Damon Knight was a hugely prolific writer who is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the short story genre. He won a retrospect Hugo Award for “To Serve Man” a 1950 short story adapted for The Twilight Zone. I greatly enjoyed both reading and narrating his short story The Worshippers for Incredible Science Fiction: Amazing Tales of the ’50 and Beyond Volume Two.
The Worshippers provided a fitting end to volume two of Incredible Science Fiction: Amazing Tales from the ’50s and Beyond. The central character of the story, Algernon Weaver, is a parochial man, who due to an unfortunate sneezing incident, finds himself trapped on an alien starship, flying through the depths of space. Through a process of trial and error, he eventually lands on an alien world where he is treated like a God by the indigenous life forms. What follows is a brilliantly realised tale of hubris and the effects of the ego of a small man when it is unchained and allowed to run wild on a global stage.
Please have a listen to a five-minute sample if my narration of the Worshippers:
The full, unabridged audio version of this story in the Audible Edition of Incredible Science Fiction: Amazing Tales from the ’50s and Beyond Volume Two runs for 51 minutes and 25 seconds. As soon as this is available on Audible and iTunes, I’ll add a link to it here!
