Damon Knight – författare

We call it a gismo.That''s right, a gismo.A bit difficult to describe. Like a cross, I suppose, without the top part. Sort of two arms on a stand.What happens is this. You hang something on one arm. Anything at all. A watch, a bracelet, money, anything. I supposed you could hang a locomotive on, only it''s a bit heavy.But anyway you hang something on and there on the opposite arm appears an exact replica. And I mean exact.You can''t tell the difference.So nobody need make anything any more. What you need you hang on the gismo. No work. No want. No starvation. No nothing.When you''ve got a gismo, you''ve got everything.

A collection of cutting-edge SF stories from one of the grand masters of science fiction, including:Rule GoldenTo protect the galaxy, Aza-Kra came from a world where violence and cruelty ceased to exist. To him, Earth was a jungle.The Dying ManIn a century that holds the secret of immortality, Claire and Dio find love impossible - until Dio discovers he is mortal.Natural StateAD 2064. Were the cities doomed? Were the plants and animals and people who lived outside more efficient than any machine that could be built? Alvah Gustad, actor and patriot, leaves New York for an unusual mission.

He reached for Churan''s throat and his hands closed on air......yet the alien had not moved. With a chill of terror, Naismith realized that his arm had passed completely through the ugly, green-skinned body.The aliens'' laughter swelled out, malicious and mocking. Behind him, Lall''s voice said, "A nice try. But not good enough."

Time Switch at the Zoo.One day Martin Naumchik, reporter for Paris Soir, visited the Berlin Zoo. He was standing outside the spacious cage housing the newly-acquired Brecht Biped, Fritz, when the world seemed to lurch.Then he was no longer outside the cage looking in, but inside looking out. He was no longer Martin Naumchik. He was Fritz, the Biped, that strange celestial animal from a world eighteen light-years away.At the same time, Fritz, who had lived almost all his life in Hamburg Zoo, also felt the lurching motion. And found himself standing outside his cage in the body of Martin Naumchik, looking at the frantic Biped inside, who was beating with both hands on the glass.

The fate of the Earth Empire hung in the balance - and Security Commissioner Spangler knew it was up to him to find the monster, the Rithian Terror, as some called it. Seven Rithians had landed on Earth. Six had been disposed of. One was loose.Surely, Spangler reasoned, the stereoptic fluoroscope would flush it out. ''That''s one test the Rithian can''t meet, no matter how good his human disguise may be.'' Spangler explained to Pembun, the strange, little Colonial who had been sent to help find the monster. But Pembun didn''t agree. ''The trouble,'' he said, ''is that the Rithi have no bones. Which would be indication enough under a fluoroscope, if it weren''t for the fact that it can easily swallow a skeleton.''Spangler shuddered.

Alien Ghetto.The men of Earth were spread thin across the galaxy - and little welcome where they did appear. They lived on sufferance, disliked by their hosts and intent on spreading hatred to the stars! Unable to live in peace in their own worlds, they would sow their seeds of discontent among the peoples of the galaxy, as all the hatreds of mankind simmered under alien rule. But revolution against Earth''s alien hosts would mean - for all mean - the end of the stars!

Gene Anderson was born in Oregon, in the twilight post-war years, into the most ordinary circumstances imaginable.Gene is endowed with powers. He can look into the other worlds that are all around him. He can make things happen. He can hurt and he can heal.His life changes dramatically when another boy is killed in a tragic accident, and Gene runs away. He is only nine. As he grows to 8''6" tall, his wanderings take him round the world in search of a remarkable destiny.

Sea Venture, CV for short, is the largest ocean-going vessel ever built by man. It is not a ship but a huge sea habitat housing a scientific research station, an entire city of two thousand permanent residents and a thousand passengers.For some, CV is the vacation dream of a lifetime; for others, a vision of man''s conquest of the seas; for two men it becomes the arena for a deadly game of cat and mouse.But for one, CV is something else: a place to stalk its next victim. It is not human, it is not even of Earthly origin. To be touched by it is deadly.What important are the hopes and dreams, fears and schemes of the people of Sea Venture when they are threatened by a force that could destroy all of human civilization?

Plague...or paradise? 2005 A.D. Six years have passed since the alien Symbionts invaded Sea Venture, Earth''s largest ocean habitat. Now, despite the government''s best attempts at quarantine, the Symbionts have spread all over the planet, infecting the bodies of both humans and animals - and slowly, subtly forcing mankind in new directions. Once possessed by the Symbionts, men and women become smarter, wiser - or else they die. War and violence are punished by instant execution from within. A new era dawns, but there are those who would turn back the millennium, who will stop at nothing to prevent...A Reasonable World.

It''s the early 21st century. Ed Stone says he''s been in suspended animation since the 1930s. He says he was kidnapped by aliens. He says they sent him forth on a mission: to convince the nations of the world to build massive vault, a mile on each side, in which humanity''s billions will lie in suspension and survive the impending destruction of the Earth.Ed Stone says all these things, and the strangest part is that people believe him - ordinary people and powerful people alike. So begins Why Do Birds, a classically science-fictional novel of ideas and quite possibly Damon Knight''s most haunting work, a terrifying tale of deceit and human folly.

What would you do if little men in purple uniforms filled your living room with impossible machinery? A machine made it possible to bury your crimes in the future?You were abandoned on an asteroid alone with a murderous living snake of metal?

Take a step forward and fall suddenly into a creeping blob of protoplasm, then discover that your three companions have fallen with you and your bodies have been digested by the ''thing''.Watch a man searching on a beach, and feel your blood run cold when he tells you what he is searching for.A doorway that will take you anywhere, except back to earth.

The room was quiet; the man in front of the mirror was the only living things there, and he was too horrified to utter a sound.In the mirror, five faces stared back at him: one young and ruddy, which was his own, and four that did not belong in that place at all, for they were wrinkled, malevolent, small as crabapples and blue as smoke.So begins Damon Knight''s ''Be My Guest'', a story of the human race possessed by things that were - well, not exactly demons . . . but not exactly not demons, either.It''s just one of the unpredictably imaginative tales in this fascinating collection by a modern master of science fiction.

The Futurian Society was founded in 1938 by thirteen science fiction fans; it never numbered more than twenty, including wives, girl friends and hangers-on; yet out of this small group came seven of the most famous names in science fiction: Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Judith Merril, Frederik Pohl and Donald A. Wollheim.Brilliant, eccentric and poor, the Futurians invented their own subculture, with its communal dwellings, its folklore, songs and games, even its own mock religion. In later years many of them became influential novelists, editors, anthologists, literary agents and publishers.The author has interviewed ten of the surviving Futurians and has traced down the widow of one member whose tragic fate was unknown until now. Drawing on correspondence, unpublished manuscripts, and amateur publications (including a collection of Futurian wall newspapers which had wound up in Australia), he has written a fascinating narrative of the early days of the Futurians, the feuds and lawsuits that divided them, and their later careers.

Thorinn went down. He had little choice, since his own father had hurled him into a well.Yet the world was shifting in those days, and Thorinn was to go deeper than his father had ever dreamed; destined to discover strange worlds within worlds, to meet beasts undreamed of, and to discover that which few of us are permitted to know:His Own True Name.