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Oleksandr Zholud's Reviews > Neom
Neom
by
by
This is a weird SF novella or small novel about men, robots and gods in Sinai desert. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for March 2023 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. The book was published in 2022 and is eligible for genre awards.
The book is set in the same universe as his 2016 Locus and Clarke’s award-nominated novel x. However, if the former (which I reviewed here) is about a space port between Haifa and Tel Aviv, this is about a new city of Neom, located on the banks of the Red Sea (past the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran, in the old Saudi desert province that was once called Tabuk), next to Sinai desert.
The story starts with Mariam de la Cruz, whose parents settled here hoping for a new better life. Now her father is dead, her mother has dementia and she works on a several jobs to make ends meet. As she goes from her housekeeping job, she sees a dead robot�
The story shifts to a boy named Saleh Mohammed Ishak Abu-Ala Al-Tirabin (only the first name is used for the rest of the story), who meets a Green Caravanserai on the Ghost Coast of the Sinai Desert. He and his family scavenged artifacts in the desert, but someone, possibly an old military robot (Israeli robotnik) killed his father and others leaving him alone, but is a possession of an exterior case of an ancient ‘terror artform� time-dilating bomb� Elias from the Caravanserai takes him in.
There are several more characters and as the story goes by, their path merge and a world after long-ago wars and current people and places slowly constructs itself brick by brick in reader’s mind. It is a slow read, even if some events may be world-breaking, the lenses so to speak are on ordinary characters and their daily life. One has to be is a mood to read this book, for it isn’t a usual SF. Just like the first book, this one is full of homages to different classic SF works, like I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and City by Clifford D. Simak, as well as allusions (I guess) to computer games (namely, GECK from Fallout II). Some pieces are to ‘wave� to a knowing reader, like:
“I am a robot,� the robot said. “I must make myself useful.�
“Your skill set is somewhat restrictive,� Mukhtar said.
“It is useful.�
“You kill people?�
“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. . . . I try to follow the Way of Robot when I can. Of course, the Laws were only ever a philosophical concept, and I must live in the world as it is, not as we may wish it to be.�
The book is set in the same universe as his 2016 Locus and Clarke’s award-nominated novel x. However, if the former (which I reviewed here) is about a space port between Haifa and Tel Aviv, this is about a new city of Neom, located on the banks of the Red Sea (past the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran, in the old Saudi desert province that was once called Tabuk), next to Sinai desert.
The story starts with Mariam de la Cruz, whose parents settled here hoping for a new better life. Now her father is dead, her mother has dementia and she works on a several jobs to make ends meet. As she goes from her housekeeping job, she sees a dead robot�
The story shifts to a boy named Saleh Mohammed Ishak Abu-Ala Al-Tirabin (only the first name is used for the rest of the story), who meets a Green Caravanserai on the Ghost Coast of the Sinai Desert. He and his family scavenged artifacts in the desert, but someone, possibly an old military robot (Israeli robotnik) killed his father and others leaving him alone, but is a possession of an exterior case of an ancient ‘terror artform� time-dilating bomb� Elias from the Caravanserai takes him in.
There are several more characters and as the story goes by, their path merge and a world after long-ago wars and current people and places slowly constructs itself brick by brick in reader’s mind. It is a slow read, even if some events may be world-breaking, the lenses so to speak are on ordinary characters and their daily life. One has to be is a mood to read this book, for it isn’t a usual SF. Just like the first book, this one is full of homages to different classic SF works, like I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and City by Clifford D. Simak, as well as allusions (I guess) to computer games (namely, GECK from Fallout II). Some pieces are to ‘wave� to a knowing reader, like:
“I am a robot,� the robot said. “I must make myself useful.�
“Your skill set is somewhat restrictive,� Mukhtar said.
“It is useful.�
“You kill people?�
“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. . . . I try to follow the Way of Robot when I can. Of course, the Laws were only ever a philosophical concept, and I must live in the world as it is, not as we may wish it to be.�
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