Judaism and SF

[cellio]

Wandering Stars is the classic compilation of SF around Jewish themes, including halachic issues that just don't arise in day-to-day life like whether space aliens can convert (and, IIRC, managing the calendar on other planets). Some of my readers might be interested in the following speculative questions that have been asked on Judaism.StackExchange:

Does the torah discuss (space) aliens?

Time travel and Judaism

If a pig was genetically modified to chew its cud would it be kosher?

(I just posted these on an old entry in response to a comment (was cleaning out spam and noticed it), but I then thought they might be of more general interest.)

Edit:

The following were contributed by Isaac Moses in a comment:

Can a robot be your rabbi? (As if we don't have enough trouble with people thinking that a website can be a rabbi.)

Does Robot = Golem?

Can a robot be your official agent? Looks like your anthology can have a whole section on robots.

If you can drive a car using only your brain, can you do that on Shabbat?


And based on another comment, I just asked: When does somebody living in space observe shabbat?

Comments

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

Well, hmm... per the top-ranked answer a naturally born, genetically modified pig that chews its cud (and divides the hoof, etc) is still not kosher because it is the direct offspring of a decidedly non-kosher pig. Is there some point-- perhaps after some number of generations-- that the descendents of the genetically modified pig might be considered kosher?

[isaac moses (from livejournal.com)]

zare_k, That sounds like a great follow-up question! http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/ask

[cellio]

I don't know. You could ask. :-) (StackExchange uses OpenID, so it's easy to get access to post.) It is possible, though I do not know, that it is only one generation, reasoning from the fact that the milk of a non-kosher animal is not kosher -- I'm thinking "direct output" might be a factor. Or not.

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

Done in comments on the OP.

[siderea]

What's the trouble? If you can genetically engineer a pig to chew its own cud, it shouldn't be any problem to implant the zygote of this cud-chewing-pig into a cow for gestation. Voila, bacon for everyone.

[cellio]

I wonder if that would count as grafting, which isn't permitted for plants (all? some? not sure) but I have no idea about animals.

[eub.livejournal.com]

That's interesting about grafting. If eating the fruit of a grafted apple tree is impermissible, that's a *lot* of your commercial apple production.