When you think of Damon Knight (1922-2002) you get a picture in your head of an old dude with a long, grey beard. Maybe you see him editing Orbit or hanging off the arm of his wife, Kate Wilhelm. Knight won many awards, wrote several books on writing science fiction, and is best remembered as a reviewer with high standards of quality in the genre. What you don’t picture is a twenty-year-old kid doodling – because Damon Knight started in science fiction as an artist. His first published work was in Amazing Stories, May 1940. His first story appeared just a little later in Ray Bradbury’s fanzine, Future Fantasia, Summer 1940. It was called “The Itching Hour.” His first professional sale wasn’t until February 1941 in Stirring Science Stories with “Resilience,” where they botched the ending. By 1950 he would be writing stories like “Not With a Bang” and “To Serve Man” (made famous on The Twilight Zone with “It’s a cookbook!”) and his fame as a short story writer would be forever set. Before then, a lot of minor work and plenty of artwork.
It would be fair to describe Knight’s art style as “cartoony.” That first sale to Ray Palmer was a cartoon. The cover he drew for the fanzine, Le Zombie in January 1940 has the same line-oriented feel. Despite this simplified style, Knight puts it to good use, adding more atmosphere and interest with delicate shading and atmospheric tones, eventually working on black scratch board. His work appeared primarily in Science Fiction Quarterly, Future, Super Science Stories, and Weird Tales, all low-paying art markets. This also explains why his artwork is so hard to find. With the exception of Weird Tales, these magazines were small timers and not collected as widely. (I imagined only for a random second that it was because Knight had purchased up as many copies as possible over the years and destroyed them. Like I said, only for a second.)
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