says publishing moves slowly?”
The almost-600 page book features stories of various lengths by 26 authors from around the world.
“I had my core list of writers I knew I wanted in it — sometimes it was a case of knowing the author, but looking for just the right story from them,” explained Lavie, who last month was named visiting professor and writer-in-residence at Richmond, The American International University in London.
“But most of the process is just me trying to read as widely as possible — something I’ve been doing all these years, to the point of keeping spreadsheets of possible stories to use, and so on.
“And then just trying to find the ones I like the most, and looking at how they intersect, and making sure to offer a broad view of the field.”
London-based Lavie — whose latest collection, The Lunacy Commission, was released last month and whose new novel, The Escapement, will be published in September — is a big fan of the short story form.
In fact, he believes that many novels are “bloated short stories”.
He explained: “I think a short story has to give you a vision of a whole world in a concise and elegant way. So I was only looking for stories that work as stories. If I thought they’d be better off as novels they wouldn’t be a good fit for me.”
The 44-year-old added that it takes skill to tell the whole story in just a few pages.
“It’s really the form where the cutting edge of science fiction is, and where you’ll find the most exciting stuff,” Lavie said.
“Novels pay better, of course, which is why a lot of people who start in short fiction eventually make the leap, but you could make the argument that the real art is in the short form.”
In his introduction to The Best of World SF, Lavie tells how it took one publisher less than an hour to turn down the book, so he was delighted that Head of Zeus gave him a “real budget and I could offer authors — and translators — good money for their work, for once”.
He added: “It’s extremely satisfying to be the first person to publish an author in English, or to give someone who hasn’t had the exposure yet that new visibility.
“Short stories are so often so disposable, in magazines or online, and to be able to take them and put them in a hardcover anthology, give them that heft and that durability — I’m really happy about that.”
He said the stories were chosen partly to serve his personal taste and also “it’s about how the story fits into the wider anthology, how it corresponds with the other stories.
“Hopefully, with an anthology, you get something that is more than the sum of its parts.”
Lavie added that he is loathe to offer advice to budding writers, “but the one thing I noticed is that there’s this really fine line, where a story or writer are almost there, and there’s just this tiny leap they need to make to get across.
“In that case you keep an eye on them and hope to pick up their work in future.
“Even with my own work, I can kind of point to 2008 as a year where the fiction I was writing made that leap.
“It could be practice, confidence, but really it’s a voice that, once you have it, stays with you.”
When I suggested that Lavie was one of the elder statesmen of sci-fi, he laughed: I would hope not. I’m still young. Like a slowly-ageing member of a 90s boy band maybe.”
With the anthologies, Lavie is looking for “a world that feels real — that you can smell, hear, touch. I also like stories that experiment with form, but I don’t love stories that are just about ideas.
“I’ll be honest — ideas are easy. Exploring them in fiction that feels lived-in and messy and has something to say as art, that’s harder.”
He describes the sci-fi scene in Israel as small.
“It used to be non-existent, now there are festivals and several self-professed fans even among the politicians — I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing,” he told me.
“Ironically I’m not really published there. I have far more books published in Japan than in Israel, for example.”
As for writers who inspire him, they are pretty thin on the ground.
Lavie explained: “I really didn’t have anyone to look up to for this. No one was doing this. No one was even interested in doing this.
“You could argue they’re still not very interested. So I had to create it whole cloth, in a way. One of the early things I did was create a website that ran for four years — the World SF Blog — that offered fiction and news and articles, and I think that had a lot of effect in the long term, in getting other people engaged.
“I hope it blazes a trail. Somebody had to do it!”
Lavie, a Washington Post columnist, is also keeping quiet on whether he is working on a second volume of The Best of World SF.
“My lips are sealed,” he smiled. “But I’m always reading, and there’s so much interesting stuff coming out.
“I recently came across a young Russian writer who’s really exciting, and I’m hoping to bring this new Chinese writer into English for the first time.
“And I found great stuff from the Gulf recently. There’s just so much more out there than just the stuff you see on the shelves! That’s what makes it exciting.”
Lavie has translated Israeli Nir Yaniv’s story Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys for The Best of World SF.
He has known Nir for almost 20 years and they’ve written two books together — with a third partly written.
The pair are also working on a web-animated series.
In April, Lavie received news that his 2016 novel Central Station — which imagined a time when Israelis and Palestinians co-existed peacefully — had won the best translated fiction category of the Chinese Nebula (Xingyun) Awards
Lavie was raised on Kibbutz Dalia, where his Romanian grandfather was one of the founders.
His mother, Chaia, is the daughter of Hungarian Holocaust survivors and was born in a refugee camp in Germany.
Lavie moved with his parents and brother to Johannesburg when he was 15 before returning to Israel.
He met his wife in Malawi and moved to the UK to be with her in 1998.
In London, he read computers at The American International University before switching to read literature.
He then worked for various internet companies before his wife landed a job as an aid worker in the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu — where Lavie struggled to keep his laptop charged due to the lack of electricity.
The couple later spent a few years in Laos, where Lavie continued to write.
He has written numerous books, novellas and anthologies. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for best novel — beating horror writer Stephen King and Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin.
His next novel, A Man Lies Dreaming, won the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize.
He also wrote a collection of four linked short stories, Hebrew Punk, which re-imagined pulp fantasy in Jewish terms.
Head of Zeus published his novel By Force Alone last year.
Lavietidhar.wordpress.com