Avram Davidson: The Avram Davidson Treasury : a tribute collection

He wrote intensely, and published over two hundred works of short fiction. Many stories are award winners or award nominees, or were included in “Best of …” anthologies. The score stands at:

Five World Fantasy Award nominations, and three awards (Best Short Fiction, Best Collection, and Life Achievement).

Seven Nebula nominations, covering all categories. (The Nebula is awarded by one’s colleagues in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.)

Two Edgar nominations and one award, for Best Short Mystery Story, from his fellow Mystery Writers of America.

The Ellery Queen Award for Best Short Mystery Story.

Appearances in nearly fifty (count ’em!) “Best Of …” anthologies.

(And a partridge in a pear tree…)

Yet many of these acclaimed stories have never appeared in an Avram Davidson collection, or have fallen out of print and are rare and hard to find.

Avram once wrote, “A labor which might have made Hercules pause is persuading a publisher to issue a collection of short stories. At the first suggestion of it they whine, whimper, climb trees, and go seek their homes in the rocks like the aunts.” (Preface to Strange Seas and Shores , Doubleday, 1971.)

But here they are — or at least some of them, gathered into a wonderful, whiz-bang volume. Ask your bookseller for more.

Avram Davidson has always been a writers’ writer — the author that other authors choose when they want a warm, witty, literate read. This became strikingly clear when we sent invitations to his friends and colleagues, requesting introductions to their favorite Avram Davidson stories — a sort of Writers’ Memorial Party. The response was exciting, as you will see. Many stories in this book were award winners or nominees; most of them appeared in one or more “Best of …” anthologies; and all of them were picked by a respected author of imaginative fiction as a beloved favorite.

I want to thank all the authors who wrote introductions, and pass along Avram’s advice to you:

A million schoolmams, male and female, have taught us as if teaching geometry or other holy writ, that a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And, of course, a story has. The beginning of a story is where it begins, the middle of a story is where it middens, and the end of a story is where it ends. This is exemplified by the one book found even in homes where the mom and the dad have provided no Bible, namely the telephone book. It begins at A and it ends at Z and it middens at or about L. It is the story or song of the Tenth Sister, Elemenope, the Muse of the Alphabet. Characters? Look at all those characters! Plots? Plots? As many as you like. From Abbott Plott to Zygmunt Plotz. (Afterword to The Best of Avram Davidson , Doubleday, 1979.)

This book has been the cooperative effort of Avram Davidson’s friends, and mine. I owe thanks and gratitude to every one — you are each a treasure. To Robert Silverberg, my esteemed co-editor, and to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, our Tor editor, who was with us from the start. To every friend who wrote an introduction — and especially to every friend who offered to write an introduction, even after the book was filled. To my dear husband, Dr. Stephen L. Davis, and my fine sons Ethan Davidson and Seth Davis (Avram Davidson’s son and godson), who made countless field-trips to the dreaded copy-shop. To Darrell Schweitzer and George Scithers at Owlswick Literary Agency, who persevered, and to Peter Crowther and Stewart Wieck, who got our ball rolling. Many thanks to author Sr. Richard Gibbons, who kept it together, and to Davidson bibliographers extraordinaire, Richard Grant, who saved so much, and vajra Henry Wessells. To those who listened patiently, tracked down information, offered help and ideas, encouragement, kindness and love in so many ways — you know who you are.

Thanks most of all to the readers, who are about to embark on an adventure. You are in for some laughs and verbal thrills, and your mind will be bent in many directions. Please remember that some of the stories were written decades ago, when language customs were different — like those wonderful old black-and-white noir films, where all the women are called “babe.” Fasten your seat belts, hold onto your hats, and don’t forget to send postcards home.

STARSHIP AVRAM TAKING OFF — BON VOYAGE.

YOURSLY YOURS (AS AVRAM OFTEN SAID),

GRANIA DAVIS (THE “IRON KREPLACH”),

1998, SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA, AND KAHUKU, HAWAII

This little story was the science-fiction world’s introduction to the art of Avram Davidson. It occupied just four pages of the July, 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which then was an elegant and fastidious publication edited by the elegant and fastidious Anthony Boucher, a connoisseur of fine wines and opera and mystery stories and fantasy, and his colleague J. Francis McComas. Boucher’s brief introduction to the story went like this:

Avram Davidson, scholar and critic, has the most beautiful beard that has ever visited our office, and one of the most attractively wide-ranging minds, full of fascinating lore on arcane and unlikely subjects. For his first fiction outside of specialized Jewish publications, he takes his theme from an offtrail branch of folklore, the baffling rime-games sung by little girls, with distinctive and delightful results.

Thus the new author was placed perfectly for us as he actually was: the bearded scholar with the wide-ranging off-beat mind. And Avram did the rest, with the dazzling opening paragraph that (while seeming to be bewilderingly diffuse) actually communicates a dozen different significant things about the narrator and his predicament, and then, deftly leading us onward through one circumlocution after another, depositing us less than two thousand words later at the sharply ironic final moment.

It was all there, right at the outset: the cunning narrative strategy, the mannered prose, the flourish of esoteric erudition, the sly wit, all done up in a four-page marvel of a story. Surely we all saw, right away, that a stream of further masterpieces would follow this introductory tidbit. Surely we did: surely. Oh, Avram, Avram, what a wonder you were!

FASHION, NOTHING BUT FASHION. Virus X having in the medical zodiac its course half i-run, the physician (I refuse to say “doctor” and, indeed, am tempted to use the more correct “apothecary”) — the physician, I say, tells me I have Virus Y. No doubt in the Navy it would still be called Catarrhal Fever. They say that hardly anyone had appendicitis until Edward VII came down with it a few weeks before his coronation, and thus made it fashionable. He (the medical man) is dosing me with injections of some stuff that comes in vials. A few centuries ago he would have used herbal clysters… Where did I read that old remedy for the quinsy (“putrescent sore throat,” says my dictionary)? Take seven weeds from seven meads and seven nails from seven steeds . Oh dear, how my mind runs on. I must be feverish. An ague, no doubt.

Well, rather an ague than a pox. A pox is something one wishes on editors…strange breed, editors. The females all have names like Lulu Ammabelle Smith or Minnie Lundquist Bloom, and the males have little horns growing out of their brows. They must all be Quakers, I suppose, for their letters invariably begin, “Dear Richard Roe” or “Dear John Doe,” as if the word mister were a Vanity…when they write at all, that is; and meanwhile Goodwife Moos calls weekly for the rent. If I ever have a son (than which nothing is more unlikely) who shows the slightest inclination of becoming a writer, I shall instantly prentice him to a fishmonger or a Master Chimney Sweep. Don’t write about Sex, the editors say, and don’t write about Religion, or about History. If, however, you do write about History, be sure to add Religion and Sex. If one sends in a story about a celibate atheist, however, do you think they’ll buy it?