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    Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends
    Unavailable
    Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends
    Unavailable
    Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends
    Ebook525 pages8 hours

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

    By Avram Davidson

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    * Where did Sinbad Sail?
    * Who Fired the Phoenix?
    * 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 Unhistory is 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, these facts, 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."


    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 28, 2006
    ISBN9781466838130
    Unavailable
    Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends
    Author

    Avram Davidson

    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 Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. 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.

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    • 5/5
      Have I seriously not written a review for this? It's a supremely fun picaresque journey into the origins of legends, written by someone who deeply loved them. This could actually the best thing Avram Davidson ever wrote.