Avram Davidson (1923–1993)

Davidson, Avram. Mutiny in Space. 1964. Prologue, 2012.
Everything about the way this book has usually been packaged is misleading. The title should be something like Castaways on Valentine’s World because most of the action takes place on that planet. The name of the planet suggests a romantic focus that is present but downplayed in the plot. A blurb says the main characters are surrounded by a “howling mob of women,” phrasing that suggests a misogynistic focus that Davidson was at show more pains to undercut. As Michael Swanwick noted in his 2003 “Introduction to Mutiny in Space” (michaelswanwick.com/nonfic/mutiny.html), Davidson also undercuts the heroic stereotype of the brave, hunky space captain who never makes a mistake, and he suggests a critique of attempts to make colonialism, racism, and sexism morally palatable. The plot does have some pulpy elements, though. A mutiny leaves a captain and the loyal members of his mostly male spacecraft crew stranded on a planet with a nonindustrial culture in which women far outnumber men. When the captain inadvertently leads the mutineers with their megalomaniac leader to the planet, violence ensues. But the loyal crew is also having trouble deciding how to create a viable society. The ones we root for are the ones with the least grandiose plans. Three and a half stars rounded up to four. show less

Updated/expanded 2022 edition of a collection originally published in 1998; a very generous collection -- roughly 650 pages, almost 40 stories -- of Davidson's stories, each with an introduction by one of his friends or colleagues, and with afterwords at the end of the book by even more of them.

Those other writers are not timid about placing Davidson among the very finest writers of short stories. Ray Bradbury imagines himself taking a long train trip with his favorite writers, including show more Davidson as well as Rudyard Kipling, Saki, John Collier, and G. K. Chesterton, then says:

"I realize that is a rare fine company I have put him in, but I have always been one to stick my neck out through affection and admiration. If I would not say he measures completely to their height, I do say this: On such a train, on such a sweet night journey, these men would gladly listen to Avram Davidson and read and enjoy him. You would find his stories in their book bags, even as you would find theirs in his."

Bradbury isn't overstating the case. Davidson's stories are marvelous, and he deserves to be remembered in such company.

I am particularly struck by how well, and how quickly, he establishes mood and tone, and over what a range -- the unsettling grim creepiness of "Naples," the outlandish whimsy of "Help! I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper," the ferociously dark humor of "Revolver." And he's always in absolute control of those moods, capable of pulling off shifts that might, in lesser hands, cause painful whiplash; the abruptly shocking end of "Crazy Old Lady" is a marvel.

Davidson also has a striking gift for language and dialect. His characters come from a variety of places around the world, and they speak accordingly. He writes dialect in a way that sounds authentic without ever feeling condescending. The elderly Jewish couple of "The Golem," for instance, could easily have slipped into horrible cliche, especially as far back as 1955, but Davidson presents them with a warmth and precision that makes them real people.

In reading this book, I knocked three more stories off my list of award-nominated short SF, and two of those are stunners. "Or All the Seas with Oysters" deftly adds touches of paranoia and the otherworldly to a story of bickering bicycle repairmen (and delivers another jawdropping ending); "The House the Blakeneys Built" is a slow-building gem of both comedy and horror. I was not quite as taken with "Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman," a Sleeping Beauty variation featuring Davidson's series character, Dr. Eszterhazy, who is sort of a Ruritanian Sherlock Holmes, though it's certainly beautifully written prose.

This book covers Davidson's career from his first published story -- 1954's "My Boy Friend's Name Is Jello," a riff on the games children play -- to his last -- 1993's "The Spook-Box of Theodore Delafont De Brooks," a dryly melancholy look at the weight of self-imposed expectations. show less

Ostensibly the tale of a wandering youth, bastard son of the last pagan king in Christiandom, this is an opulent romp of baroque language, sly puns, and wicked satirization of both early Christianity and of the decaying Roman empire.

It must be a source of endless frustration to Davidson's friends and fans that his work isn't better known, because good lord it deserves to be. This collection is a joy and a pleasure - right from the riotous opening story and all through the various layers of disparate and even warring elements that combine in perfectly balanced recipes to produce the others, to the impending passing from history and memory of the fourth-largest empire in Europe. To say the Doctor is a kind of Sherlock show more Holmes is truly insufficent - he is a kind of court sorceror of a rational age filled with surviving superstitions and ambiguous occurences and every now and the the just plain magical. A wonderful read, a wonderful listen, incredibly funny, deeply learned, Umberto Eco crossed with PG Wodehouse set in the place next door to Ruritania. show less