Wandering Stars

Description

Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy? Yes!

Wandering Stars is the landmark collection of Jewish science fiction and fantasy. The first of its kind, it is an established and enduring classic.

This is the first time in a science fiction collection that the Jewish People—and the richness of their themes and particular points of view—appear without a mask. Wandering Stars is a showpiece of Jewish wit, culture, and lore, of the blend of humor and sadness, cynicism, and faith. In these pages you’ll find superlative tales of fantasy and science fiction by masters.

Sujets

• Anthologies
• Collections
• Science Fiction
• Wandering Stars
• Jack Dann
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 11 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580237758
• Langue: English

Extrait

Wandering Stars
A N A NTHOLOGY OF J EWISH F ANTASY S CIENCE F ICTION
Edited by Jack Dann
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Acknowledgment is made for permission to print the following material:
On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi by William Tenn. Copyright 1974 by William Tenn.
The Golem by Avram Davidson. Copyright 1955 by Fantasy House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Unto the Fourth Generation by Isaac Asimov. Copyright 1959 by Mercury Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Look, You Think You ve Got Troubles by Carol Carr. Copyright 1969 by Damon Knight. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Goslin Day by Avram Davidson. Copyright 1970 by Damon Knight. Reprinted by permission of the author.
The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV by Robert Silverberg. Copyright 1974 by Robert Silverberg.
Trouble With Water by Horace L. Gold. Copyright 1939 by Street Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Gather Blue Roses by Pamela Sargent. Copyright 1971 by Mercury Press, Inc. From The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , by permission of the author.
The Jewbird by Bernard Malamud. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus Giroux, Inc., from Idiots First by Bernard Malamud, copyright 1963 by Bernard Malamud.
Paradise Last by Geo. Alec Effinger. Copyright 1974 by Geo. Alec Effinger.
Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay by Robert Sheckley. Copyright 1968 by Robert Sheckley. From Galaxy Magazine , reprinted by permission of the author and the author s agent, Sterling Lord Agency, Inc.
Jachid and Jechidah by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus Giroux, Inc., from Short Friday by Isaac Bashevis Singer, copyright 1964 by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
I m Looking for Kadak by Harlan Ellison. Copyright 1974 by Harlan Ellison.
To my mother Edith N. Dann, who still makes the best chicken soup.
Contents
Introduction:
Why Me? by Isaac Asimov
WILLIAM TENN
On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi
AVRAM DAVIDSON
The Golem
ISAAC ASIMOV
Unto the Fourth Generation
CAROL CARR
Look, You Think You ve Got Troubles
AVRAM DAVIDSON
Goslin Day
ROBERT SILVERBERG
The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV
HORACE L. GOLD
Trouble with Water
PAMELA SARGENT
Gather Blue Roses
BERNARD MALAMUD
The Jewbird
GEO. ALEC EFFINGER
Paradise Last
BOBERT SHECKLEY
Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
Jachid and Jechidah
HARLAN ELLISON
I m Looking for Kadak
About the Authors
Copyright
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The editor would like to thank the following people for their help and ideas:
Rabbi David S. Boros
George Zebrowski
Gardner Dozois
Joe W. Haldeman
Harry Altshuler
and, of course, Victoria Schochet.
INTRODUCTION
Why Me?
Isaac Asimov
When I was asked to do the introduction to this collection, that was the question I asked.
Why me?
One answer is that I am suspected of being Jewish. At least, my mother is Jewish and my father s mother was Jewish, and that makes both my father and myself Jewish by definition.
I don t do anything about it, you understand. I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never even undergone that curious puberty rite, the bar mitzvah. It doesn t matter. I am Jewish.
How can that be? Oh, well, even without the kosher stamp of religion, I bear the cultural stigmata (you should excuse the expression). I was born in a Russian shtetl, and I was brought up in Brooklyn in the very last decade in which you could still find pushcarts lining the streets and candy stores on every corner. In fact, I worked for thirteen years in my father s candy store. What s more I can tell jokes in a Yiddish dialect like a master, and I can speak Yiddish itself quite fluently. I like music in the minor, and turn faint when my favorite person places butter on her corned-beef sandwich. Mustard, I whisper. Mustard!
Why me?
Well, I write science fiction and fantasy.
There was a time, you know, when you didn t associate Jews with science fiction and fantasy. To write great novels-yes, that was permitted Jewish boys, along with playing violins (not saxophones or guitars), playing chess (not poker or pool) and becoming a doctor or a lawyer (or, in an emergency, a dentist or an optometrist-but not a ballplayer).
