Hell's Pavement

by Damon Knight

The Millennium is here. No more wars, no more gang killings, no more drunken accidents. Because you have to be good, when there's an Analogue in your brain! You're a sheep, in a world of sheep...yes, the world is perfect, until a wolf comes along - the man without an Analogue, the enemy, the man outside the law. then what are you going to do, sheep - run, or turn wolf?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Science Fiction Fantasy

191 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1955

About the author

Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic.
Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His first story, "Resilience", was published in 1941. He is best known as the author of "To Serve Man", which was adapted for The Twilight Zone. He was a recipient of the Hugo Award, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, cofounder of the Milford Writer's Workshop, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. Knight lived in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife Kate Wilhelm.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this rather good SF novel when I was about 13. Damon Knight imagines a world where a new technique allows people to be outfitted, at an early age, with a mental implant which makes it impossible for them to commit antisocial acts. The implanting rapidly becomes mandatory, and society divides into several groups, differentiated by the details of the programming in their implant.

The hero comes from the largest group, whose purpose in life is to perform low-status work in exchange for money which they spend at the church-like Store. Over the high wall, there is a parallel society of reckless high-rollers, who earn much more but have to dispose of all their income before it reaches its spend-by date a week later. But society is really controlled by the shadowy confederation of people who have natural resistance to the mind-control therapy, and can do what they want.

Would you believe it: the first time I read Knight's book, I had no idea it might be satire. They should introduce some form of color-coding.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its ridiculous premise taken forward to an inevitable conclusion recalls Knight's A for Anything, only this time with a psychological "therapy" (not really) co-opted for commercial and governmental purposes. The outcome is perhaps obvious: repression of behavior is not actually a treatment but a form of can-kicking, and granting use to those whose interests are...less than societal will have bizarre and dystopic results. Especially when the purpose--enforced brand loyalty--does by definition balkanize society into enclaves.

But I found its path much less sharp and together than A for Anything. It demonstrates a weird Store-as-Church society built on product consumption and planned obsolescence and then pans back to indicate the walled enclaves that is the logical conclusion, but then goes all secret-agent and then metaphysical and then full berserk. There's a design to it all in that the crutch of the Analogue system renders people dysfunctional (and by extension their societies) and the condition must grow worse. But it fails to stick a satisfying conclusion and there's very much wandering up to that point.

[Corinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed it but wasn't convinced. It felt like the book couldn't decide whether it was about sci-fi concepts - in which case the characters can be blank cyphers, since the ideas are the important bit - or about chases and action and romance, in which case the ideas don't have to be so well-observed. So what I'm trying to say is, the characters kept changing shape, especially the main character, who seemed to have about twenty different personalities as the book went on (although one could argue that that is the point, given that the book addresses questions of identity and how malleable that is), and the ideas didn't ring all that true: the usage of the analogue machine and the dystopian future that is created through its use did not seem to be particularly clever or accurate. Having said that though, it was pretty un-put-down-able.

[Asher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting premise, but extremely sexist, to the point that it becomes unreadable. The first chapter ( the original short story) is excelent but the rest of the book is different

[Andrewcharles420 · Rating 2 out of 5]

A psychological treatment allows doctors to program people into hallucinating 'guardian angels' that prevent them from going against the programming, originally to prevent violence and theft. Over years this treatment is expanded to more and more 'sins', eventually including the sins of governmental dissent and anti-consumerism. Several generations later, a breed of 'immunes' is found expanding in society, whose guardian angel programming doesn't control them. This book is the erratic tale of one of these immunes, first trying to make a life in the 'angelic' hyper-consumerist society, then working his way up in the immune underworld.

There were a lot of strange jaunts and tangents during the story, including one especially eccentric trip to 'the Blank'--the former state of Washington, which has mysteriously developed into some other-worldly supernatural utopia (good for them!). The rest of the US is pock-marked into 5 or 6 essentially warring consumer factions each with extremely divergent tastes and norms, making each trip into a new society bewildering and difficult to follow. I don't think the characters in the story developed very fully (or much at all), and a lot of the societal differences seemed incoherent and arbitrarily thrown together--also hard to believe that such differences could develop over such a short time (~150 years), though I suppose the differences between today (2012) and the 1860s are pretty large too.

I believe I have a couple other books by this author, so I'll be reading more of his, but at this point will not be seeking more out.

