The release of a second anthology of Israeli speculative fiction in English translation will be celebrated on September 23 with a special hybrid panel at the Icon Science Fiction Festival in Tel Aviv. Emanuel Lottem and Sheldon Teitelbaum, pillars of the speculative literature community in this country and driving force behind the 2020 Zion’s Fiction anthology will discuss utopia, dystopia and limbotopia with fans of the genre at a gathering dedicated to More Zion’s Fiction.

This second anthology includes works by well-known American Jewish writers like David Brin (who wrote an outpost) and Avram Davidson. Israeli writers like Nadav Almog and Rotem Baruchin and post-Soviet Jewish writers like Elana Gomel and Pavel Amnuel also appear. This gives the reader a bird’s eye view of the three great playgrounds where Jewish destinies were played out in the last century.

Davidson’s short story, “Help! I’m Dr Morris Goldepper ”is a gem about toothless human-like aliens who kidnap a dentist to pretend to be humans and defraud the US government. It was included in the anthology as a nod to his military service in the 1948 War of Independence. This generosity of spirit is why Amnuel, a renowned Russian-language writer living here, is also included. One can only hope that a third anthology will feature works by Lavie Tidhar and Dmitry Glukhovsky. The first is an English-speaking writer born in Israel and hailed for his achievements and the second is a Russian-speaking writer who holds Israeli citizenship.

In “The Alien with the Yellow Patch,” an essay she published in With Both Feet on the Cloud: Fantasy in Israel Literature, Gomel indicates that Israel has about a million readers who relish science fiction, as long as ‘it is written in Russian. . His revealing essay sheds light on how Soviet Jews deeply saw their thoughts in – and shaped – the science fiction of the USSR.

In the first story of this anthology, “The Sea of ​​Salt”, she plunges the yellow stain into a dark and infernal realm. In it, a German woman seeking an entry point into the collective trauma of the Holocaust enters a different reality where a biologically-like structure of a death camp is revealed. The yellow stars of this place feed on the inmates, and the Nazi guards have helmets on their heads. Oddly enough, the mighty mythical tale of Lot’s wife, who turns to salt by learning hidden things, was also employed by Greek author Ioanna Bourazopoulou for her 2013 award-winning sci-fi novel What Lot’s Wife Saw.

In their forward, Lottem and Teitelbaum introduce the reader to the many questions arising from Israeli science fiction. “For the first book, we rewrote the verse about fifty times,” Lottem told me, “this one took a little less work.”

Gomel notes that unlike their Anglo-American counterparts who imagine new borders in space and linear progression in time, Israelis tend to portray darker realities. Bourazopoulou, who envisioned a dystopian post-climate change Europe where the Mediterranean Sea reaches Paris and people are addicted to a salt-like substance, could point to a larger truth. The Israelis may not share the American imagination, but they are very much in tune with that of their neighbors along the coast.

Lottem and Teitelbaum claim that Israeli writers do not seem interested in exploring the results of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or the logical result of that country’s population doubling by the turn of the century. It sounds strange compared to American writers who dared to imagine what nuclear war could do to ordinary people as in Judith Merril’s short story “That Only a Mother” (1948) or the 1973 film Soylent Green, in which a Earth forces society to devour itself. Israeli writers seem stuck in limbo. Co-invented by Vered Shemtov and Gomel, it means to be stuck in an eternal present.

Perhaps this is the reason why so many Hebrew-speaking writers turn to fantasy. Almog’s “The Thirteenth Fairy” is a dark tale of the classic “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale and Baruchin’s “Latte, To Go” is a wonderfully imaginative fantasy tale. In it, every city in the country and in the world has its own mind and a human guardian must keep the peace to ensure that Ramat Gan (for example) does not take over Givatayim. Each spirit dresses and behaves in a unique way that truly reflects Israeli culture. In this story, the Guardian is in love with Tel Aviv. He is also stuck in this land for life, as the Guardians are unable to abandon the cities they must protect.

Science fiction uses certain devices. Imaginary technology enables intrigue, and intrigue is content, Lottem told me.

“I do device discounts,” which means he doesn’t mind if magic drives the story or the latest scientific breakthrough, “never content. That’s why I can tell you that in this country people write good science fiction.

While Israeli academics produce impressive cultural studies that use sci-fi as a way to make their point, they tend to ignore Hebrew sci-fi and focus on American examples like Star Trek, a series. classic television. Oren Ben-Yosef, for example, often employs it in his 2021 “Eaters of Worlds” which explore vegan values ​​through the prism of science fiction. In 2019, Professor Uriya Shavit published “Meat”, in which a woman takes her granddaughter to eat beef in a world where it is forbidden to kill animals for food. Ignored by Ben-Yosef, the book shares a lot with Hamutal Levin’s “Me and Nana Go Shopping,” included in this anthology.

Writing science fiction reviews in the Israeli press in the early 1980s, poet Yona Wallach wrote that the role of science fiction is to widen the keyhole from which we can see the present moment. Interest in Israeli popular culture on a never-before-seen global scale (Fauda, ​​Homeland) means that Hebrew speculative fiction has never been so well positioned to reach the stars.

More Zion’s Fiction will be launched during the Icon Science Fiction Festival in a special hybrid panel on Thursday, September 23 at 4 p.m. ET. The speakers will be Lottem, Teitelbaum, Gomel, Noa Mannheim and Ehud Maimon. Admission is free but customers must register to obtain a ticket for the Icon Festival under current health regulations. For tickets, please email: [email protected]