Customer Reviews

The Other Nineteenth Century

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The Other Nineteenth Century is the third recent hardcover collection of a selection of Avram Davidson's short fiction, after The Avram Davidson Treasury (1998) and The Investigations of Avram Davidson (1999). Needless to say this is very welcome -- perhaps a reissue of the complete Eszterhazy stories (rumoured to be in the works), and a first collection of the complete Limekiller stories, and maybe one more collection of excellent leftover pieces would be nice. This collection is theoretically of stories set in some version or other of the 19th Century, though a few stories are actually set in the 20th Century, and one or two may be set in the 18th or earlier. But no point quibbling.

The collection is marvelous. It displays Davidson's trademark wonderfully discursive prose, and his autodidact-style erudition, and his deep interest in the nooks and crannies of history. The stories span pretty much Davidson's whole career. Among the best: "What Strange Stars and Skies", about a virtuous do-gooder woman ministering to people in the slums of London who runs afoul of "that unspeakably evil Eurasian, Motilal Smith". "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire" aka "The Price of a Charm", about a man in the early part of this century deciding whether to buy a love charm or a hunting charm -- with significant results. "The Montavarde Camera" is a spooky story about a man with a nagging wife who buys the title camera only to learn its terrible power. The rather late "Twenty-Three", in which we slowly learn the horrible secret of an old family. Another late story, "El Vilvoy de las Islas", about a strange man living on a remote South African island. One of the last (perhaps it was the last) Eszterhazy stories, "The Odd Old Bird", more of a jape than anyhing. "Dragon Skin Drum", a dark story about two American servicemen in China, and Mao's revolution, and the ignorance of Westerners. And so on, and so on ... excellent excellent stuff.

Davidson's quirky stories are a delight to read and reread. Well worth the investment and a worthy supplement to The Avram Davidson Treasury & The Avram Davidson Investigations. One hopes that the Jake Limekiller stories will be collected soon and that an expanded volume of Adventures In Unhistory is next on the list of publication.

It is true that all of these stories, like most of Davidson's fiction, have a distinctly old-fashioned setting or slant--Davis says in the Afterword, "Avram Davidson was often a time traveler into the past.... The old, the archaic, the antique fascinated him"--but still picky me can't help but note that rather few of the stories are actually set in the 19th century, historical or alternate. Picky me. As to the content of those stories, it's pretty accurately conveyed by the subtitle once it has flipped out: "Truthful Accounts of Living Fossils, Montavarde's Camera, The Irradiodiffusion Machine, and El Vilvoy de Las Islas; with Heinous Crimes, Noble Ladies in Adversity, Brilliant Detections, Imperial Eunuchs, Political Machinations, etc., etc." Slightly different, but especially interesting in its way, is the final story, a 'ghost-novel' sketched in by Michael Swanwick, which demonstrates how "nothing ages so fast as science fiction."

You either like Davidson's style--very chatty, very learned, very eccentric, lots of playing with language and with dialect--or you don't. I do, but even I advise reading these stories one at a time rather than wolfing down too many in a sitting; assume some metaphor about how eating too many savoury treats at once, however small, however spicy, is bad for the digestion.

This is a somewhat random collection of Avram Davidson's short stories. As usual, they include an amazing amount of factual background. It is worthwhile for Davidson fans.