Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

by Jack Dann (Editor), Isaac Asimov (Introduction/Contributor), Robert Silverberg (Contributor)

Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction. Jewish science fiction and fantasy? Yes! Wandering Stars reminds us that we are still studying, still suffering, still making jokes and myth, and still trying to figure out what it means to be Jewish. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy this clever book. We laughed out loud reading it. The distinguished list of contributors will amaze and delight you.
Contents:
* Why Me? (Introduction to Wandering Stars) [Asimov's Essays: Other's Work] • essay by Isaac Asimov
* On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi (1974) / novelette by William Tenn: William Tenn's futuristic story takes on the volatile issue of "Who is a Jew?", a question certainly as timely in 1998 as he imagines it will be in 2533.
* The Golem (1955) / short story by Avram Davidson: Davidson humorously plants the Frankenstein monster of Jewish folklore right in the middle-class bungalow culture of contemporary Hollywood, California.
* Unto the Fourth Generation (1959) / short story by Isaac Asimov: Asimov takes on the issue of Jews as endangered species in America, a theme that is even more apparent today than it was in 1974.
* Look, You Think You've Got Troubles (1969) / short story by Carol Carr
* Goslin Day (1970) / short story by Avram Davidson
* The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV (1974) / short story by Robert Silverberg
* Trouble with Water (1939) / short story by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold]
* Gather Blue Roses (1972) / short story by Pamela Sargent
* The Jewbird (1963) / short story by Bernard Malamud
* Paradise Last (1974) / novelette by George Alec Effinger [as by Geo. Alec Effinger]
* Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay (1967) / short story by Robert Sheckley
* Jachid and Jachidah (1961) / short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (trans. of Yahid un Yehidah 1964)
* I'm Looking for Kadak (1974) / novelette by Harlan Ellison
* Ellison's Grammatical Guide and Glossary for Goyim • essay by Harlan Ellison
* Evsise, the Zsouchmoid • interior artwork by Tim Kirk
.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Jewish, Anthologies, Fiction, Judaism

254 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Bogi Takács · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several people warned me this was a bad anthology, but there are so few Jewish SFF anthologies that it's easy to be a completionist - I might as well read all the stuff out there about my own ethnic groups. I'd already read (and disliked) the followup collection More Wandering Stars several years ago, but I was telling myself that maybe that one had the leftovers, and this one would be better.

Well no, this one was possibly worse. It's old, but that's no excuse.

Let's start with the better. None of the stories were spectacular, but some I didn't mind reading. The I. B. Singer story was a striking if brief take on the afterlife, and the Asimov one was surprisingly Dickian for its time and topic. Gather Blue Roses by Pamela Sargent was also a good read, and stylistically better than much of the rest. Some of the other stories were also OK, but these were the more memorable ones, for me.

A lot of the rest was... dire. Extremely stereotyped, both of Jews and of other ethnic groups, especially American Black people (oh my G-d, I am so sorry. This is awful). Most of the stories focused on a kind of 1950s-60s(?) middle-class American secular-ish Ashkenazic Jewish existence that was... if I say very different from my Jewish experience, it is greatly understating matters.

Also it quite showed which authors were familiar with Jewish traditions and which kind of tried to scrape things up from long forgotten childhood memory, with mixed success. (AFAICT, most - all? - of the authors were Jewish.) That's before getting to the various manglings of the more mystical traditions, which were sometimes just painful. There is a way of taking liberties which stems from being familiar with the source matter, and there is just the "this will be good enough for the Gentiles, it's not like they know better, either", or a sense of entitlement that was produced as a process of assimilation to white American culture. "This is my culture and I'm the expert" doesn't quite work if you are secular and writing about religious people (or vice versa, though that happens less frequently). It often just results in embarrassing caricatures. And please don't point out that this volume came well before all the #ownvoices discussion etc. etc., - sure it did, but not all of the authors fell into those pitfalls even in this very old collection.

Also, the last story in the collection was simply revolting - not because Harlan Ellison tried to add all kinds of rather immaturely disgusting details, there is an entire specific brand of white-dude SFF that does this all the time -; but because (I put a spoiler cut for sexual violence, not because of story spoilers) there is such an incredible amount of lighthearted joking about the protagonist having been raped. No no no 10000000 times no. This is probably not very unexpected from a writer with a well-known history of sexual harassment. But I wish I hadn't read that story, and I say this very infrequently. A horrible note to end a collection on, and also very revealing of the editor's biases. Misogynist stereotypes are also quite rampant in the collection, in general.

