History Creator / DamonKnight

In 2002, SFWA renamed their Grand Master award in his honor, calling it the UsefulNotes/DamonKnightMemorialGrandMasterAward. Knight himself had won the award in 1995.

* FetusTerrible: The short story "Special Delivery" features a couple discovering that their unborn child is a hyper-intelligent telepathic bastard (in the [[MagnificentBastard magnificent]], not biological sense), but when [[spoiler: he's born the abrupt change in atmosphere turns him into an ordinary infant.]]

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: "Rule Golden" has a BBC news reporter say "In Commons today..." But omitting the article like that is an Americanism; any real Brit would at least say "in the Commons", and a BBC announcer would more likely say "in the House of Commons", which after all takes only about half a second longer.

* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: Played with horrific psychological subtlety in the short story "Masks". A man has been saved from certain death by having his brain and nervous system woven into an otherwise robotic body. Though he's retained all his memories and sense of self, his lack of human senses and physiology has left him with only one emotion: [[spoiler: nauseating disgust and hatred for the organic life that surrounds him]].

* DeusEstMachina: The short story "And the Dust Shall Praise Thee" has a weird take on this. The Apocalypse happens... Only there's no one there. So God and his angels goes looking for people, they find none. So they ask the remnants of a computer, who answers "WE WERE HERE, WHERE WERE YOU?"

* ImAHumanitarian: "To Serve Man" is a short story about a race of pig-like aliens called the Kanamit who offer Earth the benefits of their science in exchange for groups of earthlings to visit their planet. The title refers to that of a book which one of the characters managed to obtain. [[ItWasHisSled The book is revealed to be... a cookbook.]]

* LargeAndInCharge: The short story "The Handler" is centered around a subversion of this trope; the Big Man at a party is just a puppet controlled by the despised pathetic little man crammed inside his chest.
* LifeOfTheParty: The short story "The Handler" is about an enormous charismatic man who is the Life Of A Party, but is also a puppet controlled by the despised pathetic little man crammed inside his chest. When the little man leaves his puppet to take a break, everyone moves away from him and makes nasty comments about him; when, sadly, he returns to the puppet, he becomes the Life of the Party once again.

* TheWallAroundTheWorld: In ''Hell's Pavement,'' people in Connecticut (200 years in the future) know nothing of the people in New York, who know nothing of the people in Ohio, and so on. They believe people in the other places are literally monstrous and inhuman. (There are walls between zones.) This happened because supermarket chains used brilliant new brainwashing techniques to make people totally loyal to their brands, and the adherents of different brands formed different zones.

* ToServeMan: Played absolutely straight in the story "To Serve Man" which the trope is named after.

* ChurchOfHappyology: Referred to as "Diarrhetics" (and described as a fad on the same level as silly putty) in "A Likely Story".

Damon Knight (1922–2002) was an American author, editor and professional critic of SpeculativeFiction, and a founding member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Clarion Writers Workshop. He wrote many novels and short-stories, including the famous story "To Serve Man", which is the basis for our trope, ToServeMan. He is also credited with popularizing the term "IdiotPlot".

* ChurchOfHappyology: Referred to as "Diarrhetics" in one of his short stories.

* ConvenientlyPreciseTranslation: "To Serve Man" (the actual story, as opposed to the TV adaptation) attempts to get around this by saying that English and Kanamit share certain linguistic quirks and double meanings. (It also depicts the translation as less like codebreaking than the TZ episode; the people in the story use a Kanamit-English phrasebook as a starting point for the translation.)

Damon Knight (1922-2002) was an American author, editor and professional critic of SpeculativeFiction, and a founding member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Clarion Writers Workshop. He wrote many novels and short-stories, including the famous story "To Serve Man", which is the basis for our trope, ToServeMan. He is also credited with popularizing the term "IdiotPlot".

In 2002, SFWA renamed their Grand Master award in his honor, calling it the DamonKnightMemorialGrandMasterAward. Knight himself had won the award in 1995.

