The Avram Davidson Treasury

Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was literate, erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his short stories to genre pulp magazines. They were wonderful. Here are thirty-eight of the best: all the award-winners and nominees and best-of honored stories, with introductions by such notable authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Peter S. Beagle,Thomas M. Disch, Gene Wolfe, Poul Anderson, Guy Davenport, Gregory Benford, Alan Dean Foster, and dozens of others, plus introductions and afterwords by Grania Davis, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Bradbury. The stories span a period of thirty years, from ebullient 1950s tales like "The Golem" and the seminally weird "Or All the Seas with Oysters," through classics like "The Sources of the Nile" and "The House the Blakeneys Built," to the magic realism of "Manatee Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight," and the mystery and simplicity of "Naples" and "The Slovo Stove." For those already acquainted with Avram Davidson's work, this book is a joy; for those who have the pleasure of encountering his work for the first time, it is a voyage of discovery.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.