Talking about my heroes
I was honoured to take part in the wonderful podcast on the Avram Davidson Universe which goes live on April 1.
Each month curator Seth Davis (Avram’s Godson) talks with an enthusiast about one of Avram’s stories. Mine was Bumberboom which I first encountered in one of Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords anthologies in the 70s.
The story was originally part of a novel which was lost, and rather than try and rewrite it, Avram turned parts into Bumberboom and its companion story Basilisk. Both are in Seth’s great collection to honour Avram’s 100th birthday – AD 100.
If you haven’t encountered the genius that was Avram Davidson, do so now. Don’t wait for the podcast, go out and buy the Avram Davidson Treasury, or Limekiller, or the Adventures of Dr Eszterhazy. You will thank me for it.
Avram was a polyglot who read everything and incorporated a lot of it into his stories. Sometimes this made them challenging, like the later two Virgil Magus books, but it mostly provided riches beyond the common fare of fantasy, science fiction, and mystery. His prose was a long way from Hemingwayesque, but for me that is one of the joys. The story is approached elliptically and a word or sentence that seem purely for decoration can be vital to the unravelling of the tale.
Bumberboom is set in a post apocalyptic world after The Great Gene Shift – a Planet of the Apes moment reveals it is in an America which the aforementioned cataclysm has splintered into Balkanised provinces with mutated races Avram identifies with the Elves and Dwarves of legend. The picaresque lead character is searching for some ‘medicine’ to restore the fortunes of his own home, although it becomes clear the fortunes he wants to restore are principally his own. He sees an opportunity when he comes across the titled Bumberboom – a giant cannon pulled endlessly across the continent by an inbred tribe who have no idea what it is but know everyone is scared of it.
If it sounds a bit like Jack Vance, it is because it is. However it is also all Avram. Personally, I would always start my reading of Davidson with Eszterhazy, but Bumberboom is well worth seeking out. We owe a debt to Seth for bringing it – and Avram’s other work – back into print as well as unearthing lost stories from the boxes of material he inherited as Avram’s executor.
There is also a brief interview with me going live on Friday at https://mxpublishing.com/blogs/news/sherlockian-interview-tim-anderson linked to my inclusion in the forthcoming latest set of New Sherlock Holmes stories from MX Publishing. I have been honoured to have half a dozen stories included in this series which were great fun to write. As the profit from the venture supports Conan Doyle’s old house which is now a school for children with additional needs, I hope all Holmes fans support it.
