Henry Wessells, Editor.
Cooper Wessells, Honorary Secretary.
All correspondence to:
TEMPORARY CULTURE
Post Office Box 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043-0072
Electronym: wessells@aol.com
Use this electronym for requests to be added to or dropped from the
mailing list. Back issues are archived at the Avram Davidson Website,
URL : http://www.avramdavidson.org
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THE ORIGINATING ADDRESS
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WWW.AVRAMDAVIDSON.ORG
The somewhat peripatetic Avram Davidson Website has a new permanent
home and an easily recognizable domain name : http://www.avramdavidson.org
The website is sponsored by the Avram Davidson Society and is
hosted by SFF.net (www.sff.net).
The decision to choose a "dot org" domain was simple and entirely consistent
with your editor's mission of providing useful bibliographic and biographical
information on Avram Davidson (and the occasional odd, interesting, or
humorous item), entirely free of charge. More bells and whistles and
cool pictures will be added as your editor learns how to make them work.
[I would like to thank Jeffry Dwight of SFF.net for his assistance. I would
also like to acknowledge a profound debt to Jim Nicholson, who has hosted all
previous existences of the Avram Davidson Website. Indeed, one afternoon in
September 1995 (in the Dawn Age), he suggested converting my Davidson
checklist into an html file and so unleashed the website; and earned my
continued thanks for his support as it evolved. --Henry Wessells]
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JUST ANNOUNCED
Forthcoming from Wildside Press << www.wildsidepress.com >> :
MUTINY IN SPACE, by Avram Davidson
Introduction by Michael Swanwick
Cover art by Alexander Gabriel
First American hardcover edition (Limited to 2,000 copies)
List price: $35.00
ISBN: 1-58715-641-5
Pub date: July 15, 2002
The publisher notes that this is the first of what will be a matching series of
Avram Davidson hardcovers.
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"Young Vergil and the Wizard"
The Vergil Magus story, "Young Vergil and the Wizard," currently available at
the Infinite Matrix website, is an intriguing story composed by Davidson during
the middle 1980s. This self-contained episode concerns itself with the sights
and smells of the rural boyhood of Vergil Magus outside Brindisi. There are
many points of interest in the story : the way Davidson addresses the question
of Vergil's illegitimate birth ; the glimpses of powers innate and acquired ; and
the issue of time. The boy Vergil, whose father repeatedly urges him to seek
learning, develops a curious relation with the impoverished, decrepit Numa, a
relation that is defined in terms quite unlike the customary apprenticeship.
Numa and Vergil also appear to have a peculiarly fluid connection to Time, with
past and future largely (or at least, sometimes) indistinguishable.
The Scarlet Fig, the final Vergil novel, incorporates this story as its third
section. The question of Time is one of the preoccupations of the novel ; the
changes Davidson made when he integrated "Young Vergil" into the novel
manuscript accentuate this question of Time.
Where "Cornet Eszterhazy" leaves the reader with an image of young E.E.
poised on the threshold of learning in his dress whites (figuratively if not
literally), "Young Vergil and the Wizard" spans a broader period of time and
shows Vergil to be wise beyond his station as the son of an improvident
peasant ; its concluding image is all the more gruesome for being evoked
through a series of meanders and indirections.
The story URL is :
<< www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/young_vergil1.html >>
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THE OTHER NINETEENTH CENTURY : PRESS CLIPPINGS
Gregory Feeley, in a science fiction and fantasy column in the Washington
Post Book World for Sunday, 3 February 2002, reviews The Other
Nineteenth Century in a column with three other books : Tom La Farge,
Zuntig (Green Integer) ; Patrick O'Leary, The Impossible Bird
(Tor) ; Élisabeth Vonarburg, Slow Engines of Time (Tesseract Books).
Feeley observes :
"the best thing in the volume is its inclusion of three late Davidson<< www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6154-2002Jan31.html >>
stories, never reprinted, that are surprisingly dark and strong. His prose tended
toward the prolix after 1980 or thereabouts [. . .]. Yet in the last
half-dozen years of his life, Davidson published a number of stories, usually
quite short, that are concise and elliptical, and very good.
" 'The Engine of Samoset Erastus Hale, and One Other, Unknown' is a
very sharp tale of the invention and disappearance of an early radio transmitter
in the 1850s. Its brief scenes (including a scrap of court transcript) seem
fragmentary, but in fact they tell what story there is; the reader's desire to read
more is the desire for a different, more comforting story. [. . .] But 'El Vilvoy
de las Islas' is the real gem. A fantasia on the theme of the noble savage and a
meditation on mortality, it is rich and complex, full of local color (does it matter
that the locales are imaginary?), hidden puzzles, and yet more hidden solutions.
It is one of Davidson's very best stories, and worth the price of admission by
itself.
In stories, magic books have the decency to advertise themselves.<< www.greenmanreview.com/other.nineteenth.century.htm >>
They come with disturbing skin bindings and huge forbidding clasps, and
faded gilt lettering warning the reader not to open this one. Sadly, this is
real life, and I have been captured by a magic book disguised as a
perfectly ordinary hardback: Avram Davidson's The Other Nineteenth
Century. It's grabbed me and sunk itself into my brain [. . .]
There are only short stories, but they are living stories. They act like simple,
well written tales until the end, when every one of them leaps up to surprise
and snatch the reader. [. . .] Each one tells their story eloquently, and with
more shine than I can give them. And they all latch into the brain, leaving their
own reality after their pages have stopped. [. . .] If the stories are living
creatures, then the afterwords are trail guides, indicating where they live and
where more of them might be found. I intend to follow, and hope to be held
captive by such good company more often.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE AVRAM DAVIDSON SOCIETY
The Last Wizard with A Letter of Explanation.
Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number one.
Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, xii pages. Second printing, May 1999.
Single copies, $10.00 (postpaid).
El Vilvoy de las Islas.
Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number two.
Size: 6 x 9 inches, viii + 32 pages. June 2000.
Issue of 100 copies in paper wrappers : single copies, $13.00 (postpaid).
The Beasts of the Elysian Fields by Conrad Amber.
Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number three.
Size: 6 x 9 inches, iv + 12 pages. June 2001.
Issue of 80 copies in paper wrappers : single copies, $26.00 (postpaid).
To order, send a cheque in U.S. funds, payable to Henry Wessells, to :
P.O. Box 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043-0072, USA
Orders by e-mail to wessells@aol.com will be held until payment is
received.
For cheques drawn on overseas banks, please add $7.00 for bank fees.
Trade discount available.
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Next Issue Date : May 2002
The editor of The Nutmeg Point District Mail invites contributions on any
topic pertaining to the life and work of Avram Davidson.
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