I think English-language Jewish SFF has improved immensely since then. (Disclosure: I'm a bit biased because I have also had some Jewish stories published. But I was encouraged to write them after coming across the better stories.) If you follow my short story recommendations or Shira Glassman's, there is a lot of great recent stuff that hasn't been collected anywhere yet. Jewish SFF has also become a lot more diverse in outlook, style, theme, everything. So maybe just skip the two Wandering Stars collections, unless you are a diehard completionist like me. These anthologies do not represent contemporary Jewish SFF in any shape or form, or have even historically influenced the current crop of Jewish SFF writing much; they are weird isolated objects that Jews warn other Jews about. Now I am a part of this great tradition!

Next up I will probably read the more recent People of the Book (which people did not warn me about - already a plus), and that's probably... all of the Jewish SFF anthologies? I will just have to branch out in the direction of magical realism like Great Tales of Jewish Fantasy and the Occult (all translated!), and I also have a Jewish crime fiction anthology lying around. I was just so aggravated by More Wandering Stars that I gave up on Jewish short SFF for quite a while. Now I know not to make that mistake again.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are vintage, and need to be seen as such. Otherwise, they are meh, or should I say feh. It also helps to be Jewish. One of the stories is even older than I am, and all are by authors I read when I was young. My grandparents' generation, who I knew, actually talked like many of these characters. The authors were the cream of the crop of SF writers of their times. Most of the stories are lighter, and funnier, that the bulk of their writings, but just as high quality. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very cool collection. Many of the stories include an editor’s note that “This is an original story written expressly for this volume.”

All of them are written with a Jewish theme in mind, some of them old-world and some new. Where many science fiction stories are about what it means to be human, this adds the layer of what it means to be a Jew. Can a tiny brown pillow with tentacles be a Jew? William Tenn asks this question in the first story, where all Jews are being quarantined to Venus.

There is, of course, a golem story, but Avram Davidson’s golem shows up near Hollywood and can’t seem to get his story out.

Isaac Asimov’s story is very touching, in the Pebble in the Sky sense.

Marrying outside of the faith is a problem in any religion, but what if the person outside the faith is also a vegetable-based Martian?

Robert Silverberg has a wonderful story about a Dybbuk on a far planet becoming responsible for the continuation of the faith.

Bernard Malamud brings in a “Jewbird”, a sort of crow that speaks Yiddish and is fleeing anti-semites. And Isaac Bashevis Singer turns hell and earth on their head in a story about angels facing punishment for bad behavior.

Even Harlan Ellison turns things on their head, in a sense, in that his story is better than his introduction to the story, and this is as much because the story is very good as because he managed to keep his introduction down to a single page. His main character, a robot or semi-robot, needs to find a tenth man to sit shivah for a planet that’s about to get yanked out of its orbit. It’s wacky in the best Ellison tradition, and fits far better together at the end than can possibly be expected of a start where a deranged robot is telling its story to an insensate butterfly.

[Julian Spergel · Rating 1 out of 5]

The vast majority of the stories can be summarized by:

"My daughter is not marrying a space alien!" "But he's Jewish." "Oh. OK."

[ambyr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting as a historical artifact, and I did enjoy several of the stories (mostly Tenn's, Silverberg's, and Singer's), but the lows are very, very low, and the sliver of Jewish culture covered very, very narrow. It happens to be my sliver, but it's still disappointing.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rekindled my passion for science fiction when I first read it in 1974. More about how I found the book, and the impact it had on my life https://paullevinson.blogspot.com/201...

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting as an artifact of a particular time and for its intended purpose, but not something I'd recommend just for fun. It's extremely 1960s-1970s in its sci-fi, right from the bare-breasted women on the cover. (There is no connection to any of the stories inside, if you were wondering.) Only two of the twelve featured writers are women, a lot of the stories use misogynistic tropes, and as far as I can tell all of the writers are Ashkenazi and based in the US. But, aside from that, the stories illustrate a variety of perspectives and philosophies on the theme of Jewishness and science fiction. It was a particularly interesting contrast to the last sci-fi book I finished, which has more of a Star Trek-esque post-religion view.

[Fred Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great anthology of SF stories that explore what it means to be Jewish. I read this book long ago and it still resonates with me.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another from my rediscovered pile of S-F Book Club selections from the 1970’s. This is a collection of stories written by Jewish authors, with a general introduction, as well as brief introductions to the stories themselves, by Isaac Asimov, who drolly opines that he was asked to do so “because I am suspected of being Jewish.” There are thirteen stories, by such authors as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Bernard Malamud and Robert Sheckey. Most are fairly mainstream S-F stories, with a Jewish point of view. I must herein aver that I am not Jewish, and remain fairly ignorant about Jewish culture despite numerous conversations with Jewish friends and having read a number of Chaim Potok’s books over the years. So, in that context, I found myself wondering if the fact that most of the characters spoke with a Yiddish accent was a stereotype (a number of the reviews on Goodreads have alleged that, and indeed some saw it as insulting to them, despite other reviews praising the book for presenting a Jewish perspective on this genre).

