Damon Knight
(September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002)
Damon Knight was a fan who had a major fannish career and then turned with even greater success to prodom. He found sf at age ten in Amazing and became a fan after receiving a copy of Bob Tucker's Nova.
Knight was a Hugo-winning SF writer, fan, critic, editor, and co-founder of two of the most durable sf organizations ever: N3F and SFWA. (He later said that both were mistakes.) In his youth, he published the fanzine Snide, he began selling his SF writing in 1941, and was a member of the Futurians which he described in detail in his memoir The Futurians. He published It with Larry Shaw. He was also a fan artist of some note in the 1940s.
For more about some episodes of his early fannish career, see General fan organization and Futurian Houses, Vanguard, Nicknames, Quote-cards, and X Document.
He may be most famous as one of the earliest — and most incisive — critics of SF with his columns collected in In Search of Wonder published by Advent. Probably his most famous critical piece was also one of the earliest when in 1945 he demolished A. E. van Vogt's revered World of Null-A. (Van Vogt was one of the Big Three and Null-A had up to that point had a huge reputation.) The criticism, while entirely valid, was so uncharitable that it also diminished Knight's own reputation.
He was the founding editor of the SFWA Bulletin. With James Blish and Judith Merril he also founded the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference in 1956 (and directed it for its first twenty years), and in 1968 helped to found the Clarion SF Writers' Workshop.
He began his editing career in 1943 with Popular Publications, worked for a while for a literary agency, then returned to Popular Publications and assisted Ejler Jakobsson at Super Science Stories. He left Super Science Stories in 1950 to become editor of Worlds Beyond. He wrote for television, including Captain Video and His Video Rangers, and returned to professional editing with IF in 1958. He is credited with creating the original anthology with his influential Orbit series starting in 1966 and also began the Nebula Award Winners series from SFWA. His influential short story “To Serve Man” became a Twilight Zone episode.
He used the pseudonyms Donald Laverty (with James Blish), Ritter Conway, and Stuart Fleming.
The third issue of the fanzine Fanhistory, dated April 1956, was devoted to Knight and his work. "All in a Knight's Work" by James Blish appeared in Speculation 29 (1971). Knight was interviewed in the March, 1972 issue (#34) of the fanzine Luna Monthly, and in Eternity Science Fiction #4 (February, 1975). Over the years he has been featured in several issues of The National Fantasy Fan (he is credited with founding the National Fantasy Fan Federation, or N3F). The Knight Manuscript Collection is held at the George Arents Research Library, Manuscript Division, Syracuse University.
He was married three times (the second time to Helen Schlaz del Rey, a former wife of Lester del Rey); he married author Kate Wilhelm in 1963.
InfinityBox Press has been created to present the new and legacy works of Wilhelm and Knight in hardcover and ebook formats.
For a very early short biography, see Who's Who in Fandom 1940, page 8. A short bio-bibliography of Knight by Jon D. Swartz appeared in the June, 2015 issue of The National Fantasy Fan (TNFF), and featured in an N3F Fandbook.
Awards, Honors and GoHships:
- 1951 -- Best Short Story Retro Hugo
- 1956 -- Best Book Reviewer Hugo
- 1967 -- Boskone 4
- 1970 -- Balticon 4
- 1975 -- Pilgrim Award
- 1977 -- Westercon 30, Jupiter Award for Short Story
- 1978 -- AggieCon IX
- 1979 -- Intervention 1
- 1980 -- Noreascon Two
- 1981 -- Moscon III
- 1983 -- Constellation Con
- 1985 -- Boskone 22
- 1986 -- Minicon 21
- 1988 -- Rustycon 5
- 1994 -- 1994 World Fantasy Convention, SFWA Grand Master
- 1995 -- Fourth Street Fantasy 1995
- 1996 -- Raymond Z. Gallun Award
- 2003 -- Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (Posthumous)
- The SFWA Grand Master Award is named after him.
- Dirty Word [1946]
- It [1945] (with Larry Shaw)
- SFWA Bulletin
- Snide [1940-41]
- Science Fiction Forum with Lester del Rey.
| Person | 1922—2002 |
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