Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. They are wonderful. Now his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

In thirteenth-century China the Polo brothers--Marco, Niccolo, and Maffeo--request permission from Kublai Khan to return to Venice, but the aging ruler requires that they first bring him a legendary immortal princess

CONTENTS: ~ ~ NOVELETTES: Roofs of Silver [Gordon R. Dickson]; Senhor Zumbeira's Leg [Felix Marti-Ibañez]; SHORT STORIES: The Notary and the Conspiracy [Henri Damonti]; Ad Infinitum [Sasha Gilien]; Behind the Stumps [Russell Kirk]; The Depths [Jim Harmon]; ARTICLES: On Binary Digits and Human Habits [Frederik Pohl]; One, Ten, Buckle My Shoe [Isaac Asimov]

A New Collection of Long Out-of-Print Stories From One of the Greatest Fantasists of the Twentieth Century Avram Davidson, who died in 1993, was widely regarded as one of the most outstanding authors of short fantasy fiction in our time. This collection comprises his distinctive historical fantasies-tales of strange Mitteleuropas, of magic in Victorian England and on the American frontier. Here are "The Lineaments of Gratified Desire," "Traveller from an Antique Land," and "What Strange Stars and Skies"; here are dragons, cameras, and "The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach." Witty, whimsical, dark, and strange, these tales of times and places that almost were will leave even the most jaded readers amazed. No one has ever written like Avram Davidson, before or since.