A FOR ANYTHING

A FOR ANYTHING
Damon Knight
© 1959 Zenith Books, Inc
© 1965 Damon Knight

I have a copy of the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback, priced at 75 cents ($6.04 in 2026), printed April, 1972. In July of 2026, mass market paperbacks start at $5.99, so the 75 cents seems about right.

This copy was not printed on acid-free paper, all the pages currently have a yellowish tint. Although I bought it at a used book store in Rapid City, South Dakota summer of 2023, the book feels like I was the first one to read it. There’s none of the usual rounded edges of covers, or creases or white rub marks on the cover. The spine appeared uncreased before I read it. Books are weird cultural artifacts.

1972 cover of A FOR ANYTHING

Wikipedia says A FOR ANYTHING was a 1961 revised version of The People Maker, a far pulpy-er title. The first vignette of the book does seem like a sci fi pulp era short story. The bulk of the book seems tacked on later, something Knight thought up after getting the initial vignette published. The bulk of the book is weirdly dystopian. It also reads as something written in the 1890s, not 1959. Walter Miller did a far better (?) dystopia in A Canticle for Leibowitz from just about the same date.

Make no mistake this book really is science fiction: Knight was clearly trying to write a human drama, what might happen if an almost effortless matter duplicator was possible and got invented. I do think the “Gizmo” violates a large number of physical laws, so we’re unlikely to experience Knight’s society of 2149 CE.

I’m a little taken aback by the character arc of the protagonist Dick Jones, heir to a fiefdom in the Poconos. Dick changes during the story, from an un-introspective, ultra-wealthy teen, to nearly an abolitionist, then in the last four pages, suddenly morphing into a hidebound conservative monarchist. Or maybe he stayed an abolitionist, and Knight mis-handled some literary ambiguity, I can’t tell.

This was an easy read, I’m not sad I finished it, but it doesn’t have the characters or the ideas that stick with you, like 1984, or A Canticle for Leibowitz.