Davis, Chandler
Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1926-2022) US mathematician, academic and author, in Canada from 1960, after serving a short prison term for refusing to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee and subsequently losing his position as professor at the University of Michigan; in 1991, the university initiated the annual "Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic Freedom" (Mark Nickerson and Clement Markert had also been dismissed after refusing to testify). As a mathematician, he published many influential papers.
Davis was active in fandom from the early 1940s, being a member of the Boston Stranger Club and publishing the fanzine Blitherings for FAPA (which see) and VAPA (Vanguard Amateur Press Association). His fiction career was restricted to short stories, both under his full name and under the working name of Chan Davis, beginning with "The Nightmare" in Astounding for May 1946, in which he advocated the decentralization of industry to prepare for World War Three. He became inactive after about 1970 – "The Names of Yanils" (Spring 1994 Crank!), originally designed as a contribution to «The Last Dangerous Visions», had been held for two decades by Harlan Ellison before it was released. It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis (coll 2010) assembles his best work, including the title story "It Walks in Beauty" (January 1958 Star Science Fiction Magazine) and "The Names of Yanils", plus a 2003 interview. [JC]
see also: Worldcon.
Horace Chandler Davis
born Ithaca, New York: 12 August 1926
died Toronto, Ontario: 24 September 2022
works
- It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis (Seattle, Washington: Aqueduct Press, 2010) [coll: edited with an introduction by Josh Lukin: in the publisher's Heirloom Books series: pb/nonpictorial]
about the author
- Steve Batterson. The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis: McCarthyism, Communism, and the Myth of Academic Freedom (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023) [nonfiction: hb/photographic]
links
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