This undying vagrant is an Icon of Fantasy who appears or is alluded to in a number of sf stories, usually exemplifying the notion of Immortality being a curse rather than a blessing. According to legend, the Wandering Jew – known by various names including Ahasuerus and Cartaphilus – was uncharitable to Christ on the day of crucifixion, and so was condemned to live on until the End of Time. The best known sf novel in which this character makes an appearance is Walter M Miller Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz (April 1955-February 1957 F&SF; fixup 1960). C S Forester transfers the curse to Hitler in "The Wandering Gentile" (in The Nightmare, coll 1954). John Boyd, as a witty variation on Shaggy God Story bathos, leaves the Time-Travelling hero of The Last Starship from Earth (1968) to make his way back from Biblical times to modernity in this wanderer's role; a similar fate afflicts a longer-range time traveller in Earthdoom! (1987) by David Langford and John Grant. Ahasuerus himself is a minor character in Diana Wynne Jones's Parallel-Worlds adventure The Homeward Bounders (1981). A relevant anthology is Brian Stableford's Tales of the Wandering Jew (anth 1991), with a long and useful introduction by Stableford. The author links below offer further examples, chiefly fantasy; see also the corresponding entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. [DRL]
see also: Adam and Eve; Olof W Anderson; Frank Aubrey; H M Bien; James P Blaylock; James Fenimore Cooper; Paul Eldridge; Gustav Meyrink; Richard Miller; Robert Nichols; Philip Norton; Leo Perutz; Frank R Stockton; George S Viereck.
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