The Avram Davidson Treasury

A Tribute Collection

By: Avram Davidson, Robert Silverberg - editor, Grania Davis - editor

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, John Rubinstein, Orson Scott Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Mirron Willis, Justine Eyre, Paul Boehmer, Kate Orsini

Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines.

Now, his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

©1998 Grania Davis (P)2020 Skyboat Media, Inc.

Millenials need not apply

I'll start with a warning: if you think Disney's Star Wars and the new James Bond movies are great, pass this book over, don't bother.

If, on the other hand, you like Literature more than action-packed books, appreciate Saki's humor and Bradbury's poetry-filled style, realize there is more to sci-fi than starships and more to fantasy than dwarves, this MAY be the book for you.

The stories are uneven. Some are great, some are boring or meandering or not clear what they are even about.
The narration is uneven. Rudnicki is amazing, Rubinstein so-so, others indifferent.
Some stories you'll skip over. Others will wow you.

In the end, it's not for nothing this is called a collection. It collects readers as much as it does stories, and if someone was to study the readers and their preferences, it would tell us more about the world than the stories themselves.

Master

I love the sly wit, the obvious intelligence, & the incredible word play. He's a Master.

Amazing

A simply amazing collection. I was late to discovering Avram and I’m slowly working my way through all of his books. This collection is an amazing sampling of his work.

Some Better Read Then Heard but Very Good

overall, I'm glad this collection was made. It's just too much to write about in one sitting but for the audiobook I think it's a mixed bag. some narrators were very good and others I had to skip over and pick up the actual book.

Davidson reveals his context slowly as the stories go and most of the time you're waiting for the last paragraph or the very last line to get the "AHA" moment. the author forwards are immensely helpful as I would have missed a ton of points without them, and I know I still missed many more.

I'm glad that recently it seems like someone is bringing his work back into publication, if the audible message at the end is correct!

Avram Davidson is a literary genius!

If you are a connoisseur of fine literature or if you enjoy short fiction, you are in for a treat!! I believe that I will never be the same after reading this amazing treasure trove. My advice is to listen to each story more than once, they are like some fims, you get more out of it the second time. One of my favorites is the slovo stove. "It didn't even get warm!!"

Superb collection!

A superb collection by a brilliant and under appreciated writer. Davidson was a master practitioner of the short story.

Chapter and introduction labeling is baffling

I had to stop listening. Unusual stories which are fun to hear. Unfortunately the labeling/cuts of individual introductions and chapters is bizarre. Can't follow it, particularly if I lose my place, which is easy to do with this presentation.

Only a few good stories

Avram is a writer of tales/short stories. Some fit in the sci-fi genre. Unlike a book you might greatly enjoy from beginning to end. I would only recommend a few stories. I was hoping to get interested by the introductions that have been included for each story. But this very seldom happened. The stories I did like from Avram: 'Help! I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper', 'Now Let Us Sleep', 'Or the Grasses Grow', 'The Woman Who Thought She Could Read', 'And Don't Forget the One Red Rose', 'Crazy Old Lady'. As for the words from the other contributors I would like to mention those by Bill Pronzini, Harlan Ellison, Ethan Davidson, Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison again.

Dinosaur dribble 😏

I guess, if you're into old movies with James Dean, John Wayne or maybe the original black and white Dracula movie, you might like this collection. Otherwise it's simply to old.. Like overhearing a group of dinosaurs remembering "The good old days"..

Great cure for Insomnia.. ZZZzzz…

Couldn’t make it more than a few chapters. I kept waiting for any of the stories to be Sci Fi, interesting, or even mildly entertaining. But they’re not. At all.

The reader drones in a baritone almost without inflection. The stories are “artsy”, but boring as hell.

I wanted to love this. I wanted to find a new Sci Fi writer that I could enjoy, but just couldn’t get into this at all.