Avram Davidson–Writer and Editor: RGBIB 561

Indexed: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Hi, welcome to the bathtub. This is I, the old master bather.

[00:00:04]And the old master bather's parakeet, Lucky's in the hallway playing with a Kong and she's had a really nice day.

[00:00:10]This is uh this is the post pixel. We're actually we're we haven't been drinking on these shows.

[00:00:18]But tonight I took Lucky to happy hour.

[00:00:21]I'm the only guy in San Luis Obispo takes their dog to happy hour. And I do it cuz hoping she helps her settle down a bit. And give her treats and then she doesn't if she doesn't attack people then it was a really successful trip.

[00:00:31]So we're doing that. Dodo's out. Um she's she's much more sociable right now. I don't know if you noticed she's been she was she was having an affair with her one of the mirrors in her her cage and she would not leave it. She just huddled up against it for weeks.

[00:00:45]And she never said anything. She never came out. And she was losing her hair and she was just kind of look kind of sad. So I took that mirror away and now she's happy she's she's busy as a clam.

[00:00:55]She's gotten over the reflection.

[00:00:58]And that's it. This is reading great reading great books in the bathtub.

[00:01:02]Don't let me forget. For example, we've been selling a lot of our flogging our books cuz we're moving. This is all I've got left in that $5 sale. I have a fire sale. So basically $5 a book $5 and I I do the postage. So this is what's left. About 2/3 are gone. Um the people who watched her pass by it's one of my favorite of my novels. Um the reprint of history of luminous motion with my new introduction and reading great books in the bathtub which is the which is the companion volume to this completely pointless show. It's probably a little less pointless than the show itself.

[00:01:38]And I'm having my cocktail. Okay, I've done I tried to film this twice now.

[00:01:44]Lucky was getting upset in the hallway cuz I she couldn't get the food out of her Kong so I had to help her.

[00:01:48]And everything's been going fine. This is called Avram Davidson writer editor.

[00:01:53]And we've been doing this I we have a few projects here and I really like I like projects as a reader because they make me read things I wasn't going to read before. For example, we're reading all of William Trevor's novels backwards chronologically and I'd only read one or two before and it's really got me into reading I mean again I much prefer short stories but really enjoyed reading his novels backwards. I always read William Moore's novels many many times and reading them backwards is a new way of just kind of refreshing my enjoyment of those those books. We've also been doing this Avram Davidson where an old friend of mine from the I knew him from the 60s and I knew him through the 80s, 90s and he died probably in beginning of the end of the somewhere in the 90s I think and he was a novelist a very very perplexing and brilliant and incredibly intelligent man whose mind was filled with information and disinformation though he knew the difference unlike a lot of people in our world and he particularly legends and mythology and old documents about you know old geographies of the world how it was flat or it had this or that and and where the centaurs lived. He knew all that phrenology he knew all this weird stuff he would write about.

[00:03:06]And he so we're reading a novel of his or a book of his and we're reading an issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction the magazine he edited for three years. I think he was living in Mexico most of the time and this this week I finished March March 1964 issue which I think may have to be one of the best F&SF issues of all time and we'll get to that in a minute.

[00:03:29]So let me talk a bit about it. The the Island of the Earth 1968 okay 1969 in the lovely Terry Carr's edited and the Leo and Diane Dillon's designed science fiction paperbacks that I read when I was about 14 and I would go to them to the drugstore every month and get the latest one and they are still some of my favorite books. And some of them, like the Island Under the Earth, I could never read. I could never get into this book for years and years and decades and decades. And even over the past 10 years or so, I've tried it a few times and had trouble getting into it.

[00:04:05]This past couple of weeks, I just shook my head. When Lucky gets stressed out, she shakes her head. It kind of refreshes her.

[00:04:13]And shook my head a lot a few times, and I started again, and I got past page 10.

[00:04:18]I was always getting bogged down by about page 10.

[00:04:21]And I really enjoyed this book. It's probably next to Phoenix in the Mirror, probably my favorite Avram Davidson book. And I'll say a few things about it. I can't say everything I'd like to say about it. It's So, it's set in the world underneath the Earth, referring to some of the legends that Avram dug out of the world out of the out of the history of the world's books.

