Damon Knight

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(September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002)

Damon Knight (or damon knight — early on he affected the lowercase style) 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 they were his two biggest mistakes.) In his youth, he published the fanzine Snide, and he began selling his SF writing in 1941,. He 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 and they remained together until his death.

InfinityBox Press has been created to present the new and legacy works of Wilhelm and Knight in hardcover and ebook formats.

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

Fanzines and Apazines:

Person 1922—2002
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