"Haberman
Modified humans controlled by cybernetic implants.
A human that have been modified from most sensory reception, while their bodily functions are controlled by cybernetic implants. Habermans are needed to crew spacecraft, since unmodified humans would not be able to withstand the "pain of space". The Pain is a side effect of interstellar travel, which causes a desire for death in living beings."
3.5 out of 5
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1975
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Cordwainer Smith: The Ballad of Lost Linebarger Part 2 - Frederik Pohl
"There was a problem. After a few more fine stories about the associates of Lord Jestecost and C’Mell the cat lady and all, I got a saddening letter from him. He wouldn’t be writing any more stories about the Instrumentality, he said, because he had totally run out of additional story ideas. He hadn’t thought that would happen, he told me, because for years he’d kept this little pocket notebook with him, filling it with ideas as they occurred to him, including a number for additional stories in the series. But, alas. he’d been in a small boat somewhere — maybe it was on some Italian lake or Mediterranean bay — and he had leaned incautiously over the side … and the notebook had fallen out of his breast pocket into the water … and he been able to watch it dropping through the crystal-clear water until at last it was out of sight, and was gone. Along with all those never-to-be-written stories"
5 out of 5
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/12/cordwainer-smith-the-ballad-of-lost-linebarger-part-2/
5 out of 5
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/12/cordwainer-smith-the-ballad-of-lost-linebarger-part-2/
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Underpeople
From Technovelgy
"An animal modified to be human in shape and intellect.
"...there had been the problem of the underpeople- people who were not human, but merely shaped from the stock of Earth animals. They could speak, sing, read, write, work, love, and die; but they were not covered by human law, which simply defined them as "homunculi" and gave them a legal status close to animals or robots...""
3.5 outof 5
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=1959
"An animal modified to be human in shape and intellect.
"...there had been the problem of the underpeople- people who were not human, but merely shaped from the stock of Earth animals. They could speak, sing, read, write, work, love, and die; but they were not covered by human law, which simply defined them as "homunculi" and gave them a legal status close to animals or robots...""
3.5 outof 5
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=1959
Planoforming
"A form of "faster than light" travel allows for interstellar travel.
"Planoforming was sort of funny. It felt like like— Like nothing much. Like the twinge of a mild electric shock. Like the ache of a sore tooth bitten on for the first time. Like a slightly painful flash of light against the eyes. Yet in that time, a forty-thousand-ton ship lifting free above Earth disappeared somehow or other into two dimensions and appeared half a light-year or fifty light-years off." "
3.5 out of 5
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1964
"Planoforming was sort of funny. It felt like like— Like nothing much. Like the twinge of a mild electric shock. Like the ache of a sore tooth bitten on for the first time. Like a slightly painful flash of light against the eyes. Yet in that time, a forty-thousand-ton ship lifting free above Earth disappeared somehow or other into two dimensions and appeared half a light-year or fifty light-years off." "
3.5 out of 5
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1964
Monday, December 13, 2010
Cordwainer Smith: The Ballad of Lost Linebarger Part 1 - Frederik Pohl
"It was a story that had appeared in a semi-pro sf magazine from California called, if I remember aright, Fantasy Book. Its title was “Scanners Live in Vain.” It was about a bizarre kind of spaceflight, set in a bizarre future world, .and it was signed as by someone named Cordwainer Smith. So I included it in my lineup, and then had the problem of finding out who could sign a permission for the use of the story and accept the payment for it. “Cordwainer Smith” smelled very much like a pseudonym to me. But for whom? "
5 out of 5
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/12/cordwainer-smith-the-ballad-of-lost-linebarger-part-1/
5 out of 5
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/12/cordwainer-smith-the-ballad-of-lost-linebarger-part-1/
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Cordwainer Smith and A. Bertram Chandler - Steve Davidson
"My second reason for raising Chandler is the homage he paid to Cordwainer Smith in no less than two of his novels.
That it was a deliberate tribute to his fellow author is without question; Chandler actually placed Cordwainer Smith’s name right on the page for everyone to see, and used it in a way that any but the most uneducated, ignorant and unconnected reader could possibly miss. (Well, back up a bit: that only applies if you’re already familiar with Smith and Chandler.)
