KNIGHT, Norman L(ouis)

(1895-1972)

   US writer and pesticide chemist for the Department of Agriculture until his retirement in 1963. He was not a prolific writer, publishing only 11 stories altogether, the first of which was the novella "Frontier of the Unknown" for ASF in 1937. He made his main contributionby collaborating with James BLISH on A Torrent of Faces (1967). This novel - whose UNDER-THE-SEA sequences and amphibious Tritons (geneticallyengineered humans; GENETIC ENGINEERING) are taken from NLK's first story and from "Crisis in Utopia" (1940 ASF) - depicts an ambiguously UTOPIAN Earth whose trillion people (OVERPOPULATION) must face up to thechallenge of an approaching meteor.

   JC

   See also: ASTEROIDS.