Читать книгу The Avenger - Damon Knight - Страница 4

Damon Francis Knight 1922–2002) was an American science fiction author, editor and critic. He is the author of “To Serve Man,” a 1950 short story adapted for the original TV series The Twilight Zone. (“To Serve Man” even won a Retro Hugo.) He was born in Baker, Oregon in 1922, and grew up in Hood River, Oregon. He entered science-fiction fandom at the age of eleven and published two issues of a fanzine entitled Snide.

Knight’s first professional sale was a cartoon to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story sale, “The Itching Hour,” appeared in the Summer 1940 number of Futuria Fantasia (edited and published by fellow fan Ray Bradbury, who also went on to great things.) “Resilience” followed in the February 1941 number of Stirring Science Stories, edited by Donald Wollheim. Unfortunately, an editorial error made the story’s ending incomprehensible. Ultimately the correct text was reprinted in a 1978 magazine—it ran just four pages, with a two-page introduction by Knight.

At the time of his first story sale, Knight was living in New York city and was a member of the Futurians. One of his short stories describes paranormal disruption of a science fiction fan group, and contains cameo appearances of various science fiction figures under thinly-disguised names (writer H. Beam Piper is identified as “H. Dreyne Fifer.”)

Although he published a number of well-received novels, Knight’s forte was the short story; he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the form. But he made an even greater impact as a critic. Algis Budrys wrote that Knight and William Atheling Jr. (James Blish under a pseudonym) had “transformed the reviewer’s trade in the field,” in Knight’s case “without the guidance of his own prior example.” The term “idiot plot,” referring to a story that only functions because almost everyone in it is an idiot, became well-known through Knight’s frequent use of it in his reviews, though he believed the term was probably invented by Blish. Knight’s only non-Retro-Hugo Award was for “Best Reviewer” in 1956. Some of his best reviews—which are often essays—were collected in In Search of Wonder. He ceased reviewing when The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction refused to publish a review.

Knight was the founder of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA, now the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F), cofounder of the Milford Writer’s Workshop, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. The SFWA officers and past presidents named Knight its 13th Grand Master in 1994 (presented 1995). He also edited the long-running Orbit anthology series. After his death, the associated award was renamed the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in his honor. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2003.

Knight was a long-time resident of Eugene, Oregon, with his second wife, author Kate Wilhelm. His papers are held in the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archive.

He was one of the few major science fiction writers active when I was writing that I never met—though we did exchange a few emails over the years. We were on different coasts and our orbits just never managed to intersect—much to my disappointment.

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, MD