Though for years a successful and respected science-fiction writer, Avram Davidson has never been entirely at home in the genre and has largely forsaken it for fantasy and mystery writing. Even his science-fiction stories have seldom emphasized technology or rigorously extrapolated future societies. Rather, Davidson delights in upsetting the conventions and in imagining offbeat or macabre situations. While he is a prolific writer, his stories rarely bear the signs of a hack--flat or cliche-ridden prose; instead, they reveal an observant eye, a keen ear, and the ability to create subtle irony, broad comedy, the bizarre, and the terrifying. His stories are surprisingly free of repetition. Instead of returning again and again to one theme or gimmick, he experiments with plot, characterization, and style and frequently succeeds in reinvigorating a worn-out device.

Avram Davidson was born in Yonkers, New York, in a section called Hog Hill. He attended four...