Name: DAVIDSON, A. Avram Aged: 70
Born: April 23, 1923 Where: Yonkers, New York
Died: May 8, 1993 Where: Oyster Bay Nursing Home, Bremerton, WA
Interred: Cremated, ashes scattered in the Pacific.
Married: Grania Kaiman When: Feb. 11, 1962 (div 1964)
Awarded: 1958 Hugo for Best Short Story, "Or All the Seas With Oysters"; 1976 World Fantasy Collection award for The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy; 1979 World Fantasy for Best Short Fiction, "Naples"; and, 1986 World Fantasy for Lifetime Achievement. Avram also won the 1962 Edgar for Best Short Story, "Affair at Lahore Cantonment."

Educated at New York University, Yeshiva University, and Pierce College...in that order. Avram spent four years during WW II in the Navy as a hospital corpsman in the South Pacific and China. He made his first professional sale in 1946 and eight years later, Avram sold his first science fiction story, "My Boy Friend's Name Is Jello," to F&SF for the July, 1954 issue...a harbinger of things to come.

Noted for intellectualism that twisted odd plots and themes (as in paper clips become coat hangers that turn into bicycles in "Or All the Seas with Oysters"), Avram wrote 17 novels and, additionally, his 200 plus short stories appear in numerous anthologies. If there is a comprehensive list of his articles, I don't know about it, but Avram was almost driven by a curiosity of great human disasters and just felt compelled to investigate them. 1962 saw Avram's first three books published in three different directions, the novel Joyleg written with Ward Moore, the collection of short stories Or All the Seas with Oysters, and the collection of investigative articles Crimes & Chaos. 1962 was an important year in Avram's life, for many reasons, including marriage and the birth of his only son, becoming editor of F&SF, and the book publications noted. Somewhere in there he moved, as a writer, away from investigative mysteries and toward fantasy, but he never lost his lifelong curiosity of historical events. And he would have been a great historian had he chosen that path.

Avram was intelligent, gentle, gracious, and strived to be pleasant at all times. But he had a deep running ethic unique unto himself (wouldn't touch a German product, ride in a Volkswagen, or allow his stories to be published in Germany) and lo anyone who violated it...for he reacted immediately. Luckily, I never triggered it, but we had gone to an all night party together in New York City and someone said something that did...and Avram came down like a ton of bricks, burning red under his beard. He stooped by me on his way out the door and as a courtesy, whispered, "Stay. Enjoy yourself. But I'm leaving." He excused himself to his hosts and was gone. He wouldn't remain in the same area with someone who held a view that violated his ethic. Nothing about Avram's reality was pretense, so he would flee into fantasy fiction.

"Of all the writing I have ever done, I have found science fiction, as distinct from fantasy, to be the most difficult. And I never was able to live on it --- not even in California, where the ground is soft enough to dig for roots all through the winter. That I have been a fantasy writer, I entertain no doubts...but a golem is not quite a robot, nor is a zombie. The Future has been an interesting place to visit. I doubt like hell that I'm going to like living there."

Avram was editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1962-64. Then, in the spring of 1973 he was appointed visiting professor for a quarter-term at the Univ. of California, Irvine; for the school term of 1977-78, he was writer in residence at the English Dept. of William & Mary College in Virginia; and for the school term of 1979-80 he lectured at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Making a living from writing is a lot easier now than it was, and Avram had a lot of trouble at it. Often, he was itinerant. At various times, Avram lived in Israel (twice), Mexico, and British Honduras (Belize). I don't think he made it to Alaska but did live in Hawaii and many of the other 50 states. Raised in nearby Yonkers...New York City was his home ground, but after he left there in 1963 to live in Milford, Pa., like Thomas Wolfe, he was never able to go home again. In the later years, Avram's residences were usually somewhere in Washington state, mostly around the Seattle area....sometimes in an apartment over a bar and sometimes in a soldier's home, with addresses in Bellingham, North Bend, Snoqualmie, Retsil, and Bremerton. In the end, he died impoverished, stroke impaired, sick, and alone; with the most minimal of income. We were neighbors in New York City and corresponded regularly from 1960 until he died, leaving a big hole in both me and my mailbox.

Avram's life was always on the edge of being continuously desperate...and it forced him into acting like a manic depressive...even though he was not. His lows were real, continual, and bad...so when something went right or offered hope, his spirits soared. Such a time was in a letter to me on Oct. 29, 1991 when he didn't have to come to Indiana to live with me but had arranged to move in with two navy buddies (which didn't work out). In that letter he shared the following "oridjinal poym" about some WW II body damage.

Going through the China Sea
Bullets whistle through my knee.
Going through the Khyber Pass
Bullets whistle up my ass
The floating years they come and pass
But Oh! my knee! and Ah! my ass!

Thumbnail from a larger, color photo by George Willick (aka Jawdge to Avram).

PEN NAMES: Conrad Amber, A. A. Davidson (articles), & Carlton G. Miller (erotica). Ghost wrote two books as Ellery Queen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

BIOGRAPHY: Supernatural Fiction Writers, E. F. Bleiler

OBITUARY: The Seattle Times and The Daily Telegraph: London here.

ONLINE: The Avram Davidson Website

Send relevant email to George C. Willick