#damon knight

[weirdlookindog]

Damon Knight - H. P. Lovecraft's Herbert West: Reanimator

(Weird Tales - November 1942)

[70sscifiart]

Richard Corben’s 1976 cover to The Best of Damon Knight, illustrating Knight’s short story ‘To Serve Man,’ which was famously adapted by The Twilight Zone in 1962

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Magazine - Beyond Fantasy Fiction (July1953)

Art by Richard Powers

Galaxy Publishing Corporation

[gtetrahedron]

Other Worlds, Other Gods

finished "other worlds, other gods" a '71 short story collection focusing on religion in science fiction. lots of it is real pulpy, with only the slightest hints of new wave shining through (mostly via john brunner), but its some good pulp. not a long or heavy read, only a day or two.

most of the stories were from the late 50s and early 60s, with a few from the 40s and late 60s. highlights include lee suttons soul mate, john brunners the vitanuls, anthony bouchers the quest for saint aquin, and damon knights shall the dust praise thee. 

i would recommend it with the caveat that theres nothing super weird, unfortunately (which would be my main criticism). it mostly stuck to christianity (primarily catholicism!) and pastiches of such, with a few jewish cameos and one of hinduism and buddhism each. no alien religions, really. weirdest one was definitely soul mate. nothing ubik-level, lol.

side-note if any of my followers is more learned in hinduism: id be curious about your reading of the vitanuls; im not sure how accurate of a representation it is, being written by a brit, but it seems decent enough? i have very little knowledge of the religion, though, and am supremely unconfident saying that.

[misforgotten2]

A book you very likely don’t have on your shelf #253

Cover by Richard Powers  --  1962

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Damon Knight (editor) - A Shocking Thing - Pocket Library - 1974

[drumlincountry]

You must be free to make your own mistakes and your own discoveries; I believe that, but I also believe that nothing exists in isolation. The lilac bush and the spread fingers of my hand and the branches of a coral are related, and so are the stories of John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor and Leo Tolstoy and Alice Munro. Here you swing, a leaf on a twig on a branch in the wind, and you tell me there is no tree?

Damon Knight, “Creating Short Fiction”

[abookisafriend]

writing manuals

creating short fiction, bird by bird, writing down the bones, and on writing

--

creating short fiction, by damon knight: four out of five spaceships

did you feel the need for a writers' guide that comes from your corner, a place where they respect the fantastic? damon knight is a seasoned scifi writer with skills and vision, and he translates his craft as well as he can into a short, concise volume. there are examples and exercises designed to help you build your writing muscles.

especially in his analysis of one of his own stories, he focuses in on the craft with a level of concrete detail that makes the book genuinely useful, in my opinion. the only reason that this book has a lower rating than bird by bird is that i was able to easily finish bird by bird, reading with excitement, whereas damon's book is not one that i return to often and i haven't actually ever finished reading it cover to cover. it is one that i use in class, though, and there are specific sections that i highly recommend -- again, his analysis of his own story "semper fi". he also has fantastic advice on writing with the subconscious. that alone makes it worth the read.

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bird by bird, by anne lamott: four and a half out of five torn-up manuscripts

bird by bird is, in my opinion, a justified classic. it's a writer's manual with straightforward advice and examples to lift your spirits, encourage you, and guide your practice. you won't find so many analyses of examples of fiction as in damon knight's creating short fiction, but you will find encouraging and experience-based guidance on creating a long-term writing practice. the writing is very engaging and the book is a bit of a page-turner; lamott does know what she's doing. summing it up here, there are fundamentally three main principles: you have to write a shitty first draft to get a shiny final draft; write every day; it can be as little as three hundred words. when i finished the book, i felt that i knew anne lamott.

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writing down the bones, by natalie goldberg: four and a half out of five notebooks

this is a concise, accessible writer's manual with brief chapters you can read in an idle moment at any point in your day. it's very conversational and written with an easy manner, although the topics that the writer broaches can be quite serious. she is focused on memoir writing, but much of her advice applies generally to any narrative form. as with bird by bird, i really felt that i got to know the writer through this book. her writing is very enjoyable to read, and i would recommend the book on that basis alone. also like bird by bird, this book is enjoyable to read just as an experience in its own right; the author really does know how to write. my rating may be off a bit, however, as i haven't completely finished the book.

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on writing, by stephen king: four out of five blood-curdling screams

i stopped reading stephen king books because he is too good at what he does and i didn't really want to be that scared. this is a good one, though.

it is half memoir and half writing advice. i would almost recommend it more for the memoir than the advice, but advice from someone like king, who is not only a skilled writer but someone who has thought about his craft, has to be worth something. he adds one thing that the other writers mentioned here generally do not: bone up on your actual mechanics and vocabulary. in other words, the basic stuff of english class.

this book takes a bit of the fear out of approaching writing and renders it a little more accessible. "remember," he will tell you, "i got rejected a hundred times before i sold my first work." his main advice, like lamott, is to write every day. i seem to recall that he even writes on christmas.

[fl0ras]

" Harry tinha só dezesseis anos quando entendeu bem o que era o amor. "

o livro das coisas que nunca aconteceram, por ana luiza savioli.

[petermot]

The Man in the Tree, door Damon Knight

bespreker: Peter Motte, 350 woorden Nooit eerder gelezen, al had ik vaag het gevoel dat ik sommige stukken wel al had gelezen.Het boek is maar 250 p’s, maar het lijkt niet korter dan veel andere boeken. Een boek hoeft niet dik te zijn om toch het gevoel te wekken dat je over het hele leven van iemand leestHet is een fantasyroman, met heel wat snuifjes sciencefiction erin.De krachten van het…

[booklung]

[weirdlookindog]

Clarence Edwin Flynn - The Dead World. Art by Damon Knight.

(Weird Tales - November 1942)

[mostlyjustgoose]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ A SCI-FI STORY THAT WILL MAKE YOU HOOT LAUGH

please treat yourself to Damon Knight’s 1952 short story “Catch That Martian”.

Knight was the original author of the short story “To Serve Man”, which later became a classic Twilight Zone episode (and is one of my favorite jokes of all time). I got curious as to whether he was a one-hit wonder and decided to read this one at random, and folks, for a story that is now seventy-one years old, it holds up remarkably well.

because it starts with a handful of people in New York City being phased into another dimension, where they can see and move around in the physical world but not really interact with it. and wouldn’t you know it, every single one of them happened to do something extremely irritating seconds before they got pushed sideways through reality…

[baroque-hashem]

If any of y’all want to write short stories specifically, or just write in general, I really recommend this book. This book is my writing bible. I have returned to it time and again and it remains probably the most helpful, practical book on writing I’ve ever read.

[theamazingstories]

NEW SF STREAMING MOVIE — NOVA

NEW SF STREAMING MOVIE — NOVA

Steve Fahnestalk’s Amazing Stories Column 348 Figure 1 – Nova Poster Hey, happy Friday to you all. I hope it’s just a normal Friday and not a TGIF, meaning you’ve had a tough week. We Canadians (and many in the former British Empire) will have a day of mourning on Monday for the late Queen Elizabeth II, and I hope those of you in the US take a moment to remember the longest-serving monarch of the…

[theactressstaringinyourbaddream]

Me : he's my babygirl

Them: your baby girl just snapped the neck of 13 people in the blink of a second

Me: and he's my baby girl