Avram Davidson – TEMPORARY CULTURE

The Avram Davidson Centenary

This year marks the centenary of the birth of American science fiction writer and essayist Avram Davidson. Temporary Culture has been a champion of his work since the first iteration of the Avram Davidson website in 1995. The Nutmeg Point District Mail electronic newsletter, published for the Avram Davidson Society, began in 1996. Every dead author needs an advocate and the District Mail appeared regularly and often at first and served as herald and repository of activities on behalf of Davidson’s work. Something like a Davidson renaissance followed, with publication of The Avram Davidson Treasury and others. Many of these, including the Treasury, are in print now at avramdavidson.com, where there is also a monthly podcast available.

The first books published by Temporary Culture carry the imprint of The Nutmeg Point District Mail; and other titles followed. Three of the six publications of the Avram Davidson Society are in print: The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead, Chance Meeting, and Naples. In connection with the centenary, all three titles are available at special celebratory prices (through 23 April, 2023), here.

Naples by Avram Davidson

NAPLES by AVRAM DAVIDSON

Published in Napoli on 11 September 2022

NAPLES is a fine press edition of one of Avram Davidson’s darkest tales, originally published in the first Shadows anthology edited by Charles L. Grant. NAPLES won the World Fantasy award for short fiction in 1979, the same year Jorge Luis Borges was named the recipient of the World Fantasy Life Achievement award ; Davidson received that award in 1986.

Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number six.
Edition of 160 copies, printed by hand at the Kelly-Winterton Press from Hermann Zapf’s Aldus type. Stitched in yellow Hahnemühle wrappers, title printed in terracotta on upper cover. [16] pp. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches.

Ten copies, numbered i to x, were reserved for presentation ; 125 copies for distribution to members of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie (AIB), on the occasion of the congress in Napoli, September 2022.

~~Twenty-five~~ Ten copies are available for members and friends of the Avram Davidson Society.

Price : $200 (in U.S.A., overseas add $15 postage).

ORDER HERE.

The Nutmeg Point District Mail is an imprint of Temporary Culture.

Inquiries and institutional orders to :

books [at] temporary-culture [dot] com
Temporary Culture
P.O. Box 43072
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
USA

About

How Philip K. Dick Won a Hugo

In October 1962, Putnam published The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. This was his second novel to be published in hardcover, at a time when Dick was discouraged. His agents had returned the manuscripts of “mainstream novels” which no publisher had bought. Putnam also sold rights to The Man in the High Castle to the Science Fiction Book Club and that edition appeared a few weeks later.

When Avram Davidson, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction reviewed The Man in the High Castle, in the issue for June 1963, he called it “a superior work of fiction” and concluded: “Don’t take it out of the library — buy it!”. Enough fans did, for the novel won the Hugo award at the September 1963 Worldcon. “Phil said he believed it was my review which won him the Hugo and gave his career a much-needed boost,” recalled Avram Davidson. The rest of Dick’s career is well known. He continued writing science fiction novels and gained a national and international audience after Paul Williams interviewed him for Rolling Stone in November 1975.

Chance Meeting publishes Avram Davidson’s 1963 review of The Man in the High Castle and his memoir of PKD from Locus 256, vol. 15, no. 5, for May 1982. It also includes a letter from Grania Davis from the same issue of Locus and a short essay by Henry Wessells.