[Printable Tire · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yet another scifi paperback where the cover is the best part. "This is stupid," I inadvertently said to myself somewhere in the middle of reading it. Actually, it's no more stupid than any number of zany walking armchair philosophy, shallow hot takes with a dearth of character and plot, Gulliver's Travels paperbacks that seemed to exist for a span of some 30 years- the stylistically similarly zany-lazy The Free-Lance Pallbearers comes to mind- and sometimes I can enjoy these books, but frankly I wasn't in the mood to read some guy's pretentiously insular thoughts on the way society was heading in 1950. With so much skirting around, it tries to take on too much and ultimately doesn't take on much of anything.

As a side note, this paperback edition has to be one of the worst put together books in history. I had a crumbling copy for a billion years, so long in fact at some point it completely fell apart and I lost about 100 or so pages. Last October I decided to go fishing for another copy, and I found one for $2.00 in a used paperback store somewhere in New Hampshire or Maine (little steep if you ask me) and THAT copy promptly broke its spine and became a mess of dislodged papers shortly after purchase.

"art is the product of culture, and culture is the enemy of civilization. The cultured man sees what he has been taught to see; the civilized man sees what he looks at." (139)

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this one almost 40 years ago and I'm probably due for a reread, which I probably won't do. Mostly, I remember that the book was better than watching TV, though I found the writing a little lackluster. It's one of those books that one should probably read because it's part of the science fiction canon.

[Albert_Camus_lives]

The Millennium is here. No more wars, no more gang killings, no more drunken accidents. Because you have to be good, when there's an Analogue in your brain! You're a sheep, in a world of sheep...yes, the world is perfect, until a wolf comes along - the man without an Analogue, the enemy, the man outside the law. then what are you going to do, sheep - run, or turn wolf?

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Damon Knight is highly regarded in the world of science fiction but this first novel (1955) cobbled in part out of previous stories in Astounding Science Fiction and Thrilling Wonder Stories (1952-1953) is frankly rather incoherent even if good-humoured and highly creative in its ideas.

Knight was not good at extended narrative early in his career. He needed an Editor to turn another story ('Natural State', 1954) into what is widely regarded as a mediocre novel ('Masters of Evolution', 1959). He was, nevertheless, pouring out good short stories throught the 1950s.

This particular 'novel' (really a collection of incident chapters with often amusing ideas) must have a point but it is hard to find out exactly what it is. Taken chapter by chapter, we get a picture of a fertile mind operating at a higher creative level to make lots of half-points.

The central core is a sardonic view (not uncommon at the time) of consumerism and how it could become a variety of faith systems and structures of manipulation that might eliminate the democratic state and compete for power and territory.

The implicit 'faith and degeneration into servitude' story line precedes Miller's 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' by some years but probably just represents a general feeling amongst freebooting genre authors and their readers that the conforming disciplined post-war world was not for them.

There is wit in the novel although it still tends to that 'jocularity' that I have often noticed as the reason why so much science fiction of this period does not last well. It is why films of books like Southern's 'Candy' (1968) tend to fall flat nowadays despite moments of real laughter.

The big idea is that Americans are psychologically manipulated, initially against anti-social traits but then into behaviours that meet the needs of competing corporations. Each corporation builds a closed community to meet their own competitive business strategy.

One corporate structure builds an oppressive world of material poverty and waste based on constant planned obsolescence and surveillance. Another lives a herd-like existence of fear around pleasure and delight. Another is a matriarchy that holds young men as slaves.

There is a strong and well-drawn female agent (Knight is mature in his dealings with sexual attraction), effective single scenes and chapters and a wonderfully weird community outside the corporate sector that mimics Heaven in a way that can only be described as hellish.

The resistance to all this scientifically-induced degeneration (the road to hell being paved with good intentions) is as deeply nutty as the corporations they seek eventually to displace by restoring humanity to its free will (so long as it agrees with the resistance) through ... more science.

This resistance is of those who are genetically resistant to the 'analogue' processing of the corporations. Notions of normality are inverted so that those we might consider normal human beings are the exception rather than the rule. This might indicate a possible deeper reading.

We also get the expected period nods to the Cold War, in this case subversion and espionage. The resistance struck this reader as amoral and brutally ruthless to its own. Its ideology is dumped on us without further comment rather hurriedly in the final two pages.

Fertility of concept is certainly not an issue with Knight but the book's constant weirdness with limited explanation of context and an expectation that (it would seem) the reader has to read Knight's mind as well as the book make it a puzzling affair. Nothing quite hangs together.

This is a narrative and ideological mess by a rather good writer, a mind brimming with ideas but perhaps less than coherent in stringing them together. It is suggestive of great things yet never pulls them off. I enjoyed reading it and it had fun moments but it is no masterpiece.