The two novels in question are The Inheritors and The Far Traveler.
Allow me a few paragraphs for background so I can bring the few poor souls amongst you who have never read Chandler up to date."
4.5 out of 5
http://cordwainer-smith.com/blog/cordwainer-smith-and-a-bertram-chandler.html
That it was a deliberate tribute to his fellow author is without question; Chandler actually placed Cordwainer Smith’s name right on the page for everyone to see, and used it in a way that any but the most uneducated, ignorant and unconnected reader could possibly miss. (Well, back up a bit: that only applies if you’re already familiar with Smith and Chandler.)
The two novels in question are The Inheritors and The Far Traveler.
Allow me a few paragraphs for background so I can bring the few poor souls amongst you who have never read Chandler up to date."
4.5 out of 5
http://cordwainer-smith.com/blog/cordwainer-smith-and-a-bertram-chandler.html
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler
Apart from tangling with a nemesis, Drongo Kane, this novel is also a homage to Cordwainer Smith, including the names of the inhabitants of a planet, and cat-bred underpeople, among other things, so that is a nice touch.
Here, Kane is indulging in slavery - because currently the catpeople inhabitants are not classed as 'true' humans, so there are no laws against doing so.
This planet, Morrowvia, is a another Lost Colony, so likely to get away with it, until the Federation Survey Service and one John Grimes and crew come calling.
--
Large excerpt here :- http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0441370624/0441370624_toc.htm
Here, Kane is indulging in slavery - because currently the catpeople inhabitants are not classed as 'true' humans, so there are no laws against doing so.
This planet, Morrowvia, is a another Lost Colony, so likely to get away with it, until the Federation Survey Service and one John Grimes and crew come calling.
--
Large excerpt here :- http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0441370624/0441370624_toc.htm
The Lords of the Instrumentality - Ralph Benko
Find out just who is keeping down the Underpeople, here. Other than Lord Cordwainer of course.
Unfortunately has wretched performance in any browser I try. Interesting idea. Terry Dowling is Lord Afervarro, for one.
3 out of 5
http://www.instrumentality.com/
Unfortunately has wretched performance in any browser I try. Interesting idea. Terry Dowling is Lord Afervarro, for one.
3 out of 5
http://www.instrumentality.com/
Cloud Permutations - Lavie Tidhar
"MJ: The narrative voice of Cloud Permutations is at times self-reflexive and almost non-fictional in style, often referring to where pieces of the story were collected from primary and secondary sources. Why did you choose to tell Kal’s story in this way?
LT: It’s partly homage to one of my favourite SF writers, Cordwainer Smith. And it’s an interesting way of telling a story. Settling on the right voice for a story is always challenging. Different stories need different approaches and this one just felt the most natural for a story that is as much about the world as it is about its hero. There is a lot more going on beyond Kai’s story – a lot of other stories, and some intersect with his and some are in the distant past and some have not happened yet."
Unseen.
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/2010/09/an-interview-with-lavie-tidhar-on-cloud-permutations/
LT: It’s partly homage to one of my favourite SF writers, Cordwainer Smith. And it’s an interesting way of telling a story. Settling on the right voice for a story is always challenging. Different stories need different approaches and this one just felt the most natural for a story that is as much about the world as it is about its hero. There is a lot more going on beyond Kai’s story – a lot of other stories, and some intersect with his and some are in the distant past and some have not happened yet."
Unseen.
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/2010/09/an-interview-with-lavie-tidhar-on-cloud-permutations/
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Short Story
Number of words : 2900
Percent of complex words : 10.3
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 16.0
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 10.5
Flesch : 64.5
Flesch-Kincaid : 8.2
PEOPLE
Goldsmith
Made the fife and died as a result.
Bodidharma the Blessed One
Ancient religious leader who is given the fife.
German explorer
Found the fife.
Wolfgang Huene
A nazi who hates Hitler and finds the fife.
Hagen von Griin
One of the German rocket scientists who worked at Huntsville, Alabama.
TECHNOLOGY
Magical fife
A musical instrument. A chancy prediscovery of psionic powers with sonic triggering. Made of gold.
Onyx
A type of quartz.
Case No. 34 of the Dorotheum
Where the fife resided in Germany.
PLACES
Cathay
Another name for part of China.
Loyang
Chinese city.
Anyang
City in South Korea.
Rhine
German river.
Cape Canaveral
Site of USA space launches.
ORGANISATIONS
Northern Wei dynasty
Ancient Chinese rulers.
Toba Tartars
Chinese barbarians.
Volkssturm
German military group.
Harappa
A proto-Indian culture.
ANIMALS
Tiger and wolf and fox and jackal and snake and spider
Encountered by the Bodidharma.
VEHICLES
B-29s
Allied planes.
PLOT
A goldsmith makes a fife with special properties which has different owners over time from Bodidharmas to nazis. Eventually a rocket scientist uses it as a replacement strut in a launch and wonders if it matters in what setting he left it.
2.5 out of 5
Number of words : 2900
Percent of complex words : 10.3
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 16.0
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 10.5
Flesch : 64.5
Flesch-Kincaid : 8.2
PEOPLE
Goldsmith
Made the fife and died as a result.
Bodidharma the Blessed One
Ancient religious leader who is given the fife.
German explorer
Found the fife.
Wolfgang Huene
A nazi who hates Hitler and finds the fife.
Hagen von Griin
One of the German rocket scientists who worked at Huntsville, Alabama.
TECHNOLOGY
Magical fife
A musical instrument. A chancy prediscovery of psionic powers with sonic triggering. Made of gold.
Onyx
A type of quartz.
Case No. 34 of the Dorotheum
Where the fife resided in Germany.
PLACES
Cathay
Another name for part of China.
Loyang
Chinese city.
Anyang
City in South Korea.
Rhine
German river.
Cape Canaveral
Site of USA space launches.
ORGANISATIONS
Northern Wei dynasty
Ancient Chinese rulers.
Toba Tartars
Chinese barbarians.
Volkssturm
German military group.
Harappa
A proto-Indian culture.
ANIMALS
Tiger and wolf and fox and jackal and snake and spider
Encountered by the Bodidharma.
VEHICLES
B-29s
Allied planes.
PLOT
A goldsmith makes a fife with special properties which has different owners over time from Bodidharmas to nazis. Eventually a rocket scientist uses it as a replacement strut in a launch and wonders if it matters in what setting he left it.
2.5 out of 5
Tiger and wolf and fox and jackal and snake and spider : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Encountered by the Bodidharma.
3.5 out of 5
3.5 out of 5
Case No. 34 of the Dorotheum : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Where the fife resided in Germany.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Magical fife : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
A musical instrument. A chancy prediscovery of psionic powers with sonic triggering. Made of gold.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Hagen von Griin : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
One of the German rocket scientists who worked at Huntsville, Alabama.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Wolfgang Huene : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
A nazi who hates Hitler and finds the fife.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Bodidharma the Blessed One : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Ancient religious leader who is given the fife.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
Short Story
Number of words : 4700
Percent of complex words : 8.5
Average syllables per word : 1.4
Average words per sentence : 10.5
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 7.6
Flesch : 77.0
Flesch-Kincaid : 5.1
PEOPLE
Gordon Greene
Originally Giordano Verdi. A Space Service officer.
Wallenstein
An old man.
Karl Vonderleyen
An old lieutenant of the service.
ORGANISATIONS
Space Service
Goes into the Up-and-Out.
TECHNOLOGY
Nancy
An imaginary virus created friend.
Sokta virus
Designed to be implanted in a person and released in the case of needing companionship in space.
PLANTS
Geraniums
A type of flower.
FOOD
Dago Red
A wine.
PLOT
Man cannot cope in space alone, so missions always have more than one person. However, if one dies then there is a problem. The sotka virus enables a person to experience an imaginary companion after it is triggered. In a military interview, such a story is recounted.
3.5 out of 5
Number of words : 4700
Percent of complex words : 8.5
Average syllables per word : 1.4
Average words per sentence : 10.5
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 7.6
Flesch : 77.0
Flesch-Kincaid : 5.1
PEOPLE
Gordon Greene
Originally Giordano Verdi. A Space Service officer.
Wallenstein
An old man.
Karl Vonderleyen
An old lieutenant of the service.
ORGANISATIONS
Space Service
Goes into the Up-and-Out.
TECHNOLOGY
Nancy
An imaginary virus created friend.
Sokta virus
Designed to be implanted in a person and released in the case of needing companionship in space.
PLANTS
Geraniums
A type of flower.
FOOD
Dago Red
A wine.
PLOT
Man cannot cope in space alone, so missions always have more than one person. However, if one dies then there is a problem. The sotka virus enables a person to experience an imaginary companion after it is triggered. In a military interview, such a story is recounted.
3.5 out of 5
Sokta virus : Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
Designed to be implanted in a person and released in the case of needing companionship in space.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Gordon Greene : Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
Originally Giordano Verdi. A Space Service officer.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Novelette
Number of words : 8100
Percent of complex words : 10.0
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 12.3
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 9.0
Flesch : 70.9
Flesch-Kincaid : 6.4
PEOPLE
Assistant
To Mr Spatz.
Mr Spatz
His boss.
Khruschev
Russian Prime Minister.
Secretary of State
USA cabinet member.
Undersecretary
Deputy to the Secretary of State.
Nelson Angerhelm
Of 2322 Ridge Drive, Hopkins, Minnesota. A 62-year-old retired poultry farmer. He had served in World I.
Colonel Plugg
A US army officer.
Lieutenant Colonel Potariskov
The Soviet Assistant Military Attache.
Colonel Tice Angerhelm
Nelson's younger brother, deceased.
Theiss Ankerhjelm
Swedish admiral a couple hundred years ago. A West Pointer in the Adjutant General's office.
Don Juan
Famous womaniser.
Soviet Ambassador
Head of the Soviet diplomatic mission.
Jensen
Angerhelm's pastor.
Mrs. Prai Jesselton
Tice's old girlfriend.
ORGANISATIONS
Department of the Army
US government department.
Signal Corps
Army intelligence gatherers.
Soviet Embassy
Diplomatic mission to the USA.
SAC base
Army facility.
FBI
Federal Bureau of Intelligence. USA national cops.
VEHICLES
Sputniks
Russian spacecraft.
CONCEPTS
Galactic clearance
Security rating. Galactic clearance came a little bit after Universal clearance.
PLACES
Minneapolis
US city.
Plattsburg
Town in New York.
Hopkins
A town in Minnesota, a diplomatic no travel zone.
VEHICLES
Chevrolet
A car.
Willys roadster
An old car.
PLOT
The intelligence communities of the USA and the Soviet Union are concerned about a message from a dead colonel to his retired brother in Minnesota. Especially as it doesn't matter what country you are in when you receive the broadcast and you can tell what it is.
3 out of 5
Number of words : 8100
Percent of complex words : 10.0
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 12.3
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 9.0
Flesch : 70.9
Flesch-Kincaid : 6.4
PEOPLE
Assistant
To Mr Spatz.
Mr Spatz
His boss.
Khruschev
Russian Prime Minister.
Secretary of State
USA cabinet member.
Undersecretary
Deputy to the Secretary of State.
Nelson Angerhelm
Of 2322 Ridge Drive, Hopkins, Minnesota. A 62-year-old retired poultry farmer. He had served in World I.
Colonel Plugg
A US army officer.
Lieutenant Colonel Potariskov
The Soviet Assistant Military Attache.
Colonel Tice Angerhelm
Nelson's younger brother, deceased.
Theiss Ankerhjelm
Swedish admiral a couple hundred years ago. A West Pointer in the Adjutant General's office.
Don Juan
Famous womaniser.
Soviet Ambassador
Head of the Soviet diplomatic mission.
Jensen
Angerhelm's pastor.
Mrs. Prai Jesselton
Tice's old girlfriend.
ORGANISATIONS
Department of the Army
US government department.
Signal Corps
Army intelligence gatherers.
Soviet Embassy
Diplomatic mission to the USA.
SAC base
Army facility.
FBI
Federal Bureau of Intelligence. USA national cops.
VEHICLES
Sputniks
Russian spacecraft.
CONCEPTS
Galactic clearance
Security rating. Galactic clearance came a little bit after Universal clearance.
PLACES
Minneapolis
US city.
Plattsburg
Town in New York.
Hopkins
A town in Minnesota, a diplomatic no travel zone.
VEHICLES
Chevrolet
A car.
Willys roadster
An old car.
PLOT
The intelligence communities of the USA and the Soviet Union are concerned about a message from a dead colonel to his retired brother in Minnesota. Especially as it doesn't matter what country you are in when you receive the broadcast and you can tell what it is.
3 out of 5
Galactic clearance : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Security rating. Galactic clearance came a little bit after Universal clearance.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Theiss Ankerhjelm : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Swedish admiral a couple hundred years ago. A West Pointer in the Adjutant General's office.
3 out of 5
3 out of 5
Colonel Tice Angerhelm : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Nelson's younger brother, deceased.
3.5 out of 5
3.5 out of 5
Lieutenant Colonel Potariskov : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
The Soviet Assistant Military Attache.
3.5 out of 5
3.5 out of 5
Nelson Angerhelm : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Of 2322 Ridge Drive, Hopkins, Minnesota. A 62-year-old retired poultry farmer. He had served in World I.
3.5 out of 5
3.5 out of 5
Cordwainer Smith's Universe Timeline - J. J. Pierce
"Timeline From The Instrumentality of Mankind, Compiled by J.J. Pierce.
Note: With Smith's own notebooks lost, chronology is largely a matter of guesswork, based on internal evidence. But the order of stories and surounding events can be fairly well established."
4 out of 5
http://www.theweebsite.com/ragnar/smith_time.html
Note: With Smith's own notebooks lost, chronology is largely a matter of guesswork, based on internal evidence. But the order of stories and surounding events can be fairly well established."
4 out of 5
http://www.theweebsite.com/ragnar/smith_time.html
Monday, October 18, 2010
Planet Buyer and the Catmaster: A Critical Future for Transference
In: -
Empire Burlesque: The Fate of Critical Culture in Global America
Author(s): Daniel T. O'Hara
Published: 2003
Pages: 392
Series: New Americanists
Unseen. Small piece of at google books :- http://books.google.com.au/books?id=LEto7uIGCcQC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=Planet+Buyer+and+the+Catmaster:+A+Critical+Future+for+Transference&source=bl&ots=FPRiKOxt3s&sig=UTndEyXf9zj7dTFYEkCIpTbTck8&hl=en&ei=k8u7TNSyEoSecObp7eoM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Planet%20Buyer%20and%20the%20Catmaster%3A%20A%20Critical%20Future%20for%20Transference&f=false
http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=8340&viewby=series&categoryid=33&sort=title%C3%83%C3%9C
Empire Burlesque: The Fate of Critical Culture in Global America
Author(s): Daniel T. O'Hara
Published: 2003
Pages: 392
Series: New Americanists
Unseen. Small piece of at google books :- http://books.google.com.au/books?id=LEto7uIGCcQC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=Planet+Buyer+and+the+Catmaster:+A+Critical+Future+for+Transference&source=bl&ots=FPRiKOxt3s&sig=UTndEyXf9zj7dTFYEkCIpTbTck8&hl=en&ei=k8u7TNSyEoSecObp7eoM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Planet%20Buyer%20and%20the%20Catmaster%3A%20A%20Critical%20Future%20for%20Transference&f=false
http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=8340&viewby=series&categoryid=33&sort=title%C3%83%C3%9C
Cordwainer Smith and the Soushenji: Comparative Perspectives on the Boundaries of Humanity - Lisa Raphals
“Cordwainer Smith and the Soushenji: Comparative Perspectives on the Boundaries of ‘Humanity’” (in Dream Weavers: Globalization, Science Fiction, and the Cybernetic Revolution)
Unseen.
http://complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html
Unseen.
http://complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith - Steve Silberman
"Calling a magazine “off-trail” may not be the most felicitous way for an aspiring author to introduce himself, but it was understandable if the boyish professor at Johns Hopkins University — who coyly described his work for the Pentagon as being “a visitor to small wars” — felt defensive about his novelette. Three years earlier, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, the most literary-minded of the pulps, had rejected Scanners, calling it “too extreme” for a periodical that regularly featured marauding robots, exploding spaceships, and alien reptile overlords on its cover. Other editors seemed to agree.
