Forget about start-up nation! Inspired by a science fiction novel - the 1903 proto-Steampunk utopia Old New Land by Theodor Herzl - the State of Israel is the quintessential science fiction nation.

Enter, More Zion's Fiction: Wondrous Tales from the Israeli ImagiNation, the second of an authoritative three-volume English language collection of Israeli speculative fiction.

Herzl, the Austrian journalist once famously declared: "If you will it, it is no dream." Herzl's dream was to create a modern Jewish state in the historical homeland of the Jewish people. Ours is to forge out a literary refuge for the kind of unbridled literary fancy his aspirants, tasked with transforming his science-fictional vision into a hardscrabble reality, could not bring themselves to accomplish. Yours, we hope, will be to help us pry open a long-shuttered window into the dreams and nightmares of a nation quite unlike any other.