[Junz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is definitely more of a 1.5 than a 2 out of 5, but I'm rounding up because I didn't finish it and, for all I know, the second half of the book could possibly end up more interesting. For me, the first half was just too much of a chore to get through and, aside from a general curiosity I hold about 1950s speculative fiction and Damon Knight's work (i.e. IIRC, I've enjoyed a handful of his short stories), very little about the book was holding my attention. For me, the biggest issue is that, for a story whose main themes are human psychology and behavioral conditioning, the author doesn't spend any time exploring the characters' internal lives, instead focusing all of his creative energy on world-building, action sequences, and behind-the-scenes espionage, all of which are also presented with very little clarity. What results is that our main character, Arthur, just kind of bounces from one bizarre dystopian scenario to another and, along the way, acts out in ways that just come from nowhere and go nowhere.

To be sure, the first section, where we meet Arthur going about his day-to-day business in his home region, has a mostly-coherent sequence of events. Where things really fly off the rails is in the section that follows, when Arthur leaves that region and ends up in a neighboring region with a completely different societal structure. Within a space of around twenty pages, he meets the female lead, wins a paintball match with her (albeit after shooting her right in the face), stands around while she gets in a state-sanctioned 'whip duel' with another lady over who gets to hang out with him, throws a rage tantrum and knocks her unconscious at some other facility, starts a riot in a crowded area, goes on the run and, unless I misread everything, sets a whole city block on fire in an attempt to out-maneuver the authorities.....? Then, in the following chapter, he's suddenly whisked off in a helicopter to some strange college and getting scolded by a prefect for not making his bed properly. At this point, I had to tap out.

Sunk-cost hangups might find me finishing the last five-or-so chapters of this one at some point, but I'm quite certain that the book's just not worth the struggle.

[Big Enk · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5/5

Not too much to say about this forgotten and disappointing dystopian novel. This particular dystopia is centered around a technology that creates hallucinations of an authority figure (or "angel" as they are called in the book) to prevent antisocial behavior. In the small society where the main character lives, corporations co-opt it to incentivize consumerism, capitalism, and debt. It just so happens that the main character is also one of the few people who are genetically immune to the effects.

Honestly, even though I finished the novel not but a few hours ago, I could barely tell you what happened. The first chapter, which was the original short story that the novel was expanded upon, was by far the best part, but it wasn't even that good. Knight spends a lot of time focused on the action of the story, as Arthur discovers that his immunity isn't unique, and that there are other societies with different rules enforced beyond the "Wall" at the edge of town. Unfortunately the action is poorly paced and described. Knight's prose is mediocre at best throughout the novel. I also have a hard time thinking that this plot was not filled with cliques even when it was written in 1954.

I can't say much more about it. I really should've DNF'ed 2/3 of the way through, but by then I had sunk enough cost to surrender to the fallacy. Boring, confusing, and sexist. It never really came together to form a cohesive story that feels more than a bunch of half-assed additions to a short story that didn't need any extrapolation. It definitely strays onto the bad side of mediocre. This one of the times where I'm not surprised it faded into obscurity. Cool cover though!

[Becca Baker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe there is a good story hidden in here, but it's clearly not this book. The pacing is all over the place because there are so many concepts stuffed into this book - that are intentionally obscured to the reader - and jump cuts mid scene, that the reading experience is mainly just trying to figure out what is happening. Each plot thread is like 20 pages long, and is so exposition heavy that I would have given up if I wasn't reading it for Book Club. There are philosophical parts of this book, but it's too fragmented and trying to hide itself that it's a bad manifesto, with the story being weak enough that it doesn't hold a candle to similar stories. This was written in the 1960s so its refreshing to see progressive ideas (even for today) but that doesnt excuse its "story". If you want a better experience, read any dystopian YA story and a Sci-Fi book about mind control, and you will get the gist of "Analogue Men" by Damon Knight.

[Charlie Pasta · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF
Spoiler alert

I read this because I read one of Knight's short stories in a compilation and enjoyed it. It has a strong first chapter and an interesting concept but I felt it lost track of the whole idea of the angels much too quickly. He was starting to lose me when the main character beat up that woman who was trying to have sex with him and he fully lost me when (for seemingly no reason at all), this became a novel about college and hazing freshman. I just couldnt do it after that.

[Alb1 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bouquin interminable, il comporte même pas 200 pages mais il est tellement mal organisé qu’on s’y perd très facilement et on a l’impression d’enchaîner les pages sans en voir la fin. Je le conseil vraiment pas même si la 4e de couverture donnait pas mal envie
Flop

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just another one I have no memory of

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

1981 grade B+