The result is that a great many novels written in America deal with Jewish themes. After all, what else are all those great Jewish novelists going to write about? Methodists?
But science fiction and fantasy (in cheap magazines yet-feh) was different. In the days when I was an avid groper for those cheap magazines, the stories dealt entirely with Americans of northwest-European extraction who fought Homeric battles with space pirates, outer-world monsters, and evil wizards (to say nothing of Martian princesses in brassieres). What kind of a place was that for Jewish boys?
I do not say, mind you, that there were no Jews among the scribblers who filled the pulp magazines. There must have been, for despite her best efforts, an occasional Jewish mother lost control. Think of all the Jewish boys who went on the burlesque stage (bums!) and became millionaires (geniuses!).
Many of the Jewish pulp writers, however, used pen names as a matter of sound business sense. A story entitled War-Gods of the Oyster-Men of Deneb didn t carry conviction if it was written by someone named Chaim Itzkowitz.
To give an actual case, that excellent writer Horace L. Gold, whose marvelously funny story Trouble with Water is included in this collection, and who is as Jewish as stuffed kishke, wrote outstanding science fiction for years under the name of Clyde Crane Campbell, you should again pardon the expression.
Jewish names which sounded German were, of course, permitted, for after all they might really be German, and Germans were northwest Europeans, who (though they were not quite as superior as they thought they were) were pretty superior, for people who didn t speak English.
As far as I know, though, I was the first science fiction writer of note who used his own name, where that name was a mixture of a Biblical Isaac and a Slavic Asimov.
Why? Because I didn t know any better, that s why. To me, the name Isaac Asimov had a swing to it. For some reason (possibly superior genes) I was happy with it. I never longed for anything more glamorous. Had someone offered me the name Leslie Fotheringay-Phipps and begged me with tears in his eyes to take it, I would have refused.
In fact, I adopted so proprietary an attitude toward my name that for a long time I felt annoyed at my brother for sharing my last name and at I. Bashevis Singer for sharing my first name. However, my brother is a nice guy, and I. B. S. is a good writer, as you can see from his story in this collection-so I ll permit it for a while longer anyway.
Then, too, one of my major reasons for wanting to write was to see my name in print. My name, not some stranger s.
Take William Tenn, who also has a story in this collection. His name isn t William Tenn. Who, in his whole life, ever heard of a name like William Tenn? What William Tenn s name really is, is Philip Klass. Now whenever Phil claims to be William Tenn, he is met with profound disbelief. Words like hallucinatory megalomania and in gantzen ah meshugener are heard.
This, at least, I was never troubled with. My pen name and my real name are identical and both are as Jewish as I am.
Only I didn t write on Jewish themes. I didn t think of Jews, particularly, in connection with robots, wrecked spaceships, strange worlds with six suns, and Galactic Empires. The subject didn t come up in my mind.
And yet sometimes it popped up. My first science fiction novel, Pebble in the Sky , dealt with a stiff-necked group of Earth people facing a Galactic Empire that felt contempt for them. Some people thought they saw a resemblance to Judea and the Roman Empire of the first century there and, who knows, maybe they were right. And one of my chief characters was named Joseph Schwartz. I didn t come right out and say he was Jewish, but I ve never found anyone who thought he wasn t.
Sometimes, too, it was necessary for me to have a character whom, for nefarious purposes of my own, I wanted the reader to underestimate. The easiest trick was to give him a substandard version of English, for then he would be dismissed as a comic character with at most a certain limited folk wisdom. Since the only substandard version of English I can handle faultlessly is the Yiddish dialect, some of the characters in The Foundation Trilogy speak it.
But times changed. After World War II, with the vanishing of the Nazi menace and the rise of the United Nations, racism became unrespectable. At once, all kinds of ethnic consciousnesses became popular and, to my own personal amazement, science fiction and fantasy, dealing with Jewish themes, turned out to be possible-so that a superb collection such as this one could be put together eventually.
Indeed, caught up in the new spirit, even I wrote a fantasy that was deliberately and entirely based on a Jewish theme. It was Unto the Fourth Generation and it is included in this collection.
That is still another answer to the question Why me? -because I have a story in this collection.
Anyway,