Elsewhere: A faction within the runesmen warned Casey Swift that the Chief could not be depended on—that, in fact, the greater Swift’s success, the less likely the Chief was to be dependable.
But Casey was not actually aiming all this at the Chief. He was aiming it at the Green King. The hand that binds is the hand that loosens. Cunning king, would he want the balance of power entirely thrown up for grabs by the total destruction of the Jacks? Not bloody likely. And it was he, after all, who had had Casey brought to the world of In-Between in the first place.
Time passed. Events occurred.
The slayers and their new commander had driven the Jacks back into the very frosts and snows of the wild North. And then it was, as he knew it must be, that Casey saw the ignorant armies slow to a crawl … then go stiff and rigid … and all motion cease …
And back he went through the jeweled mists and into the cortex of his own old body once again. Forever. Forever? Perhaps not forever …
For hers is the hand that loosens
And hers is the hand that binds
Hers is the hand that releases
And hers is the hand that winds
LIKE A LEOPARD-FISH OR A MORAY EEL (II)
Envoi: “the idea for this came to me one night in 1963 in Berkeley Cal. when in the near night sky I saw an unexplained aerial phenomenon like a moray eel or a leopard shark. Not sure why I never finished this, it looked real good at the time. It was to have involved gladiators, probability theory, and the slide rule. Chee.”
—AD, 02 October 1976
AFTERWORD TO “MICKELREDE”
What could represent the vanishing past more clearly than the slide-rule? Would today’s high-tech students even recognize a slide-rule, let alone worship one?
Michael Swanwick, an extraordinary, award-winning author of speculative fiction, has taken the posthumous fragments and shards of an incomplete manuscript, and fashioned them into a narrative that is unique in form and style, and a unique blend of two great writers’ minds.
—Grania Davis
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Account of Mr. Ira Davidson” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1976.
“Buchanan’s Head” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1983.
“Business Must Be Picking Up” first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1978.
“The Deed of the Deft-Footed Dragon” first appeared in Night Cry, Fall 1986.
“Dr. Bhumbo Singh” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1982.
“Dragon Skin Drum” first appeared in Kenyon Review, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Winter 1961.
“El Vilvoy de las Islas” first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1988.
“The Engine of Samoset Erastus Hale, and One Other, Unknown” first appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, July 1987.
“Great Is Diana” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1958.
“The Lineaments of Gratified Desire” first appeared (as “Price of a Charm”) in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1963.
“The Man Who Saw the Elephant” first appeared (as “What More Is There to See?”) in Yankee Magazine, October 1971.
“Mickelrede” (with Michael Swanwick) first appeared in Moon Dogs by Michael Swanwick (NESFA Press, 2000).
“The Montavarde Camera” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1959.
“O Brave Old World!” first appeared in Beyond Time, ed. Sandra Ley (Pocket Books, 1976).
“The Odd Old Bird” first appeared in Weird Tales, no. 293.
“One Morning with Samuel, Dorothy, and William” first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, December 1988.
“Pebble in Time” (with Cynthia Goldstone) first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1970.
“The Peninsula” first appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, November 1985.
“The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach” first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 1986.
“Summon the Watch!” first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1971.
“Traveller from an Antique Land” first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1961.
“Twenty-Three” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 1995.
“What Strange Stars and Skies” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1963.
Edited by
GRANIA DAVIS
AND HENRY WESSELLS
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
TOR BOOKS BY AVRAM DAVIDSON
The Avram Davidson Treasury
The Other Nineteenth Century
AFTERWORD BY GRANIA DAVIS
“He is not antagonistic toward all mechanical devices; he is quite fond of the water wheel and maintains a strict neutrality toward the spinning jenny.” Thus spoke author Michael Kurland, describing Avram in the recent mystery story collection, The Investigations of Avram Davidson.
Science fiction is a form of virtual time-travel. Most writers and readers of SF like to travel into the distant future. But Avram Davidson (1923-1993) was often a time traveler into the past, both in his writing and in his own life. The old, the archaic, the antique fascinated him. Snuff was his preferred recreational drug. He loved to delve into the mysteries of the past in his stories, and in his Unhistory essays. Futuristic technology did not attract him. Avram never nuked his food (horrors!) in a microwave, but was famous for his slowly simmered kettles of soup. This was a man who never drove a car, whose transportation system was his feet.
