History Creator / AvramDavidson

* UncannyFamilyResemblace: In ''The Phoenix and the Mirror'', the plot turns out to hinge on the uncannily close resemblance between a princess and a servant girl who is the illegitimate daughter of the same father. Justified by being very closely related on both sides of the family: the serving girl's mother was, herself, the illegitimate daughter of the father of the princess's mother.

* GeniusBonus: Ubiquitous in Davidson's work

* TheWoobie: Dr. Morris Goldpepper.

* ChineseLaunderer: The title character of "The Deed of the Deft-Footed Dragon"

* TheButlerDidIt: One story features the writer who invented the trope, and a large number of disgruntled butlers.

Avram Davidson (1923 - 1993) was an American writer of SF and crime fiction, prolific and award-winning in both fields.

Probably his best-known story is the HugoAward-winning "Or All the Seas With Oysters", which posits a creative unified theory to explain a set of everyday questions beginning with 'Why is there never a paperclip to be found when I need one?'.

* RoyalStatesOfAmerica: Played with in "O Brave Old World!", which describes a timeline in which America remains under the British crown, but Britain itself doesn't. In this timeline, the crown prince falls in love with America while on a tour, so when he becomes king he moves his capital and parliament to Philadelphia. Some years later, a group of his subjects rebel against being ruled by a distant monarch with no grasp on their interests -- and thus, Britain gains its independence.

* RoyalStatesOfAmerica: Played with in "O Brave Old World!", which presents an alternate timeline in which George III's father went to visit the American colonies when he was still Prince of Wales, and liked the place so much that when he became King he moved the seat of government to Philadelphia. As a result, America remains part of the Empire but England rebels and fights a war of independence following the promulgation of a controversial new law affecting the price of tea.

Avram Davidson's works provide examples of:

Two of his crime fiction stories, "The Ikon of Elijah" (in which an antique dealer goes to extreme lengths to obtain a valuable antique) and "Thou Still Unravished Bride" (in which a woman goes missing on her wedding day) were adapted for episodes of ''AlfredHitchcockPresents''.

* HeAlsoDid: The foreword to one collection of Davidson's stories notes that people who are mostly familiar with his crime fiction often have this reaction to the discovery that he wrote SF, and vice versa.

* PublicDomainCharacter: The [[SherlockHolmes English doctor and his disconcertingly-observant friend]], both unnamed, in "The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach"

Several of his notable SF works feature history that never quite was, such as in his stories featuring Dr Esterhazy, a respected scientist in the 19th-century {{Ruritania}}n empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, or the Vergil Magus series, beginning with ''The Phoenix and the Mirror'', which is set in the Roman empire not as it was but as people of the Middle Ages imagined it to be.

** "Thou Still Unravished Bride" is a quotation from JohnKeats.

** "O Brave Old World!" is a misquotation of a line from ''TheTempest''.