[00:04:41]I mean, he really is. He's like a living Borges story, Avram. He knew every book that was ever written and published.

[00:04:48]And it was underneath It's under the underneath the Earth, and it's somehow disconnected from the Earth, and it also has this weird peculiarity that you understand only as the book develops, which is every once in a while it shifts like ours shifts seismically, our planet shifts seismically, and mountains erupt, form, and so forth. But time and geography completely shape reshape themselves. And so, as the characters move through the landscape of this this island under the Earth, they're encountering themselves in the past, and they're encountering events that happened in the past, and they're back in places that they're are not They weren't where they were far away from before, and there's a lot of things changing. The opening of the book, and I may have this wrong, so don't quote me.

[00:05:29]I never quote the Master Baeder on anything. But the opening is sort of it recounts how a guy named Captain Stay, he has a ship, and a merchant, I think his name is Merchant Low or something like that.

[00:05:41]And Merchant Low, and they somehow have stolen tons and tons of treasure from somewhere or found tons and tons of treasure. And they've hidden it somewhere in the the land of the Centaurs.

[00:05:51]The Centaurs referred to as Sixies.

[00:05:54]Avram doesn't tell you any of this stuff. You have to figure it out as you go along. The Sixies are Centaurs cuz they have four legs and two arms.

[00:06:01]And in the opening 10 or 20 pages, he just mentions like well there's these types of creatures and these type of creatures. And as the book develops, you realize these some of these characters have names and histories, but you don't really know any of the history of any of these characters. And it kind of comes at you as you as the book comes along, much like the way the characters encounter different stories of themselves in different periods of their lives as they travel through.

[00:06:24]So, I won't say too much more than that except that it it there's a lot of characters. There's a harpy, there's a there's a some magical thief who steals things and and like Avram as in Phoenix in the Mirror, we have like a 20-page description of how Virgil conducts a an alchemical ceremony. You know, like 20 pages, I think.

[00:06:45]There's like several pages of how this thief make magic magically makes himself capable of entering people's homes. I forget his name is on the Zorbanan, the thief. Reminds me a little bit of of Jack Vance. Avram and Jack Vance were friends.

[00:06:59]And it's much more complex and much more studious, if that makes sense, than Jack Vance. But it's still a lot of fun. I'm going to For example, I'm going to give you one example from this and I was trying to do this earlier and I had to stop cuz I screwed it up.

[00:07:15]For example, in the first 10 or 20 pages, Stag Captain Stag is traveling to go They're going to recover all this wealth that they've hidden somewhere. I think that's what's happening.

[00:07:25]And he's got a woman in the back of his carriage.

[00:07:28]And her name is Spahana.

[00:07:30]But you don't know her name until like halfway through the book. It's like almost like if Faulkner had written this science fiction novel. Really, it's a lot of the same modernist ideas that we only know things as they happen to us.

[00:07:41]Anyway, there's this woman this beautiful woman in the back of the of the the lorry or whatever he's driving. And she's left behind when when uh when uh Stag goes off to look for the look for the wealth.

[00:07:53]And she's left behind by a woman whose children have been stolen. These are all There's lots of minor characters in a lots of different characters in a short novel.

[00:08:01]And at one point they have a discussion and he says uh and one of them asked, "Is is it one of Did you come from a place which has a king?" And I'm just reading this paragraph as a sample of how much how much story Avram can invent and bring to life in a paragraph.

[00:08:19]Is that Is it one of those places which have a king?

[00:08:23]She said that it was.

[00:08:24]Did Rerir ask her something further? Was she herself totally lost in her own thoughts thus conjured up? Then eventually she began to speak of them aloud. Had a spell been cast creating Cariovus before her very eyes and drawing her back into it? That's the place that she was from. So that she seemed to guide her questioner through its streets and parks, to show her the herd of golden deer and the trees who shed, on hearing of injury to anyone, tears which were balm for those same wounds. She showed her the massive yellow walls and the blunt yellow turrets of the palace and she told her the tales and the legends and the laws how anyone who dared speak ill of anyone within these yellow walls, unless the speaker was the king's remembrancer and charged with just reporting, within those yellow walls had henceforth to veil his mouth and face and to go so veiled all the days of his life, how so rare were girl twins that the king himself was charged with rearing them and the time they came to womanhood would marry both of them himself.

