While doing a college humor column I was hoping to be the next Art Buchwald, but instead ended up first as a lawyer, then a film critic and college professor. When I finally got around to writing fiction, the blending of science fiction and comedy was a natural fit (with occasional forays into horror and fantasy). Iâve done four novels and a couple of dozen published stories to date and when readers tell me theyâve enjoyed them I answer, âIf it made you laugh, I did my job.â When I came up with the mashup title of âFather of the Bride of Frankensteinâ I said, âI have to write this.â
Robert Sheckley was a major influence on me as he mixed SF and humor, sometimes broadly and sometimes darkly. This âbest ofâ collection â on which I got to offer my suggestions as to what should be included â really is the cream of the crop. I will always be grateful that I had the chance to meet him while he was still with us⌠and that before I could say a word, he thanked me for a blurb I did on another collection of his works. It was the perfect fanboy moment.
This is a classic collection of Jewish-themed science fiction ranging from Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison to Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer. It includes William Tennâs hilarious âOn Venus Do We Have a Rabbiâ written especially for the volume. Besides being entertaining it showed me how to weave Jewish themes into genre material without compromising either.
Jewish science fiction and fantasy? Yes! The distinguished list of contributors includes: Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Pamela Sargent, Avram Davidson, Geo. Alec Effinger, Horace L. Gold, Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, and Carol Carr.
William Tenn's futuristic story "On Venus, Have We Got A Rabbi" 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. Asimov's "Unto the Fourth Generation" takes on the issue of Jews as endangered species in America, a theme that is even more apparent today thanâŚ
Everybody knows that all animalsâbats, bears, sharks, ponies, and peopleâstart out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?
Oy, forget the mediocre movie. George Burns was perfectly cast but the reason God appears as a little old Jewish man is that heâs granting an interview to a Jewish freelance journalist, not a white bread grocery store clerk played by John Denver. This book taught me that a writer could be laugh out loud funny and still have something serious to say, something Iâve aspired to in my own fiction.
For a God whom philosophers have proclaimed dead, itâs time for a little PR in this novel from the New York Timesâbestselling author of Kramer vs. Kramer. âGod grants you an interview. Go to 600 Madison Ave., room 3700, Monday, at 11 a.m.â When a struggling writer receives this typed note in the mail one morning, curiosity wins out and he finds himself keeping this mysterious appointment. Soon heâs in an ordinary conference room with an intercom on the floor, furiously scribbling shorthand notes as he interviews God, a deity who badly wants to improve His public profile. Sometimes GodâŚ
Laumerâs satirical books about Jame Retief, a functionary in Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne, were inspired by his real-life career in the U.S. Foreign Service. They donât have to be read in any order and mix short stories (as in this collection) and novels. Much of the humor comes from Retief ignoring the diplomatic niceties in dealing with the problems involving Earth and various alien races.
The first-ever collection of Retief stories by Keith Laumer. Includes "Protocol," "Sealed Orders," "Cultural Exchange," "Aide Memoire," "Policy," and "Palace Revolution."
Constance is a wild, stubborn young girl growing up poor in a small industrial town in the late 1800's. Beneath her thread-worn exterior beats the heart of a dreamer and a wordsmith. But at age twelve, sheâs orphaned. Running away to join the circusâlike kids do in adventure booksâseems likeâŚ
Brown was another author who mixed SF and humor. Here he stood the alien invasion premise on its head. Instead of spaceships from an advanced civilization laying waste to our great cities, Brown wonders how weâd react if the invaders werenât interested in mass murder or enslaving humanity but simply annoying the hell out of us. His little green men from Mars enjoy insulting and pestering Earthlings. After a while, âWar of the Worldsâ might be a preferable encounter.
THEY WERE GREEN, THEY WERE LITTLE, THEY WERE BALD AS BILLIARD BALLS AND THEY WERE EVERYWHERE!
Luke Devereaux was a science fiction writer, holed up in a desert shack waiting for inspiration. He was the first to see a Martian - but he certainly wasn't the last.
It was estimated that one billion of them had arrived - one to every three human beings on Earth. Obnoxious green creatures who could be seen and heard (but not harmed) and who probed private sex lives as shamelessly as they exposed government secrets.
Phil Levin knew his daughter Samantha would marry someday. He wasnât even surprised that it was another graduate student in her bioethics program. The surprise was it was Frank, a reanimated corpse who not only wants to grapple with the issues his creation raises, but also wants to convert and make a Jewish home with her⌠which is more than Phil and his wife ever did.
This sets Phil off on a journey that will include wedding planning, media intrusiveness, Jewish practice, a legal battle over whether Frank even has a right to exist, and whether âThe Munstersâ theme is appropriate for the reception.
A hundred years in the future, in a world where technologically enhanced bodies are valued above organic ones, Complete Life Management (CLM) is selling perfection in the form of the latest and greatest bionic model, the Apogee. As an elite runner and inadvertent spokesperson for the humanism movement, NYPD DetectiveâŚ
1184 BCE. Ramesses III, who will become the last of the great pharaohs, is returning home from battle. He will one day assume the throne of the Egyptian empire, and the plots against him and his children have already started. Even a god can die.