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Jews Versus #1-2
Jews vs Omnibus: Jews vs Aliens and Jews vs Zombies
Now collected into a single volume, editors Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene bring you the groundbreaking anthologies Jews vs Zombies and Jews vs Aliens, which pose the two most important questions asked in the past 2000 years: what happens when the Chosen People meet aliens... or the living dead? With authors ranging from Orange Prize winner Naomi Alderman to The Big Bang Theory's writer/producer Eric Kaplan, and from BSFA Award winner Adam Roberts to BFS Best Newcomer Sarah Lotz, the stories range from the light-hearted to the profound. "If you will it, it is no dream!" as Theodor Herzl said: and no doubt he had just these anthologies in mind. Jews vs Aliens and Jews vs Zombies are the must have anthologies of the year.
- GenresJewishAnthologies
274 pages, Paperback
First published December 3, 2015
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86 people want to read
About the author
Lavie Tidhar
393 books741 followersLavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.
Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.
Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.
Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.
He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).
Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.
His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.
Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).
Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).
He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.
He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).
Tidhar lives with his wife in London.
Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.
Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.
Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.
He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).
Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.
His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.
Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).
Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).
He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.
He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).
Tidhar lives with his wife in London.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 17, 2016
These are two short charity anthologies of short stories published last year, doing more or less exactly what their titles promise. They caught my eye in particular because of the co-editors - I've enjoyed Tidhar's alternate history treatments of Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, and Levene has been a friend of mine since 1987 - though as it turns out neither of them has contributed fiction to either volume. Both books, of course, are filled with Hugo-eligible stories.
Jews vs Zombies is the easier concept to grasp (there are fewer varieties of zombie than of alien). It struck me on reading the stories that both Jewish historical experience and zombie stories tend to converge on urban environments. There's an obvious part-way cross-over with the golem, which one or two of the writers explicitly invoke. The one that particularly grabbed me was the final story, Adam Roberts' "Zayinim", about a young girl fighting off zombies while thinking about philosophy.
In the foreword to Jews vs Aliens, Lavie Tidhar points out that "The alien in science fiction, it is often said, stands in for the Other in all its myriad forms... To [John W.] Campbell, of course, the Jews were the aliens – but what happens when the roles are reversed?" Another theme that came through to me here more than in the other book was the military tradition of aggressive defence; Roseanne Rabinovitz's story "The Matter of Meroz" combines the two very effectively.
I approached these with some trepidation, as the last time I read a themed anthology of Jewish sf I was unimpressed. There are one or two awful or incomprehensible stories in each of these anthologies, but in general they are very much worth reading.
Jews vs Zombies is the easier concept to grasp (there are fewer varieties of zombie than of alien). It struck me on reading the stories that both Jewish historical experience and zombie stories tend to converge on urban environments. There's an obvious part-way cross-over with the golem, which one or two of the writers explicitly invoke. The one that particularly grabbed me was the final story, Adam Roberts' "Zayinim", about a young girl fighting off zombies while thinking about philosophy.
In the foreword to Jews vs Aliens, Lavie Tidhar points out that "The alien in science fiction, it is often said, stands in for the Other in all its myriad forms... To [John W.] Campbell, of course, the Jews were the aliens – but what happens when the roles are reversed?" Another theme that came through to me here more than in the other book was the military tradition of aggressive defence; Roseanne Rabinovitz's story "The Matter of Meroz" combines the two very effectively.
I approached these with some trepidation, as the last time I read a themed anthology of Jewish sf I was unimpressed. There are one or two awful or incomprehensible stories in each of these anthologies, but in general they are very much worth reading.
March 10, 2026
I enjoyed more of the stories from Jews vs Aliens than I did from Jews vs Zombies but overall there were SO many duds in these collections. In my opinion best ones were “Antaius Floating in the Heavens Among the Stars” by Andrea Phillips and “The Reluctant Jew” by Rachel Swirsky, both from Jews vs Aliens.
April 15, 2016
Some stories I enjoyed much more than others, but I found that the last stories in each section - Jews vs Aliens and Jews vs Zombies have stuck with me quite a bit.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews