{"id":1249,"date":"2009-06-07T23:06:58","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T03:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2018-08-08T23:36:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T03:36:12","slug":"17700-2-damon-knight-beyond-the-barrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=1249","title":{"rendered":"17700. [2] (Damon Knight) Beyond the Barrier"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m revis\u00adit\u00ading this lit\u00adtle-known nov\u00adel, which I read as a kid. I did\u00adn\u2019t remem\u00adber much detail, only a few of the odd\u00ader inci\u00addents in the sto\u00adry, and its creepy atmos\u00adphere. Damon Knight first made a rep\u00adu\u00adta\u00adtion as an acer\u00adbic crit\u00adic, and was extreme\u00adly crit\u00adi\u00adcal of A. E. van Vogt\u2019s work. So it\u2019s iron\u00adic that this nov\u00adel struck me as dis\u00adtinct\u00adly \u201cvan Vogt\u00adian\u201d. It cer\u00adtain\u00adly has that author\u2019s ten\u00adden\u00adcy to jerk you from one plot devel\u00adop\u00adment to anoth\u00ader, and to con\u00adstant\u00adly shift its frame of ref\u00ader\u00adence. There\u2019s also a bit of a Philip K. Dick feel to it. The sto\u00adry starts with a pro\u00adtag\u00ado\u00adnist with mem\u00ado\u00adry loss, a dubi\u00adous iden\u00adti\u00adty, enig\u00admat\u00adic events, mur\u00adder, aliens mas\u00adquerad\u00ading as humans, and soon drifts into time-trav\u00adel, wan\u00adder\u00ading about an emp\u00adty space ship after the human race is extinct, and even has the main char\u00adac\u00adter fall through the earth like a yo-yo. The stuff is just piled on. And yet, it\u2019s readable.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, it was just this kind of stuff, with no lit\u00ader\u00adary pre\u00adten\u00adsions, that made read\u00ading SF<\/span> such a plea\u00adsure. The ideas just tum\u00adbled out, willy-nil\u00adly. They were fun to think about. There was a play\u00adful\u00adness, an irrev\u00ader\u00adence, and an \u201cout\u00adsider\u201d feel\u00ading that you sensed in the writ\u00aders that can\u2019t be found in today\u2019s SF<\/span>. Damon Knight was one of those writ\u00aders you pic\u00adtured meet\u00ading in a seedy bar at one in the morn\u00ading, nurs\u00ading a glass of Jim Beam. Noth\u00ading like the tedious\u00adly respectable types who dom\u00adi\u00adnate the field today. (Come to think of it, I once met van Vogt \u2014 in a seedy bar at one in the morn\u00ading, and we talked for hours)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m revis\u00adit\u00ading this lit\u00ad\u00adtle-known nov\u00adel, which I read as a kid. I did\u00adn\u2019t remem\u00adber much detail, only a few of the odd\u00ader inci\u00addents in the sto\u00adry, and its creepy atmos\u00adphere. Damon Knight first made a rep\u00adu\u00adta\u00adtion as an acer\u00adbic critic, \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-br-reading-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8002,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions\/8002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}