Cordwainer Smith

Cordwainer Smith – pronounced CORDwainer Smith – was the pseudonym used by American author Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966) for his science fiction works. Linebarger was also a noted East Asian scholar and expert in psychological warfare.

Science fiction writing

Linebarger's stories are strange even by the standards of science fiction, sometimes written in narrative styles closer to traditional Chinese stories than to most English-language fiction. His science fiction is relatively small in volume, due to his time-consuming profession (he worked in the intelligence community, and as a college professor), and his early death. Rather than a full-fledged series like Dune, Smith's writings consist of only one novel, originally published in two volumes in edited form as The Planet Buyer, a.k.a. The Boy Who Bought Old Earth, (1964) and The Underpeople (1968), later restored to its original form as Norstrilia (1975); and around 30 short stories (gathered in The Rediscovery of Man and other collections), all of them suggesting a rich universe, but leaving much to be guessed by the reader. The cultural links to China were partially expressed in the Felix C. Forrest pseudonym, as the ideograms for "Linebarger" in Chinese roughly translate as "Forest of Incandescent Bliss".

Related Topics:
Science fiction - Chinese stories - Dune - 1964 - 1968 - Norstrilia - 1975 - The Rediscovery of Man - Ideogram - Chinese

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As an expert in psychological warfare, Linebarger was very interested in the then-newly developing fields of psychology and psychiatry and inserted many of their ideas into his fiction. His fiction also often has religious overtones or motifs, in particular in characters who have no control of their actions. This has led to suggestions that Linebarger was conventionally religious, which are refuted by Linebarger's daughter. Regardless, Linebarger's works are sometimes included in analyses of Christianity in fiction, along with the works of authors such as C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Related Topics:
Psychology - Psychiatry - C. S. Lewis - J.R.R. Tolkien

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The bulk of his stories are set some 14,000 years in the future, starting on Earth. The Instrumentality of Mankind rules the planet and any planet later inhabited by humanity. The Instrumentality attempts to revive old cultures and languages in a process known as the Rediscovery of Man. This rediscovery can be seen either as the initial period when humankind emerges from a mundane utopia and the nonhuman underpeople gain freedom from slavery, or as a continuing process begun by the Instrumentality, encompassing the whole cycle, where mankind is constantly at risk of falling back to its bad, old ways.

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His stories, describing a long future history of Earth, from a postapocalyptic landscape with walled cities defended by agents of Instrumentality to an utopic planet in which freedom can be found only deep below surface, in long-forgotten and buried anthropogenic strata, may appear to belong to the Dying Earth subgenre of Science Fiction, but are ultimately more optimistic.

Related Topics:
Future history - Postapocalyptic - Anthropogenic - Dying Earth subgenre - Science Fiction

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Linebarger's stories feature strange and vivid creations, such as:

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• Planet Norstrilia, a semi-arid planet where an immortality drug is harvested from gigantic (over one hundred tons) virus-infected sheep (see the worms of Arrakis and melange for similar concepts).
• The punishment world of Shayol (cf. Sheol), where criminals are punished by the regrowth and harvesting of their organs for transplanting.
• Planoforming spacecraft crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats which defend against the attacks of unknown malevolent entities in space with the flash of small atomic weapons (these entities are perceived by humans as dragons, and by cats as gigantic rats).
• The Underpeople, animals modified genetically into human form to fulfill servile roles, and treated as property. Several stories feature clandestine efforts to liberate the underpeople and grant them equal rights to humans. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality.
• Habermen and their supervisors, Scanners, whose sensory nerves have been cut to block the "pain of space", and who perceive only by vision and various life-support implants. Other modes of perception can be temporarily restored to scanners by "cranching".