Line #20 Creator/AvramDavidson


1	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/avram_davidson.jpg]]
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3	Avram Davidson (April 23, 1923 – May 8, 1993) was an American writer of SF and crime fiction, prolific and award-winning in both fields.
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5	Probably his best-known story is the UsefulNotes/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?'.
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7	Several of his notable SF works feature history that never quite was, such as in his stories featuring Dr Eszterhazy, 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.
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9	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 ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents''.
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11	!!Avram Davidson's works provide examples of:
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13	* TheButlerDidIt: "Author, Author" features the writer who invented the trope, and a large number of disgruntled butlers.
14	* ChineseLaunderer: The title character of "The Deed of the Deft-Footed Dragon" is a Chinese man who has migrated to the US and is now employed in a laundry.
15	* ConstructiveBodyDisposal: In "The Cobblestones of Saratoga Street", two elderly women campaign against a move to have a cobblestone street in their neighborhood resurfaced with modern materials. It turns out that the real reason they want the street left alone is that when they were much younger and the cobblestones were first being laid they used the construction to hide the body of a man who'd seduced them both.
16	* CrystalDragonJesus: In ''The Phoenix and the Mirror'', set in a fantastical version of Roman times, the Cult of Daniel Christ teaches that the Old Testament prophet Daniel was the true Messiah. It's very big on martyrdom, especially if there's a chance of being thrown to the lions. It's not clear if regular Christianity also exists in the setting.
17	* ForWantOfANail:
18	** In "O Brave Old World!", a small change results in the American Revolution being the occasion on which ''England'' revolted against the rule of ''America''.
19	** In "Pebble in Time", a time traveller dislodges a single pebble and causes a massive change to the history of the western United States.
20	* GoingToSeeTheElephant: "The Man Who Saw the Elephant"
21	* 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. Among other things he ghost-wrote a few of the later Literature/ElleryQueen books, when Dannay & Lee had reduced their input to plotting.
22	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: In several of his historical-set stories.
23	* LiteraryAllusionTitle:
24	** "Thou Still Unravished Bride" is a quotation from Creator/JohnKeats.
25	** "O Brave Old World!" is a misquotation of a line from ''Theatre/TheTempest''.
26	* MockMillionaire: The title character of "Captain Pasharooney" turns out to be one of these, though with an unselfish motivation.
27	* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Dr Esterhazy -- sometimes addressed as ''Drs'' Esterhazy, on account of possessing doctorates in more than one field.
28	* PosthumousCollaboration: ''The Boss in the Wall'', completed by his wife, Grania Davis
29	* {{Pride}}: The aliens lure Doctor Morris Goldpepper into slavery by playing to his vanity and pretending to offer him the chance to be a groundbreaker on their world too.
30	* PublicDomainCharacter: The [[Literature/SherlockHolmes English doctor and his disconcertingly-observant friend]], both unnamed, in "The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach"
31	* {{Ruritania}}: Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania
32	* SiblingTriangle: In "The Cobblestones of Saratoga Street", two sisters discover that they've fallen in love with the same man, who has been seeing each behind the other's back.
33	* TimeTravel: In "Pebble in Time", a man invents a time machine and uses it to go and watch his favourite historical moment. Despite taking great care to keep out of the way, he inevitably (since there'd be no story otherwise) manages to make a mess of it.
34	* UncannyFamilyResemblance: 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.
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Context Creator / AvramDavidson