Tuesday Fiction: “Smile of the Monster” by Ido Sokolovsky

Today’s Tuesday Fiction is by Ido Sokolovsky. Born in 1967, Ido is from Israel, and used to read science fiction in his youth. Now in his mid-life crisis, he writes sci-fi stories in Hebrew for any one willing to publish them. His friend Yehudit translated this story in return for a plate of humus. This...

Shimon Adaf Wins Israel’s Sapir Prize

Author Shimon Adaf won Israel's Sapir Prize last night. The prize, modelled after the British Booker Prize, is worth £30,000 and is considered Israel's premier literary award. The winning novel, Mox Nox, tells the parallel stories of a boy coming of age in difficult upbringing, and of the man he had become, a young author, and...

With Both Feet in the Clouds: on Israeli Fantasy

At $75 for the hardcover edition, this is a bit expensive, but this new academic collection of essays on Israeli fantasy, first published in different form in Hebrew in 2009, is now out in an English-language edition from Academic Studies Press.   Blurb: Why do Israelis dislike fantasy? Put so bluntly, the question appears frivolous....

Guy Hasson’s The Emoticon Generation Released

Israeli author Guy Hasson's new collection has just been published by Infinity Plus Books. Guy Hasson’s The Emoticon Generation features seven stories about life-changes brought about by our new electronic generation: stories that blur the borders between our world and science fiction, stories that make you ask, ‘Has this already happened? Is that actually true?’...

Calvino’s The Distance From The Moon in Charming Animation

Italo Calvino's "The Distance From the Moon" gets a charming animation treatment in this short film from Israel created by Shulamit Serfaty.

Our Friends: The Machines

Israeli writer Nir Yaniv has created a charming stop-motion video to accompany the release of his new English-language short story collection, The Love Machine & Other Contraptions.

Nir Yaniv’s debut English-language collection released

Israeli author Nir Yaniv’s debut English-language collection has been released by Keith Brooke’s Infinity Plus imprint. The Love Machine & Other Contraptions is available in Kindle and paperback formats. Yaniv is a film-maker, musician and author based in Tel Aviv. With World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar he co-wrote 2009 novel, The Tel Aviv Dossier....

Movie Night: Impossible Dreams

No update tomorrow so we thought we'd leave you with something fun for the weekend! The film Impossible Dreams, written and directed by Shir Comay, based on the story "Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt. Israel, 2011. 22 minutes. In Hebrew, with English subtitles.  Starring Ori Yaniv and Ayala Zilberman. The full film can be watched free on youtube....

Short Story Highlight: “Undercity” by Nir Yaniv, at Apex Magazine

Apex Magazine have just published Israeli author Nir Yaniv's story, Undercity. The story was published in the exclusive pre-order edition of The Apex Book of World SF 2 but will not be available in the regular edition. You can, however, read it for free online! That day, the complacent city received three warnings. No one bothered to...

Short Story Highlight: “A Good Ending” by Guy Hasson (Israel)

Over at InterNova there's a new story by Israeli author Guy Hasson, A Good Ending: This story has a good ending. Well… for the bureaucrat. ********** Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, there lived a bureaucrat. And the bureaucrat’s son, who was six at the time of this story, had very bad...