Knock (short-story)
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"Knock", written by Fredric Brown, is a science fiction short story that starts with a description of "a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long." It then goes on to elaborate on those two sentences and build a more complete story around them.
It was published in the December 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. The story-within-a-story is as follows:
- The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...
There have been three different radio adaptations (Dimension X, X Minus One and Sci Fi Channel's Seeing Ear Theatre).
The full story concerns Walter Phelan, the last man on Earth, who was selected by an invading alien race known as the Zan to be a specimen in their zoo of exotic Earth flora and fauna.