Damon Knight

Biography

Knight was born in Baker City, 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 titled Snide. He referred to the fanzine as his "passport out of the Pacific Northwest". His first story, "The Itching Hour", appeared in the Summer 1940 number of Futuria Fantasia, edited and published by Ray Bradbury. it was reprinted in a 1978 magazine in four pages with a two-page introduction by Knight. To the general public he is best known as the author of "To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for The Twilight Zone. These reviews were later collected in In Search of Wonder. in Knight's case "without the guidance of his own prior example". The term "idiot plot", 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. cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, 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). After his death, the associated award was renamed the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in his honor. Some of his papers are held in the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archive, and some are held at Syracuse University.