Adventures in Unhistory : Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends

by Davidson, Avram

• ISBN13: 9780765307606
• ISBN10: 076530760X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-28
• Publisher: Tor Books
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Summary

* Where did Sinbad Sail? * Who Fired thePhoenix? * The Boy Who Cried Werewolf * The Great Rough Beast * Postscript on Prester John * The Secret of Hyperborea * What Gave All Those Mammoths Cold Feet? And many more--fictional? authoritative? fantastic? deadpan?--investigations into the real, the true'¦and the things that should be true PREFACE BY PETER S. BEAGLE ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE BARR "Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like and everyone knows what a dragon looks like." Not a novel, not a book of short stories,Adventures in Unhistoryis a book of the fantastic--a compendium of magisterial examinations of Mermaids, Mandrakes, and Mammoths; Dragons, Werewolves, and Unicorns; the Phoenix and the Roc; about places such as Sicily, Siberia, and the Moon; about heroic, sinister, and legendary persons such as Sindbad, and Aleister Crowley, and Prester John; and--revealed at last--the Secret of Hyperborea. The facts are here, the foundations behind rumors, legends, and the imaginations of generations of tale-spinners. But far from being dry recitals, these meditations, or lectures, or deadpan prose performances are as lively, as crazily inventive, as witty as the best fiction of the author, a writer praised by Gardner Dozois as "one of the great short story writers of our times." Who, on the subject of Dragons, could write coldly, dispassionately, guided only by logic? Certainly not Avram Davidson. Certain facts,thesefacts, deserve more than recitation; they deserve flourish, verve, gusto,style--the late, great Avram Davidson's unique voice. That prose which, in the words of Peter S. Beagle's Preface to this volume, "cries out to be read aloud."

Author Biography

Avram Davidson was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1923. After spending some time at New York University, he served in the Marines from 1942 till 1946--and again saw action during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. For two years in the early 1960s, Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He earned awards and accolades throughout his life for his SF writing, including the Hugo Award, the Edgar Award, the Ellery Queen Award, and three World Fantasy Awards. Davidson died in 1993.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Peter S. Beagle
Where Did Sindbad Sail?	1	(20)
Who Fired the Phoenix?	21	(20)
An Abundance of Dragons	41	(26)
Who Makes the Mandrakes?	67	(16)
The Boy Who Cried Werewolf	83	(20)
The Great Rough Beast	103	(26)
Postcript on Prester John	129	(24)
The Theft of the Mulberry Tree	153	(16)
The Secret of Hyperborea	169	(20)
Heads I Win, Heads You Lose	189	(18)
The Spoor of the Unicorn	207	(18)
What Gave All Those Mammoths Cold Feet?	225	(16)
Bird Thou Wert, But Art No More	241	(22)
The Moon	263	(18)
The Prevalence of Mermaids	281	(24)
Index	305