Avram was also famous for his stories, which brought him many prestigious awards, if little material wealth. “The Necessity of his Condition” won the (Ellery) Queen’s Award for best mystery story in 1957. In 1958 his classic exploration of the breeding habits of safety pins and bicycles, “Or All the Seas with Oysters,” won the Hugo Award for best science fiction short story. In 1962 his homage to Rudyard Kipling, “The Affair at Lahore Cantonment,” won the Edgar Award for best short mystery story. 1965 saw two nebula Award nominations—“The House the Blakeneys Built,” for best short fiction, and Rogue Dragon for best novella. 1966 saw two more: for The Clash of Star-Kings (a.k.a. Tlaloc) in the best novel category, and The Kar-Chee Reign for best novella.
In 1975 his Doctor Eszterhazy tales, set in a fantastical Eastern European monarchy before the Great War, first saw print. One of them, “Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman,” was a finalist for the Nebula Award for best novella. They were collected as The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, and won that year’s World Fantasy Award for best collection. (A later Eszterhazy story, “The Odd Old Bird,” is reprinted in this collection.)
Avram picked up an Edgar nomination for best short story in 1977 for “Crazy Old Lady,” then hit a streak of World Fantasy Awards. He was nominated for best short fiction in 1978, for “Manatee Gal Won’t You Come Out Tonight.” In 1979 he was nominated for “A Good Night’s Sleep” for best short fiction, and for The Redward Edward Papers for best collection. That same year he won (finally!) the World Fantasy Award for best short fiction, for his story “Naples.”
In 1980 “There Beneath the Silky-Tree and Whelmed in Deeper Gulphs Than Me,” was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella. In 1983 another Eszterhazy tale, “Eszterhazy and the Autogondola-Invention,” was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella and in 1984 yet another Eszterhazy story, “Young Doctor Eszterhazy,” was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella.
In 1986 “The Slovo Stove” was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best short fiction. And finally, in 1986, he received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Add to this one more Nebula nomination for post-lifetime achievement, for his 1999 novella The Boss in the Wall (posthumously completed by Gr
ania Davis).
Most of these stories can be found in the recent Locus-Award-Winning, World-Fantasy-Award-nominated collection, The Avram Davidson Treasury (Tor, 1999).
This latest collection, The Other Nineteenth Century, contains Avram’s stories set in the not-so-distant past. These are his tales of the Nineteenth Century and related eras, a time of gaslights and steam runabouts and snuff. In this book you will find alternate histories, unusual events, and strange and steamy gadgets. Turn up the gaslight and enjoy the shadows on the wall.
I want to thank my esteemed co-editor Henry Wessells, who came up with the idea for this book; George Scithers (who contributed story Afterwords) and Darrell Schweitzer of Owlswick Literary Agency; and Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books, who brought the idea to life. I also want to thank Jack Dann, my co-editor on the recent Avram Davidson Jewish fantasy collection, Everybody Has Somebody in Heaven (Devora Press), who taught me new editorial tricks. I especially want to thank Ms. Sarah Fishman, who has prepared a preliminary catalogue of the Avram Davidson Archive. And thanks, of course, to our beloved readers, families, and friends.
GRANIA DAVIS
San Rafael, California
North Shore Oahu, Hawaii
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AVRAM DAVIDSON was born in 1923. He won the Hugo Award, the Edgar Award, the Ellery Queen Award, and three World Fantasy Awards. He died in 1993.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
GRANIA DAVIS is the author of the novels The Rainbow Annals and Moonbird, and was married to Avram Davdison for many years. She and Davidson collaborated on several works, including The Boss in the Wall. She lives in California.
HENRY WESSELLS is an antiquarian bookseller in New York and the author of Book Becoming Power. His fiction and essays have appeared in Nature, Interzone, The Washington Post Book World, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. He is publisher of The Nutmeg Point District Mail and maintains the Avram Davidson Web site at http://ad.kosmic.org.
Notes
1
“Grandpa and the Iroquois,” Colliers, January 4, 1957.
2
And one remembers with some small dismay the so-called Riots of Rosarosa, in that remote rural region, which began when someone in a cantina allegedly denied that El Vilvoy had cut off seventeen of the heads of the misfortunate invaders. Small wonders that he thereafter preferred, so it seems, the shadows of bein unrecognized, to the full noontine glare of the Publicity.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously
THE OTHER NINETEENTH CENTURY: A Story Collection by Avram Davidson
Copyright © 2001 by Grania Davis
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429972680
First eBook Edition : February 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davidson, Avram,
The other nineteenth century : a story collection / by Avram Davidson ; edited by Grania Davis and Henry Wessells.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-84874-9 (hc)
ISBN 0-312-87492-8 (pbk)
1. Fantasy fiction, American. 2. Historical fiction, American.
I. Davis, Grania. II. Wessells, Henry. III. Title.
PS3554.A924 O84 2001
813’.54—dc21
2001054537
First Hardcover Edition: December 2001
First Trade Paperback Edition: December 2002
The Other Nineteenth Century Page 32