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Are there any other fans of Avram Davidson among us?

He was a Jewish writer of Weird stories, fantasy, detective stories, and science fiction. I write the genres in that order because I think he wrote his best when writing Weird fiction. The subsequent genres are in order of quality of his writing in them (as I judge it from my very limited sample). When he wrote in the three other genres, he always had strong elements of Weird in his writing. It makes for a truly unique way of telling a tale.

The other thing about Davidson's style was that it was almost always pure stream-of-consciousness. I normally find this narrative method annoying, even when reading someone as great as Faulkner, but Davidson's is so unpretentious and relevant, you quickly sense the brilliant mind at work behind it. The key to enjoying Davidson is to sit back, read the words, and let them flow. Enjoy the ride wherever he wants to take you.

Here is the Wikipedia page on him:

I came to know his work because I subscribed to Weird Tales way back. He had an issue, one of my favorites ever, devoted to his work:

You might be surprised Davidson wrote detective fiction. Davidson wrote two Ellery Queen stories for the book series franchise now long out of print. These two books are either loved or hated. Ellery Queen fans usually think little of them because their genre expectations are met only incidentally if at all. Literary fiction lovers and Davidson fans like them. They're interesting because Davidson was forced to tame his writing down into a pre-set structure and plot not entirely his own.

I know little of his science fiction. I have only his Mutiny in Space, which I've just started reading and am so far unsure what to make of. I love the covers. The front cover is a tamed down version of the back cover, more visible on the actual book than in this online image. Check it out:
Davidson's brilliance is not really found in his plots or main storyline writing, but in the asides he uses as he goes, for example this one on the second page of the novel: "Only a fool points a gun when he doesn't have to," Larran Cane was saying, "And only a fool doesn't point a gun when he has to." That I know so little of Davidson's SF is why I ask others out there if they may have perhaps read some and have an impression of it they could share.

I did locate Davidson's first published story available online for free. It's really short, titled "My Boy Friend's Name Is Jello" from the July 1954 issue of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: It is a good representative of his work as a whole. If you care to read the four pages, I bet you either like the story or hate it. There's no middle ground with this guy.

His name seems familiar, but I didn't recognize any of the titles on the page.

I have one book by Avram Davidson on my TBR list: Joyleg, but cannot remember having read anything else of his.

Thanks for the background information. It is interesting about the Ellery Queen stories; I think Theodore Sturgeon may have written one of those novels as well.

That's certainly a creative little story. I like it... but I don't think I'd be up to large doses of Davidson's work.

Then there's Or All the Sea with Oysters: . A little less hallucinatory, but still def. Weird. I don't particularly care for it, but I do acknowledge its humor.

I have a few of his books in my to be read pile. You’ve intrigued me enough to move them further up the list. The entry on Wikipedia is quite interesting.

I do have 4 of his novels:
Rork!
Masters of the Maze
Clash of Star-Kings
The Island Under the Earth
All translations, so I guess he must have been a pretty well known author. I remember to have picked one up once but put it down pretty quickly again. Maybe I will try again with The Island Under the Earth, wich has the highest score on GR.

Cheryl wrote: "Then there's Or All the Sea with Oysters: "

Which by the way won Hugo in 1958 for the best short story. Re-reading it today I found out that I read a Russian translation a long time ago and IIRC it was heavily censored with Oscar's rides and parts of dialogue (e.g. about drug stores) omitted

Leo wrote: "I do have 4 of his novels:
Rork!
Masters of the Maze
Clash of Star-Kings
The Island Under the Earth"

Only the last one gets a rating above 3.5. I must admit Mutiny in Space so far isn't doing much for me either. To be fair, I am not sure if I'm overly distracted in my reading or if it's the the plot that is wandering everywhere. I need to give this work three straight uninterrupted hours instead of 15 minutes here and 20 there....

Cheryl wrote: "Then there's Or All the Sea with Oysters: A little less hallucinatory, but still def. Weird. I don't particularly care for it, but I do acknowledge its humor."

I really enjoyed this story, but don't see that much humor in it to be honest. To me the most interesting game is to try to peg its genre.

I'm surprised it was printed in a science fiction magazine. It doesn't have a single element of science fiction.

I just saw the movie "Christine" on TV, based on the Stephen King novel. It's amazing how much Davidson's story matches the same plot. One could make the case that Davidson's story here then is horror. Only no one dies and it's really not that frightening.

One could make the case for classifying the story as fantasy, but it is missing the supernatural change agent. Who is it that is capable of commanding what form of supernatural power? I suppose then it has to be classified as not-all-that-frightening horror after all.

This difficulty in classification is how one knows one has a story that can only be in the genre known as Weird.