The Best of Damon Knight

A Master of the Short Story.

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In reading this collection of 22 short stories spanning Damon Knight's career from the 1940s to the 1960s, I was absolutely floored with Knight's craftmanship. Knight was able to provide a background, a character, and a story arc within the course of a few thousand words. More importantly, the stories have some kind of impact on the reader, whether the impact is humorous or thought-provoking.

And all of this during the early days of science fiction.

I compare these short stories to contemporary short stories and the latter fall short. I find that too many short stories today appear to be the first chapter in a planned novel and, therefore, are inconclusive and banal.

The topics and insights of Knight's short stories are often amazing. In “Semper Fi,” Knight imagines societal energy being drained off by the invention of a device that can take the user to their own dream world. In a way, Knight anticipated the reality of social media back in the 1940s.

In “Down There,” Knight imagines a short story writer in 2012 using a computer to write a short story by dictating to it and then using a pull-down menu to make changes or additions to the story. Except Damon Knight didn't use the term “pull-down menu” because when the story was written in the 1960s, the term didn't exist.

Some of the stories are based around jokes (To Serve Man), dirty jokes (The Cabin Boy), or puns (Eripmav). And, yet, there are some beautiful stories - “Mary” is beautiful romance set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is free to have sex but not free to change occupations. Then, there is “The Handler” which seems to reach a level of absurdist metaphor akin to “Being John Malkovich,” which Knight disclaims.

A nice feature of this collection is that the stories are introduced with a short excerpt from Knight that situates the story in Knight's life.

This is an easy and enjoyable read, particularly for those who like the more “classic” age of science fiction.