The Dying Man

A multi-talented professional whose career as writer, editor, critic, and anthologist spans almost fifty years, Damon Knight has long been a major shaping force in the development of modern science fiction. He wrote the first important hook of SF criticism, In Search of Wonder, and won a Hugo Award for it. He was the founder of the Science Fiction Writers of America, co-founder of the prestigious Milford Writers' Conference, and, with his wife, writer Kate Wilhelm, is still involved in the operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers, which was modeled after the Milford Conference. He was the editor of Orbit, the longest running original anthology series in the history of American science fiction, and has also produced important works of genre history such as The Futurians and Turning Points, as well as dozens of influential reprint anthologies. Knight has also been highly influential as a writer, and may well be one of the finest short story writers ever to work in the genre. His books include the novels A For Anything, The Other Foot, Hell's Pavement, The Man in the Tree, CV, A Reasonable World, and Why Do Birds, and the collections Rule Golden and Other Stories, Turning On, Far Out, The Best of Damon Knight, and the recent One Side Laughing. His most recent book is the critically acclaimed novel Humptey Dumptey: An Oval. Knight lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon.

Here he gives us a vivid and powerful look at a languid, placid future world of hedonistic immortals who devote their seemingly endless lives to recreation and the arts—and who are about to find out that, even for them, it's always later than you think it is . . .