★★★

Central Station is a space port between Tel Aviv and Jaffa in a future entwined Palestine/Israel. In this story, we follow a Robot/Juliet love story of resident Isobel Chong and robotnik Motl. Can the new underclass of Robotniks love?

The story is great on the world-building side and quite weak on the plot side with a predictable end. Tidhar’s other story published in the anthology is clearly the better choice.

Meta: ISFDB. First published May 2012 in Robots: The Recent A.I.. Set in the Central Station Series. I’ve read it in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection.