Zion's Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature by Sheldon TeitelbaumMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A fascinating collection of stories. The stories are quite varied; though there are two things that I felt ran throw them all. The first is that the default background was Jewish. This is hard to define or pinpoint exactly, but there was something just, well, Jewish about the stories. Sometimes it was explicit but other times, it was more just something there. The second thing is that almost all the stories, if not all, were a bit dark. As though one could sense a kind of underling traumatic or tragic in each one. Some were funny or sweet, but even in those there was some thing lurking underneath. Maybe these are really two sides of the same thing; but it is interesting that this collection of stories all seemed to have that element. Maybe this is the genre, or maybe it's the editors.
I think it's important to pay more attention to the "speculative literature" part of the title rather than the "Zion's fiction." The latter suggests science fiction, while speculative captures a broader range of stories: including science fiction, but also fantasy and horror. There are no bright lines between these genres, but there are certainly paradigmatic versions of each. In any case, these stories were all mixed, maybe a bit more heavy into the fantastical and horror elements. Only a few could be categorized as "pure" science fiction (if there is such a thing).
I'd probably prefer something more science-fiction-y and less fantasy/horror; but I still was interested in all the stories.
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