Damon Knight - Biography

Biography

Damon Knight 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 drawing to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story, "Resilience", was published in 1941; an editorial error made this story's ending incomprehensible, although the story was later reprinted elsewhere as Knight originally wrote it. He is a Hugo Award winner, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, cofounder of the Milford Writer's Workshop, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. Until his death, Knight lived in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife Kate Wilhelm, also a writer of science fiction and of fantasy, contemporary mimetic and crime fiction.

At the time of his first story, he was living in New York, 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 Futurians and others under thinly-disguised names: For instance, non-Futurian sf writer H. Beam Piper is identified as "H. Dreyne Fifer".

In a series of reviews for various magazines, he became famous as a science fiction critic, a career which began when he wrote in 1945 that A. E. van Vogt "is not a giant as often maintained. He's only a pygmy who has learned to operate an overgrown typewriter." After nine years, he ceased reviewing when a magazine refused to publish one review exactly as he wrote it. These reviews were later collected in In Search of Wonder.

The SFWA's Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement was renamed in his honor. Formerly known as the Grand Master Award, Knight received that honor in 1994.

To the general public, he is best known as the author of "To Serve Man", which was adapted for The Twilight Zone. He is also known for the term "idiot plot," a story that only functions because almost everyone in it is an idiot; the term was probably invented by James Blish, but became well-known through Knight's frequent use of it in his reviews.