Future combined with Science Fiction August 1942

Norman Louis Knight (September 21, 1895 – April 19, 1972) was an American chemist and writer of

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

and

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

. His most prominent work is probably '' A Torrent of Faces'', a novel cowritten with

James Blish James Benjamin Blish () was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is best known for his '' Cities in Flight'' novels and his series of ''Star Trek'' novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. His novel '' A Case of Conscie ...

and reprinted in the Ace Science Fiction Specials line/

Biography

Knight was born at

St. Joseph, Missouri St. Joseph is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Missouri. Small parts of St. Joseph extend into Andrew County. Located on the Missouri River, it is the principal city of the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includ ...

on September 21, 1895, at 2109 Messanie Road with his father Louis Ruthven Knight, and his mother Mary E. Knight (née Stauber). Norman's father was a druggist, and the family lived over the family drug store. While not much of his fiction is remembered today, it was noticed during original publication. Particularly the short story ''Saurian Valedictory'', published in Astounding Science Fiction, January 1939, was praised by famous science fiction couple

Edmond Hamilton Edmond Moore Hamilton (October 21, 1904 – February 1, 1977) was an American writer of science fiction during the mid-twentieth century. Early life Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania. So ...

and

Leigh Brackett Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for '' The Big Sleep'' (1946), '' Rio Bravo'' (1959), and '' The Long Go ...

, who made a comment that "It was a brilliant achievement and nobody seems to have heard of it, or him. It was an attempt to depict a reptilian civilization before Man. It succeeded triumphantly; the values were all so different, the psychology", and described it as "One of the really great stories on alien mentality". Knight was a young man in St Joseph, Missouri in the early part of the 20th century. He joined the US Army Signal Corps in 1917, and was sent to France where his initial service was interrupted with a hospital; stay due to influenza. Upon release he was delivering messages between commands via horseback. When Knight was released from service after the war, his first job was with the nascent National Weather Service in Davenport, Iowa, where at a Summer picnic, he met Marie Sarah Yenn, who was to become his wife. They had one child, a girl named Paula Marie.

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Clute, John and Peter Nicholls. ''

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (SFE) is an English language reference work on science fiction, first published in 1979. It has won the Hugo, Locus and British SF Awards. Two print editions appeared in 1979 and 1993. A third, continu ...

''. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995. .

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Knight, Norman L. 20th-century American chemists 1895 births 1972 deaths American science fiction writers American male novelists 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers Chemists from Missouri