Avram Davidson Boeken

15 SF-verhalen

Enkele generaties na de derde galactische oorlog zijn er nog slechts zo'n zeventig van de Honderd Werelden over. Het menselijk ras is moe van het vechten; behoud van de status quo is het beste waar men op hoopt. De arme wereld Pia 2 heeft alleen nog contact met de rest van de mensheid via het Q-schip van het Gilde van de Tweede Academie, dat om de vijf jaar langskomt om de Gildestation te bevoorraden en de essentiële roodvleugeloogst op te halen. Wanneer de oogst terugloopt, wordt Edran Lomar als gezant naar Pia 2 gestuurd om de oorzaak te achterhalen. Echter, geen van de betrokken partijen, inclusief de bureaucraten van het Gildestation en de Tocks, de afstammelingen van de oorspronkelijke kolonisten, staat te wachten op Lomars bemoeienissen. Bovendien zijn er de rorks, angstaanjagende inheemse wezens die de situatie compliceren. Lomar wordt, tegen zijn wil, een katalysator die het broze evenwicht op Pia 2 verstoort. Avram Davidson, een van de groten in de 20ste eeuwse sciencefiction en fantasy, stond bekend om zijn eruditie en literaire stijl, en zijn werk is bekroond met onder andere een Hugo en meerdere World Fantasy Awards. Davidson's unieke vertelstijl en humor maken zijn verhalen onvergetelijk.

A young Avram Davidson would have been seven years old at the time, when prohibition was the law of the land and beer barons like Dutch Schultz sold illegal alcohol to the public. In 1962 Avram wrote Beer Like Water, which was part of a book of Davidson’s true short stories titled Crimes & Chaos.In this book, in Avram’s typical fashion, he plays with the setting such that it’s a bit more special than reality. Beer! Beer! Beer! exists at the intersection of magical realism (just a hint) and historical fiction, with the streets of Yokums representing the Yonkers of his youth in the 1920s and 1930s much in the way that the British Hidalgo of Limekiller! parallels Belize.If you pay attention, you’ll notice little nods to you, his readers, along the way—could Yokums somehow be connected in Avram’s universe to the goings-on in the fantastical empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania?

Professor Vlad Smith is on a terrifying quest, one that will take him from the halls of our most hallowed institutions to the most run-down of old houses in blighted neighborhoods. A mysterious committee, shredded yellowed newspapers, a daguerrotype of a Confederate soldier, a headless corpse and a corpseless head.... These are the clues which Smith must piece together to save his sanity and his daughter, and uncover the terrible secret of the Boss in the Wall. What a scary story, like a modern Dracula but completely original in its concept and chillingly realistic in its narration. Avram Davidson was one of the finest writers the fantasy field has had, endlessly inventive and uniquely vivid. Grania Davis has completed this work, which he left unfinished, in a way that does him proud. - Poul Anderson The Boss in the Wall is a last powerful and major work by a major and powerful author. - Gregory Benford It is hard to imagine the genre that could encompass him; it is even more difficult to imagine fantasy or science fiction without him. - The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Avram Davidson was an American Jewish writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and a Queen's Award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre.In this collection of stories from 1959 to 1961, Avram treats us to pieces on maritime tragedies, Prohibition-era gangsters, forgotten Americans, the Triangle Shirt Co. tragedy, and the Crimean Light Brigade blunder. He also has an intriguing theory about Jack the Ripper.

Collected here for the first time are Davidson's remarkable mystery tales, including: the 1840s murder investigations of New York's chief constable, Jacob Hays; a sinister lesson in New England thrift; a bride who disappears on her wedding day; a slavetrader and a deal gone terribly wrong; treachery in a nursing home; a greedy antiquarian repents his ways; expatriates who will kill for a little peace and quiet; and much ado about an exiled earl, Albanian Trotskyites, the Mafia, New Amsterdam river pirates, and the aspiring hooligans known as the Nafia (who "control all the gumball and India nut machines south of Vesey Street").

Avram Davidson's six Jack Limekiller stories create a rich and colorful world where the magical and inexplicable coexist with the outboard motor and the escalation of the American war in Vietnam. British Hidalgo is "a place that you can put your arms around" - welcoming and friendly to the visitor, but uncanny beings dwell in the bush and roam along its coast. Afloat and ashore, Jack Limekiller, master of the working sailboat Saccharissa, encounters ghosts of the colonial past and monsters far older. Set in the imaginary Central American colony of British Hidalgo (a fictionalized British Honduras / Belize), originally published in various magazines, It includes a preface by Grania Davis, introductions by Lucius Shepard and Peter S. Beagle, and concluding material by Henry Wessells, the author, Grania Davis and Ethan Davidson.

Dust jacket design by Peter Rauch. The title novella, together with five stories in the science fiction and fantasy genre, each with an afterword by Davidson.

A New Collection of Long Out-of-Print Stories From One of the Greatest Fantasists of the Twentieth Century Avram Davidson, who died in 1993, was widely regarded as one of the most outstanding authors of short fantasy fiction in our time. This collection comprises his distinctive historical fantasies-tales of strange Mitteleuropas, of magic in Victorian England and on the American frontier. Here are "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire," "Traveller from an Antique Land," and "What Strange Stars and Skies"; here are dragons, cameras, and "The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach." Witty, whimsical, dark, and strange, these tales of times and places that almost were will leave even the most jaded readers amazed. No one has ever written like Avram Davidson, before or since.