All that said, I found the stories themselves entertaining and thought-provoking. The ones that stand out for me are: Avram Davidson’s “The Golem,” in which said Golem has a hard time getting a word in edgewise with an old bickering married couple; George Alec Effinger’s “Paradise Last,” about the challenges facing Jewish colonists settling a new planet; and Carol Carr’s “Look, You Think You’ve Got Troubles,” which addresses the question of whether one could be an alien and still be Jewish. Most if not all of these stories are peppered with gentle humor and a satiric wink. Four stars.

[Brenda (aka Grandma) · Rating 4 out of 5]

quote from the introduction by Isaac Asimov
"The reason I am writing this introduction is that, despite all my infidel ways and beliefs, I am Jewish enough."

quote from "The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV" by Robert Silverberg
"These Kunivaru are a primitive folk. They live closer to the world of magic and witchcraft, of demons and spirits, than we do whose minds are schooled in the habits of reason."

quote from "Gather Blue Roses" by Pamela Sargent
"(By the time I reached my adolescence, I had heard all the horror stories about the death camps and the ovens; about those who had to remove gold teeth from the bodies; the women used, despite the Reich’s edicts, by the soldiers and guards. I then regarded my mother with ambivalence, saying to myself, I would have died first, I would have found some way rather than suffering such dishonor, wondering what had happened to her and what secret sins she had on her conscience, and what she had done to survive. An old man, a doctor, had said to me once, “The best ones of us died, the most honorable, the most sensitive.” And I would thank God I had been born in 1949; there was no chance that I was the daughter of a Nazi rape.)"

[Cindy Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not much for anthologies. I'd rather read a full length novel. But I wanted to read this because I'd read the first story "On Venus Have We Got A Rabbi" online and loved it, and a friend told me it was actually part of this anthology.

I liked the story even more the second time. There are a few others that I enjoyed though for the life of me, none of them come to mind.

While I'm not a reader of science fiction and so can't judge the book on that basis, I have read enough Jewish literature to be able to appreciate the humor that appeared in a lot of this book. Unfortunately because the book was first published in 1974, some of it is dated, especially when it comes to the portrayal of the nagging Jewish wife.

All that to say, it's a 3 but if you get the chance to read On Venus, do it. That story is a 5.

[David H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been intrigued by this anthology for years, so I was happy to finally pick it up. It's a mix of original and reprinted stories, and while some were very good (Sargent's "Gather Blue Roses" and Asimov's "Unto the Fourth Generation"), some were a rather middling. This book came out in 1974, but due to the reprints and time, some of the stories very incredibly dated today (who the hell cares about a dowry in this day and age?). I did enjoy a lot of the humor, though, even with the datedness.

It's also interesting knowing that this book came out only months after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which definitely heightens the context.

[Kassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

With a few exceptions, the speculative fiction, the gender relations, and the yidishkayt in this book's stories are about fifty years out of date. The exceptions--that is, the stories worth reading--are "Goslin Day" by Avram Davidson, "The Jewbird" by Bernard Malamud, and "Jachid and Jechidah" by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Someone needs to do a new anthology along these lines, with stories by some recent Jewish speculative fiction authors, and more translations from Yiddish classics (especially Der Nister).

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology of Jewish science fiction and fantasy, with both original stories and reprints. The originals come from William Tenn; Robert Silverberg; George Alec Effinger and Harlan Ellison. The reprints are by Avram Davidson; Isaac Asimov; Carol Carr; Isaac Bashevis Singer; Pamela Sargent; Horace Gold and Robert Sheckley. If you're a fan of any of these writers or interested in Jewish culture, you might want to check this out. (It couldn't hurt.)

[Michael Sypes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the stories range between "meh" and "feh." There are a couple of better ones, like "The Jewbird" by Malamud, but I remember reading that in a general anthology for HS. In many cases, I'm reminded of a phrases uttered by my grandparents about a comic act they might nor have liked - "Too Jewish." There's much more devotion to schmaltz than to any decent fantasy or sci fi here.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read. Uniquely Jewish scifi. I remember feeling particularly compelled by the stories by Geo. Alec Effinger, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and others. As with any anthology, some stories worked for me and some didn't, but I'm really glad this anthology exists.

[Alan-Michael White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took this book from a Take a Book Leave a Book at the coffee shop in Ole Miss' Library, back when there was one. Took me several years to actually read all of it, and it's great. It has some of the most esoteric stories I've ever read.

