A Is For Anything by Damon Knight (book review).
A Is for Anything by Damon Knight originally came out in 1959 under the name The People Maker as a novel, and further back, it originally appeared in 1957 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. As such, you have to accept that the language isn’t quite the same as what might be expected today, especially as the book discusses slave labor, and terms like “Negros” and “American Indians” rather than “Native Americans” are used. I mention this so you won’t be surprised. I haven’t read much of Damon Knight’s work, though after getting this book, I’ve ended up with two other books of his in a job lot. His reputation is largely based on being a critical book reviewer, and if he were alive today, I expect he would want people like me to be as critical of his work as he was of others.
Harry Breltfeller is one of a hundred people who receives a pair of Gizmos in the post with instructions that it can duplicate anything, including itself. Naturally, he’s a little cautious. Oddly, from there, Knight shifts to the lives of other people in America and doesn’t return to Breltfeller. I have to keep reminding myself this story was written 67 years ago, and I wonder whether Knight was experimenting or simply establishing the Gizmo.
In the meantime, let’s discuss these Gizmos, especially as they violate the first law of conservation of matter/energy by not even giving a semblance of where all this matter is coming from, let alone duplicating something as complicated as a human being.
Further into the book, we are really following the life of Dick Jones from Buckhill. I had to look it up, and that’s in Minnesota, although he moves away after killing his cousin in a duel. In an odd turn of events, the Gizmos are rarely mentioned, and although it’s not explicit, the setting seems to be in the southern states of the USA. Oddly, the back cover is more explicit about the fact that slavery is going on, with slaves being created by the Gizmo—at least 300 per head of their masters, as gathered from the content. The uprising is also significantly disguised.
My reaction is that Damon Knight set up a science fiction element and then largely ignored it to write his own story. I imagine 66 years ago, a book like this would have been at least controversial because of the slavery aspect, but the treatment doesn’t come across as particularly strong. After looking him up, I found that this is his third novel, and he might not have been in a position to improve on it before release.
I do think he could have done a lot more with the Gizmo. It wouldn’t have stopped creativity, but manufacturing would have been easy with no labor. It was hinted that the Gizmos could come in different sizes, with small ones to make food, although you have to wonder how they avoid the original food going stale and upscaling for anything else. I initially thought you could visualize this like a 3D printer of today, but it clearly isn’t. It just duplicates, with no explanation of how or who created it in the first place. In short, it’s just a magic machine, and no matter how well Damon Knight wrote, this novel isn’t really science fiction.
GF Willmetts
July 2024
(pub: Avon Books, 1980. 208 page paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 0-380-48553-2).
