"Knock" is a science fiction short story by American writer Fredric Brown. It begins with a piece of Flash fiction based on the following passage by Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Fredric Brown condensed this text into "a sweet little action story that is only two sentences long". "Knock" then goes on to elaborate on those two sentences and build a more complete plot around them. It was published in the December 1948 issue of '' Thrilling Wonder Stories''. There have been three different radio adaptations ('' Dimension X'', '' X Minus One'' and Sci Fi Channel's ''Seeing Ear Theatre''). The story was reprinted in '' The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949''Everett F. Bieler & T. E. Dikty, eds., '' The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949'' New York: Frederick Fell, Aug. 1949, 314 pp.

Plot summary

The first two lines are a complete story by themselves:

Reception

The story won the 2012 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award;

James Nicoll James Davis Nicoll (born March 18, 1961) is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usene ...

, however, describes it as "fairly conventional".The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award Anthology — A. N. Editor
by

; published May 13, 2017; retrieved May 13, 2017

References

External links

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''Dimension X'': "Knock", 06 May 1950
{{Fredric Brown 1948 short stories Science fiction short stories Short stories by Fredric Brown Works originally published in Wonder Stories