Damon Knight was an American author, editor and professional critic of SpeculativeFiction, and a founding member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Clarion Writers Workshop. He wrote many novels and short-stories, including the famous story "To Serve Man", which is the basis for our trope, ToServeMan. He is also credited with popularizing the term "IdiotPlot".

* VegetarianVampire: Spoofed in the short story "[[SdrawkcabName Eripmav]]", in which the vegetarian vampire is killed via a [[IncrediblyLamePun steak]] [[{{Feghoot}} through the heart]].

* {{Feghoot}}: "Eripmav" is a setup for a stake/steak pun.

* ImAHumanitarian: "To Serve Man" is a short story about a race of pig-like aliens called the Kanamit who offer Earth the benefits of their science in exchange for groups of earthlings to visit their planet. The title refers to that of a book which one of the characters managed to obtain.[[spoiler: The book is revealed to be . . . a cookbook.]]

* VegetarianVampire: Spoofed in the short story "[[SdrawkcabName Eripmav]]", in which the vegetarian vampire is killed via a [[IncrediblyLamePun steak through the heart]].

* LifeOfTheParty: The short story "The Handler" is about an enormous charismatic man who is the Life Of A Party, but is also a puppet controlled by the despised pathetic little man crammed inside his chest.

* AdamAndEvePlot: One short story had two survivors of a biological war, one being an infirm pilot who barely survived the plague and the other being a nurse who had a natural immunity. The repopulating never happens, because she is a very moral woman and they're not married. (And where are they going to find a priest?) The pilot eventually dies, because he has an attack of the sickness in the one place she would never follow him: The men's bathroom.

* AccentUponTheWrongSyllable: In "You're Another," there's a man in the year 4000 or so whose native language is Esperanto (though not named). When he speaks English, he has a thick Esperanto accent, and stresses the penultimate syllable of every word, just as in Esperanto. (E.g., "Now you will give me d'in''stru''ment.")

* TalkingToThemself: In ''Beyond the Barrier'' [spoiler:a creature that has spent many years hiding inside, and as, a human can no longer shake that side of himself. He is challenged to do what the human would do and not what he wants to do]].

* TalkingToThemself: In "Beyond the Barrier" [spoiler:a creature that has spent many years hiding inside, and as, a human can no longer shake that side of himself. He is challenged to do what the human would do and not what he wants to do]].

* VegetarianVampire: * Spoofed in the short story "[[SdrawkcabName Eripmav]]", in which the vegetarian vampire is killed via a [[IncrediblyLamePun steak through the heart]].

* DeusEstMachina: The short story ''And the Dust Shall Praise Thee'' has a weird take on this. TheApocalypse happens... Only there's no one there. So God and his angels goes looking for people, they find none. So they ask the remnants of a computer, who answers "WE WERE HERE, WHERE WERE YOU?"

Damon Knight was an American author, editor and professional critic of SpeculativeFiction, and a founding member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Clarion Writers Workshop. He wrote many novels and short-stories, including the famous story "To Serve Man", which is the basis for our trope, ToServeMan. He is also credited with popularized the term "IdiotPlot".

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The novella "Rule Golden" contains the line "England is only about 400 miles long, from Land's End to John O'Groats." While the first half of this sentence is roughly true, John O'Groats (as the name implies) is not in England. '''''Scotland''''' adds another 4–500 miles to the length of Britain.

* Aesoptinum: The short story "Rule Golden" has an alien that spreads a special plague which induces tele-empathy. This means that prison guards become depressed from the sadness of their prisoners, somebody that strikes someone else will feel the pain from their blow, and somebody that kills someone else will suddenly drop dead (strangely, this even includes such acts from a distance, such as shooting someone, which just kills the shooter rather than everyone else within the same radius). The ostensible reason the alien does this is to make humans become peaceful before they invent interstellar travel, with a side benefit supposedly being the elimination of hierarchic governments (since "government is force"). For no particular reason, the plague affects all warm-blooded animals, not just humans. This means that all mammals and birds are now effectively vegetarians (unless their prey are insufficiently cuddly-looking), causing the extinction of [[CarnivoreConfusion larger beasts of prey]] all over the world.