'"Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a wombat looks like, but 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. It is 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, Aleister Crowley, and Prester John; and -- revealed at last -- the secret of Hyperborea.

The facts are here, the foundations behind the rumors, legends, and 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 author' best fiction; 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 introduction to this volume, "cries to be read aloud."

Condition: Pre-loved book. Minor yellowing of pages. Otherwise in good condition.

Format: Hardcover
Year published: 2006
Pages: 308
Sub-genre: Fantasy; short stories
Imprint: Tor