Isaac Asimov? Gene Roddenberry?
He’s making a distinction between SF and Fantasy.
Of course if ANY genre makes me want to vomit it is "Magical Realism," which seems to be the province of Catholics.
Asimov was an atheist, as I understood it, although he was not concerned against anyone ever praying on his behalf.
I immediately started thinking of Jewish sf writers, too ... Harlan Ellison, Avram Davidson ... but the author of this article makes a firm, if not inarguable, distinction between fantasy and science fiction. The lines have blurred in much recent writing, as I learned when I asked my daughter to define “steampunk.”
I like both SciFi and Fantasy but they are different genre.
if Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science fiction religion”
Citing Asimov and Roddenberry sort of proves the author’s point, no?
I actually think this is a brilliant article.
I have to ponder the inclusion of one of my favorite authors, Mark Helprin. He’s Jewish. But...is he a Jewish author?
I’m not entirely sure you could say that. He’s very cosmopolitan, and there are magical elements in Winter’s Tale. But his other works, though imaginative and memorable, they really are much more this worldly....so....maybe he is a Jewish author, after all.
In any event, he is certainly an aesthete, and a soldier, a lover of language, and a teller of stories.
He’s also a conservative, and I admire him as much as any human being who is alive right now....
Joel Rosenberg was the first name to pop into my head. Wrote the Guardians of the Flame series . . . very talented fantasy writer. . . as well as Sci-fi and now mysteries.
It is not only that Jews are ambivalent about a return to an imaginary feudal past. It is even more accurate to say that most Jews have been deeply and passionately invested in modernity, and that history, rather than otherworldliness, has been the very ground of the radical and transformative projects of the modern Jewish experience. This goes some way towards explaining the Jewish enthusiasm for science fiction over fantasy (from Asimov to Silverberg to Weinbaum there is no dearth of Jewish science fiction writers
It's not that it's impossible to write both fantasy and hard SF/alternative history. There are examples of writers who have done it (Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Mary Gentle, Rudyard Kipling, Elizabeth Moon), but offhand I can't think of any of Jewish background who have done so.
Just as those of Jewish background tend to gravitate towards progressive politics, they seem to avoid contemplating a non-technological culture that is never going to become the shiny Star Trek universe.
Avram Davidson?
Avram Davidson (April 23, 1923 – May 8, 1993) was an American Jewish writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and a Queen’s Award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says “he is perhaps sf’s most explicitly literary author”.