Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Rachel: I’m obsessed with Zohar Jacobs’ short stories, and every time she publishes one, I have to send the link around to everyone I know and yell at them until they read it. Today, she’s joined us to tell our readers about her work!

Zohar: I write science fiction and slipstream, and so far have had stories published in the Sunday Morning Transport, Small Wonders, Analog and Clarkesworld. I also have a story forthcoming in Asimov’s.

Rachel: I’m always impressed by the religious and cultural questions you address in your writing, whether it’s about the role of religion on a Soviet lunar base or the question of whether a paired intelligence counts as one person or two in a minyan. Religion is such an under-explored concept in sci-fi—what draws you to exploring it?

Zohar: Mostly I’m getting back at Gene Roddenberry for how badly he dealt with religion in Star Trek. Although I’m an agnostic, religion has always been part of my life, and it’s one of the most complex social and intellectual systems that humanity has created. Why assume that we’d leave all that behind? You could actually argue that the feeling of being unmoored by distance from Earth and the scale of the universe might make people turn to religion more.

Rachel: Another theme I see in your writing is the engagement with real-world issues such as the climate crisis or the war in Ukraine? What are the challenges of writing about a future that is so grounded in our present?

Zohar: Oddly I’ve never thought of it as a challenge. I sometimes think that I’m not a very creative person: reality is always where I get my inspiration, because it comes up with much more complex and bizarre scenarios than I ever could. By hewing close to reality, I can expect my readers to bring their own set of rich, independent associations to my work. I guess the challenge is that I can’t predict how people will take my writing – but I’m not sure I could do that anyway.

Rachel: How important is literary voice in science fiction?

Zohar: Many SF readers prefer transparent, pacy prose that doesn’t get in the way of the story: think Andy Weir’s The Martian. So maybe it’s not that important. On the other hand, some of SF’s best writers have been great prose stylists – Ursula le Guin, Samuel R. Delany, M. John Harrison – so it’s clearly no obstacle to success either. Literary voice is important to me, but then I sometimes joke that I’m actually a literary author who just likes spaceships too much.

Rachel: What’s your next writing project?

Zohar: Funnily enough, a literary novel. It feels odd to temporarily step back from the SFF community, but this is a story that I’ve been wanting to tell for nearly 20 years. (It has spaceships too.)

Rachel: Tell us where the Night Beats community can find you and find your work!

Zohar: Apart from the magazines where I’ve been published, you can find me on Twitter @zoharjacobs and BlueSky @zoharjacobs.bsky.social. One of these days I will set up a website but this is not that day yet.