[Steven desJardins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tend to rate anthologies by the heights rather than their depths, and by that standard, the Effinger story would cause the anthology to rate four stars. Unfortunately it's preceded by a great slough of mediocrity, and it does not give a great impression of the state of science fiction circa 1974.

[Jake GR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting insights into neuroses of the modern American Jewish mind.

[Alicia Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well ite a good anthology book though like any other anthology bookshelf you do have (depending on your view) couple of okay ones. One funny ones is street of dreams, feet of clay by Robert Sheckley.

[Steve Portigal · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mixed bag but overall reading this book was a tedious experience.

[Mike Augustine · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple of the stories could be considered science fiction, loosely; most not so much. I can’t say I enjoyed any of these Jewish-centric stories.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published in 1974, it is a nice collection of short stories with Jewish themes. As a gentile, I struggled with the Yiddish words. This reduced my enjoyment of some of the stories.

[radueriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It shows its age often and in sometimes upsetting ways, but at its core this book is a testament to the questions Jews have always been asking and exploring, and that's pretty darn cool.

[Hannah Wexner-Dolven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was nightly storytime for a few months. Some stories were funny, others very sad; some better than others; all super creative. Overall pretty fun although not sure I’d recommend

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1016298.html[return][return]Not really very satisfied with this collection of "Jewish sf" stories. Perhaps I am over-sensititve to ethnic stereotypes, even by the ostensibly stereotyped, as a result of too much exposure to paddywhackery myself. It may seem an odd criticism, but I found it much more ethnocentric than I had expected: despite a recurrent theme of various non-human creatures claiming to be Jewish, in fact most of the stories totally play to stereotypes based on the mid-twentieth century Jewish experience in the United States, rather than on any broader exploration of Jewish identity or history. I'd be surprised if a European or Israeli Jew felt there was a lot here they could identify with. There is a truly awful story by George Alec Effinger. Rather disappointing.

[Cody VC · Rating 2 out of 5]

what a slog. most of these are just of the "jewish...in SPACE" variety which does not good sci-fi make. the ones that felt the most like legit sf were (in order of inclusion) the stories by silverberg, effinger, and sheckley. and maybe ellison, but i don't like him so whatever.
effinger's was...meh. sheckley's was a somewhat familiar premise, while engagingly written. silverberg's seemed like the best fusion of sf and jewish culture. of the fantasy offerings, i enjoyed malamud's the most overall, followed by singer and maybe gold.

i agree with the other reviewers on here that, to our modern sensibilities, the relentless stereotypes are offputting. makes me think of how, recently, black people were remarking on the fact that when muhammad ali referred to joe frazier as a gorilla&c., nobody really thought much of it--but since that sort of ingrained racism has fallen away (for the most part) remarks like that would no longer be funny/acceptable to other black people.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very erratic anthology of allegedly science fiction stories featuring Jews. Some were not science fiction. Some were modern fairy tales and not much else. It was so hard not to read this anthology and keep thinking of



The Harlan Ellison entry was effed up -- even for Harlan Ellison, the King of Effed Up. I don't know if I'm Jewish somewhere in my ancestry, but I was borderline insulted by this story.

I thought the best story was the chilling and unpredictable "Gather Blue Roses" by Pamela Sargent. That and the two Avram Davidson stories alone are worth the price of admission.

[Kitap · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing anthology featuring too many stories in which Judaism is reduced to annoying stereotypes. Three stories stood out as exceptions:

- William Tenn's "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi," explores the perennial question, "Who is a Jew?"

- "The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV" by Robert Silverberg uses a deft combination of Jewish folklore and sf tropes to tell a tale of (literal) alienation.

- Isaac Bashevis Singer "pours black paint over modern man's favorite philosophical toys with a cheerful vengeance" (p. 201) in this tale in which life, death, and rebirth are turned upside down.

I also enjoyed Harlan Ellison's concluding story, "I'm Looking for Kadak," although I didn't find it as meaningful as the other three.

[Noach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This incredible book may be edging out The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon as my all time favorite book. Each page is a treasure; I hate to be finished with even one more page because it means I'm that much closer to the end.

As in this morning, for instance, I'm reading a story called Jewbird, about a Jewish crow. Big beak, dressed in black, rumpled feathers, davens, talks in Yiddish, prefers matjes to schmaltz herring. ...

And last week, I read the story of the last Jew in the Universe, on the planet Mazel Tov IV. There's no chevra kadisha to bury him, so they reprogram a robot with the entirety of Jewish knowledge. It goes uphill ... and Judaism goes on ... from there.

So much brilliance here.