Lilith and the Knight
Two Jewish fantasy novels, one set in an Eastern Europe of demons and death, the other a time travel romance …
fantasy
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and the Tenets of Progressive Faith
A few nights after I saw Tenet, the new Christopher Nolan movie, the rioters in Portland attacked the Oregon Historical …
The Yale Fantasy of Leigh Bardugo
The setting for Leigh Bardugo’s acclaimed new fantasy novel ‘Ninth House’ is Yale, and it’s an unintentionally revealing look at …
Zionavar
On the Jewish themes, characters, and subtexts of Guy Gavriel Kay. Read the essay at the Jewish Review of Books.
Simon Ings’s Brave Jew World
In the alternate history of The Smoke, Simon Ings maps sci-fi horror onto the Jews. Read the full review at …
Watching Game of Thrones, Waiting for Shavuot
On binge-watching and worlds without tradition. Read the full essay at the Jewish Review of Books.
The Last Unicorn as Post-Holocaust Fable
For six decades and counting, Peter S. Beagle has written fantasy literature with a Jewish-American sensibility. An overview of his …
Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of C. S. Lewis
Forty years ago, Harold Bloom published his bad fantasy novel The Flight to Lucifer. He claimed it was a product …
The 2,000-Year-Old Women
Two of the most highly praised novels of 2018, Dara Horn’s Eternal Life and Sarah Perry’s Melmoth, feature a Jewish woman born in …
Of Were-Owls and Wandering Jews
My fantasy reading this month included Jewish shape-shifters and “Pharisees,” Michael Moorcock and Rudyard Kipling, and a new Israeli novel …
Why Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is Bad Jewish Fantasy
Sure, all this beats a pogrom. But given that Novik clearly intends the book to work as a commentary on …
The First-Ever Anthology of Israeli Science Fiction and Fantasy
And how it compares with a Jewish American anthology. Read the full review at Mosaic.
Out-of-Body Experiences: Recent Israeli Science Fiction and Fantasy
“Common themes exist among some if not all of these books: the fluidity of identity in our social media world, …
Brave New Golems
As pop culture monsters, golems may not have the cachet of zombies or vampires but they haunt us nevertheless, as shown …
The Inklings
Had you the good fortune of being present at a gathering of the Inklings, you might have witnessed J. …
What Does an Acclaimed Israeli Sci-Fi Writer Have to Tell Us about the Israel of Tomorrow?
“To this familiar Tel Aviv scene, however, with its characteristic mix of squalor and charm, Tidhar has added cyborgs, chip-implanted …
Why Are There No Great Israeli Superheroes?
Age of Ultron, this year’s Avengers film sequel, has generated $1.4 billion worldwide at the box office so far, a …
Jews of Dune
Frank Herbert’s Dune, often named as the greatest science fiction novel ever written, turns 50 this year. Set thousands of …
Meet the New Weird
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy of sci-fi / horror novels is contemporary, in some ways even trendy. The cast of …
The Once and Future Jews of Dan Simmons
Science fiction writer Dan Simmons is the author of more than two dozen novels. Not all of them are science …
investigations and fantasies 