[00:09:29]How boy twins, on the other hand, grew up under the most terrible fate which man could ever face. For one One each pair was doomed to leprosy And it was up to each to decide which would choose to suffer for the other.

[00:09:42]So, what when twins are born in this in this this kingdom, these things happen to them. She led her questioner by the hand and showed her the train of trench bearers whom the king sent twice a week to bring food from his own stores and kitchens to such old women as were childless widows and the mummers and mini singers. He went he sent to sing and dance and play before them and to cheer their aged and sorrowed countenances. She showed her the choosing of the counselors of state first by lot and then by ballot and then by further lot and then by further ballot until there stood up before the king the 10 men and the 10 women whose counsel and advice he was obliged to ask. And she showed her the rose-red ships with rose-red sails which carried the king's cargos.

[00:10:25]Lastly, she told her that if any man had been pronounced dead and yet rose to live again, he was dressed in black robes with a white mask and brought before the king to cast dice for the fate of the kingdom. And how on such occasions, since the victory of death was not to be thought of, the king played with loaded dice. I mean, it just it's a it's a breathtaking paragraph.

[00:10:49]There's a lot of paragraphs like this.

[00:10:51]I I I And that's page I Did I give you the page numbers? You really should have the page numbers to look this up um on your own when you get your own copy of the book because it's uh it's page 99 to 100, I think most settings of the most paperbacks will have the same, 99 to 100. Just to read that sample paragraph, you need to read a couple of times.

[00:11:10]Every paragraph of the book is filled with this this incredible imagination that what he's using stuff, I'm sure he's picked up here and there, but he's weaving it into these incredible visions.

[00:11:20]Anyway, I was I was really really excited about reading this and and really proud of my old friend Avram. I I wish I'd known how good it was when I knew him. Uh cheers to old Avram.

[00:11:31]He was a much better writer than understood. And and now just to say this, so Avram edited this is the last we're reading through the last year of Fantasy and Science Fiction that Avram edited.

[00:11:41]As you know, people who are when when it's when there's an editor they come and go and sometimes stories are there that were bought by previous editors and so forth, but we're just going to treat this like this is near the end of his career. So, it's um we we'd imagine that Avram chose most of it. He's also doing as much work as he can producing his own work in this in the magazine cuz he paying he needs the money. He's living in Mexico.

[00:12:04]This is one of the this may be the best single issue I can remember. I'm sure there's many as good as this. But this includes Automatic Tiger. The first story is by Kit Reed. That's one of the first fantasy stories I ever read. It was read to me by my math teacher, Mrs. Miller.

[00:12:20]Mrs. Miller Mrs. Mrs. Williams at Benjamin Franklin High Junior High. I hated that school. But every Friday on on in math class she would if we were good, but basically she wanted to do she would read a science fiction or a crime story to us. And this is one of the first stories she ever read. I'll never forget Automatic Tiger.

[00:12:38]It's about a man in the is this set in the 60s and he buys a tiger for his someone in the family, an automatic robot tiger. And he decides he loves the tiger so much he he keeps it. And he he he's there's these great images of him running through New York streets with this automatic tiger beside him. I don't want to tell you more about it, but I read it again for the first time in 30 40 60 years.

[00:13:00]It's a great great short story by the great Kit Reed. Um Sack of Varel, this is one of Avram Davidson's own great stories and it's one of his best stories. It's a very it's three or four four or five pages and it's about a kidnapping and the character of the kidnapping is is what the secret is.

[00:13:16]There's a story called Survival of the Fittest which I liked and I can't remember it.

[00:13:20]There's an Isaac Asimov science essay.

