Talk:Knock (short story)

Asimov's Science Fiction mention
Seeing as I'm too tired to carry on, I hope some other Wikipedian can fulfill the task of inserting whatever appropriate mention of "Knock" from my blog... It's being derived from an article on New Wave (science fiction) from a 1984 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

If done well enough, the two articles should tie-in nicely with each other. DrWho42 22:37, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Literary criticism
The word "alone" could be omitted from the story. As it was written, the story is unecessarily long.


 * I disagree. The story's twist revolves around the author's expectation that, in the time and culture that he wrote the tale, most people would interpret "last man" to mean "last human being" (and not literally "last man"). Without the word "alone" it comes across as sloppily sexist. In fact the word is crucial to setting up the story's twist ending. If anything could be chopped off it would be "in a room", but even that would be iffy; without those words the door comes out of nowhere. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If the door comes out of nowhere if the room isn't mentioned, the man comes out of nowhere because his mother isn't mentioned. Am I being sexist again?--Odd M. Nilsen (talk) 02:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is pretty much the shortest horror story ever (first 2 lines) and many will consider this as sexist because of the fact that maybe it might have been Grace, who came back to appreciate his proposal. Am I Right? -Araesoawesome (talk) 12:54, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Completely rewrote article for accuracy
With respect to the original author, most of the original article was incorrect. The seventeen-word short-short story was not published as a standalone story; "Knock" is several-thousand-word story about Walter Phelan, a story that begins with a description of the quoted two-sentence story. The audio versions are adaptations of the full story; they didn't invent the Walter Phelan/alien zoo stuff. I have thoroughly rewritten the article (and removed some phrases that didn't make any sense) to match the actual story, which I have here in front of me in the NESFA Press book From These Ashes: The complete Short SF of Fredric Brown. --Elysdir 04:08, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Knock (short story" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Knock_(short_story&redirect=no Knock (short story] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 18:11, 3 March 2024 (UTC)