The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon, £14)
The latest SF from acclaimed author Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) theorises that a 1950s American pulp writer discovered the true nature of reality and encoded it into an obscure paperback novel before founding the Church of God’s All-Seeing Eyes. That short novel, Lode Stars, makes up the central part of this book, followed by a biographical sketch of its fictional author, Eugene C Hartley, his authenticity buttressed by letters ventriloquising authors and editors from Robert A Heinlein to Jack Kerouac. (The real American writer and founder of a science-fictional religion is never mentioned.) Other sections focus on the few people in London who have read, or even seen, a copy of Lode Stars: Delia Welegtabit (Hartley’s mathematician granddaughter), Oskar Lens (a Russian criminal) and Daniel Chase, the rare-book dealer Delia hires to search for her missing husband. It’s a lot to cram into a short book, and the effect is of an interesting collage, clever and entertaining parts that finally fail to cohere.