[00:13:23]I've said this before, I I never finished the an and as Asimov science essay. I would read the first two pages as a kid and there were always some funny anecdote about Isaac Asimov and then it would go into something I could care less about.

[00:13:36]Lord, then they have a long novel that by Oscar Wilde called Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, which I have read before. It was fun reading it in the old F&SF version and they reprinted this.

[00:13:47]And it's a terrific I Oscar Wilde story.

[00:13:49]It is great It's a perfect F&SF story.

[00:13:52]There's essay by the another science essay by Theodore L. Thomas.

[00:13:57]A terrific horror story by Harry Harrison called Incident in the IND, a subway at sta- a station in uh in New York. And it's just a great story a great three or four page story about horrors happening in the underground. Um books Avram does most of the books himself. He's a very funny book reviewer. Um and uh he says things like so he reviews a Susan Sontag novel and says, "How can people publish this crap?" Basically is what he says to Susan Sontag. He's a terrible It just does He writes three sentences and this is crap. But then he writes lots of interesting He re- reviews Way Station by Clifford Simak, a book I like. I think we've talked about here.

[00:14:35]And then there's J. T. McIntosh. He's this old science fiction He's British writer, I think.

[00:14:40]And I'd never really read J. T. McIntosh and I would say this is my least favorite story in this epi- this issue, Humanoid Sacrifice.

[00:14:48]And it takes place on some foreign planet far away planet and there's some adventurer. I think his name is John Smith and he goes there and he finds that they have a Victorian woman in frozen in a light in their library of human of interesting objects and he falls in love with this this creature. And it's I I I read it all the way through pretty much in one sitting. I really enjoyed it. Robert Bloch, they call this a short story and I probably missed something.

[00:15:12]It sounds like the history of conventions.

[00:15:15]Robert Bloch, almost every time I start something by Robert Bloch I I really enjoy it. I haven't read a a of Bloch and his short stories are pretty fun horror stories. I don't think this is a short a horror story. I think this is just I must have it may I may have I stopped reading near the end.

[00:15:30]So, I may have missed something. The Lost Leonardo by J.G. Ballard. That If you think about Avram, all of the characters all the writers and they're such a varied type of writer from Kit Reed, Oscar Wilde you can see Avram liking. But, um J.T. McIntosh McIntosh is very different. And J.G. Ballard really interesting Ballard story which I don't remember reading called The Lost Leonardo which the premise is that great paintings he creates a notion of a the Leonardo da Vinci's crucifixion, a painting that never existed. The painting of Jesus being crucified.

[00:16:06]And uh it dis- it's been stolen from Louvre, I think. And there's these two detectives who go looking for it. And it follows through it basically creates this really interesting fantasy about I I'll give I'll give you a bit of the reader a bit of a spoiler alert. Uh the the Wandering Jew, the person who's supposed to have said to Jesus, you know, get stop crying and get up on the goddamn cross and get out of here. And who's doomed to forever wander the Earth for being so cruel to the son of God is a character in it.

[00:16:35]And it's a weird thing cuz you you don't think of Ballard as as a as a religious person. But, it's a very interesting story. And it does bring in a few things about Ballard which are the the kind of the notion that all these sac- these these these uh sacred places in modern society, the museums and the institutions and so forth are actually filled with kind of um kind of primitive uh worship is involved. And there's a sort of surreal aspect to some of it. Anyway, I really enjoyed the story. I I had trouble starting I started two or three times. And then the third time I really enjoyed it a lot. I think it's a very good very unusual Ballard story.

[00:17:14]So, there There go.

[00:17:16]Tur- This is one of the best issues they ever did, I think. And I'm looking forward to reading March-April. We'll get to April next. Anyway, it's not everyone's cup of tea. If you love Avram Davidson's stuff and you never got into it, you definitely have to try this one. And if you want to try Avram, I wouldn't start here. I'd start with the short stories.

[00:17:34]But it's definitely, if you're interested in fantasy and some of the more odd, strange, interesting fantasy of the past century, definitely try this uh Islands of the Earth. I really looked forward to every every page that I read of it. Okay, stay safe.

[00:17:50]Um more soon. Bye.