In this book, Valerie Estelle Frankel ana­lyzes one of the many facets of the artis­tic world that has been affect­ed by Jew­ish cre­ators: sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. While these gen­res are often con­sid­ered to be dom­i­nat­ed by Chris­t­ian imagery and themes, the effect Jew­ish cre­ators have had on sci­ence fic­tion ranges from main­stream works such as Star Trek, to more inti­mate and overt­ly Jew­ish fic­tion from authors like Isaac Bashe­vis Singer. In par­tic­u­lar, Frankel’s explo­rations of Space Balls and Dune pro­vide unique per­spec­tives on Jew­ish com­e­dy along­side Jew­ish mysticism. 

The ulti­mate strength in this text is that it serves as a com­pan­ion to mul­ti­ple pieces of sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy, while also focus­ing on a dis­tinc­tive­ly post-Holo­caust the­mat­ic that arrives most clear­ly in the seg­ment dis­cussing post-apoc­a­lyp­tic works. The author’s obser­va­tions are well sup­port­ed by evi­dence cit­ed direct­ly from the source mate­r­i­al. This strat­e­gy and pre­sen­ta­tion keeps both the analy­sis ground­ed, but also is able to point the reader’s atten­tion to ele­ments about which they can extrap­o­late and the­o­rize for them­selves. Frankel does not make the assump­tion that read­ers have already engaged with sci­ence-fic­tion analy­sis, but rather that they have been pas­sive audi­ences of sci­ence fic­tion or fan­ta­sy and are eager to expand their knowl­edge of the gen­res. The one flaw in this is that if the read­er is unfa­mil­iar with a work being dis­cussed, the text may be confusing.