The Avram Davidson Treasury, Avram Davidson
The Avram Davidson Treasury, Avram Davidson
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The Avram Davidson Treasury
A Tribute Collection

Author: Avram Davidson, Robert Silverberg, Grania Davis

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki, a full cast, John Rubinstein, Paul Boehmer, Mirron Willis, Justine Eyre, Orson Scott Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Kate Orsini

Unabridged: 23 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Skyboat Media

Published: 11/17/2020


Synopsis

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.

About Avram Davidson

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) was author of nineteen published novels and more than two hundred short stories and essays collected in more than a dozen books. Davidson won the Hugo Award in science fiction, the Queen’s Award and Edgar Award in the mystery genre, and the World Fantasy Award (three times).

About Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Prix Apollo. He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels -- including the best-selling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes -- and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are Legends and Far Horizons, which contain original short stories set in the most popular universe of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy and SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg's Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.

About Grania Davis

Grania Davis (1943–2017), an author and editor, wrote The Rainbow Annals, The Great Perpendicular Path, and Moonbird. She was married to author Avram Davidson from 1962 to 1964 and collaborated with him on several works. After Davidson’s death in 1993, Davis coedited collections of his stories, including The Avram Davidson Treasury (with Robert Silverberg), which won the 1999 Locus Award for best collection.

About Ray Bradbury

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

About Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo award nine times, the Nebula award three times, the Bram Stoker award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.

About John Rubinstein

John Rubinstein made his debut as the title role in Bob Fosse’s Pippin. He is a skillful, AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator who has read works by Jonathan Kellerman, Orson Scott Card, Tom Clancy, and Gabriel Brownstein. Rubinstein is also a successful actor and has acted in the films Jekyll, Choose Conner, The Truth About Layla, and 21 Grams.  His television credits include The Young and the Restless, Greek, Desperate Housewives, Day Break, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, CSI and Law & Order.

About Paul Boehmer

Paul Boehmer attended his first Shakespearean play while in high school; he knew then that he was destined to become the classically trained actor he is today. Graduating with a master's degree, Paul was cast as Hamlet by the very stage actor who inspired his career path. A nod from the Universe he'd chosen aright! Paul has worked on Broadway and extensively in regional theater. Coinciding with another of his passions, sci-fi, Paul has been cast in various roles in many episodes of Star Trek. Paul's love of literature and learning led him by nature to his work as a narrator for audiobooks, his latest endeavour. Paul is married to the love of his life, Offir, and they live in Los Angeles with their two midnight-rambling tomcats, Dread and David.

About Mirron Willis

Mirron Willis has narrated over 200 audiobooks across various literary genres and has won several Earphone Awards for Excellence and is an Audie Award finalist and winner. Notable works include Ginny Gall by Charlie Smith, The Smokey Dalton Series by Kris Nelscott; My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte; The Long Fall (Booklist, Best of 2009) and others by Walter Mosley; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elijah of Buxton, The Translator; and Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B Dubois. In three seasons at the Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas), Mirron appeared as JP in What I Learned in Paris, Malcolm X in The Meeting, Henry in Race, and as Countee Cullen in Knock Me a Kiss (2013 Giorgee Award for Best Leading Actor). Other roles include Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VI Parts 2 & 3, and A Raisin in the Sun with the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed as guest narrator with the Houston Symphony. Film and TV guest appearances include Criminal Minds, Private Practice, The Exes, Monk, 24, Seinfeld, Cheers, The Parkers, Living Single, E.R., Star Trek, and Independence Day, among others. Mirron resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.

About Justine Eyre

Justine Eyre is an award-winning audiobook narrator who has recorded over three-hundred titles. Named a 2013 AudioFile Best Voice, she has won an Audie Award and multiple Earphones Awards. Classically trained and multilingual, she performs on stage, television, and film and has had roles in King Lear and The Crucible, on Two and a Half Men and Mad Men, and in multiple indie-circuit films.

About Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977--the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin. Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.

About Gabrielle de Cuir

Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award.  She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.

About Kate Orsini

Kate Orsini is a native of Talladega, Alabama. She earned a double major in Theatre and French Literature from Vassar College. She’s performed on stage, in film, and on TV. She currently recurs on NCIS: LA, and stars in the Zoom episodic, “The Corona Dialogues,” produced by Bonnie Hunt, for which she won Best Actress at the London Independent Film Festival.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jamie on February 27, 2023

Avram Davidson is fairly obscure to modern readers but was extremely well regarded and influential among his peers, which include many of the greats of both American SFF and mystery fiction that emerged in the 50's and 60's. This collection won the Locus Award for Best Collection (1999) and represen......more

Goodreads review by Dmitry on July 25, 2007

Suppose you are the insomniac son of the world's funniest, smartest rabbi, who tells you bed time stories to get you to go to sleep, except they are so good, you never do. (And if that's not your idea of the best possible collection of American science fiction and fantasy short stories, I don't know......more

Goodreads review by Michael on March 28, 2017

Five hundred pages of stories from some writer that we've barely heard of? How good can this be? As it turns out, not bad at all and oftentimes verging on the excellent, as a host of other writers do their best to resurrect their old friend and make him famous in a way he was never in life (unfortun......more

Goodreads review by Athena on March 29, 2023

I've been slowly picking my way through this for months and have been talking about it era by era on my blog as I finish each section. Now it's finally done. I say that not in a bad way but I can only read so much of a thing like this by one author and it became a struggle by the end. I also liked th......more

Goodreads review by Aaron on February 20, 2016

This is one of the finest short fiction collections I have ever read. Avram Davidson is another of the great writers who are criminally overlooked. He was at one time the editor for "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction". His absolute genius is apparent in almost every story contained within.......more


Quotes

“Not merely a treasury, it’s a genuine treasure. Some of its pages will carry you away to strange seas and shores, others will show you the marvelous within the seemingly ordinary, and just about all of them will take your breath away. But that’s what magicians do.” Washington Post Book World

“Davidson had one of the most original imaginations in the history of American SF and fantasy…and he deserves to be enjoyed by generations of ordinary readers rather than left to the dubious mercy of SF academics.” Booklist