It’s not hard to see why. Fifteen years before the word cyborg was invented, and with no preliminary exposition, the story plunged the reader into the passions, intimacies, and life-and-death conflicts of cybernetically augmented human beings. Man-machine hybrids had appeared before in fiction (including a celebrated tin woodman whose total-body prosthesis lacked a heart, and the robotically resurrected actress in C. L. Moore’s groundbreaking feminist sci-fi tale “No Woman Born”), but Linebarger’s central character — a courageous cyborg named Martel — was both a sleeker machine and a more acutely rendered human character than readers of the pulps were used to. Martel and his fellow cyborgs, known as “Scanners,” had their own lexicon of shop talk, expressive body language, code of ethics, professional guild, rousing songs, and finely honed sense of discipline. They were more like Marines than robots."
4 out of 5
http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2010/09/21/tripping-cyborgs-and-organ-farms-the-fictions-of-cordwainer-smith/
It’s not hard to see why. Fifteen years before the word cyborg was invented, and with no preliminary exposition, the story plunged the reader into the passions, intimacies, and life-and-death conflicts of cybernetically augmented human beings. Man-machine hybrids had appeared before in fiction (including a celebrated tin woodman whose total-body prosthesis lacked a heart, and the robotically resurrected actress in C. L. Moore’s groundbreaking feminist sci-fi tale “No Woman Born”), but Linebarger’s central character — a courageous cyborg named Martel — was both a sleeker machine and a more acutely rendered human character than readers of the pulps were used to. Martel and his fellow cyborgs, known as “Scanners,” had their own lexicon of shop talk, expressive body language, code of ethics, professional guild, rousing songs, and finely honed sense of discipline. They were more like Marines than robots."
4 out of 5
http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2010/09/21/tripping-cyborgs-and-organ-farms-the-fictions-of-cordwainer-smith/
Monday, June 21, 2010
Lecture 6 Onward and Outward: The 1950s, Space Travel, Apocalypticism, and the Beautiful Weirdness of Cordwainer Smith - Michael Drout
In : From Here to Infinity: An Exploration of Science Fiction Literature
by Michael Drout
SFF audio says most of this lecture is devoted to Cordwainer Smith.
Unseen.
http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=822
by Michael Drout
SFF audio says most of this lecture is devoted to Cordwainer Smith.
Unseen.
http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=822
Monday, June 14, 2010
Cordwainer Smith - Frank Northern Magill
Critical Survey of Short Fiction: Current writers. Index By Frank Northen Magill
"Book overviewThis series contains 515 essays, revolving around authors of short fiction. Essays are arranged alphabetically by author and provide in-depth overviews of short-story writers. Each essay contains full birth and death data, substantial listings of literary works by genre, and an analysis and survey of the major themes and techniques in the writer's work, using specific titles for examples. Finally, there is a list of other publication by genre, and an annotated bibliography.
Snippet view - Item notes: v. 7 - 1981 - 2901 pages -"
Unseen.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=cAgnAAAAMAAJ&q=cordwainer+smith&dq=cordwainer+smith&lr=&cd=124
"Book overviewThis series contains 515 essays, revolving around authors of short fiction. Essays are arranged alphabetically by author and provide in-depth overviews of short-story writers. Each essay contains full birth and death data, substantial listings of literary works by genre, and an analysis and survey of the major themes and techniques in the writer's work, using specific titles for examples. Finally, there is a list of other publication by genre, and an annotated bibliography.
Snippet view - Item notes: v. 7 - 1981 - 2901 pages -"
Unseen.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=cAgnAAAAMAAJ&q=cordwainer+smith&dq=cordwainer+smith&lr=&cd=124
A Cordwainer Smith Checklist - Mike Bennett
Title A Cordwainer Smith Checklist
Issue 37 of Booklet Series
Drumm booklet
Author Mike Bennett
Publisher Chris Drumm Books, 1991
ISBN 0936055499, 9780936055497
Length 28 pages
Unseen.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=EenIPAAACAAJ&dq=cordwainer+smith&lr=&cd=92
Issue 37 of Booklet Series
Drumm booklet
Author Mike Bennett
Publisher Chris Drumm Books, 1991
ISBN 0936055499, 9780936055497
Length 28 pages
Unseen.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=EenIPAAACAAJ&dq=cordwainer+smith&lr=&cd=92
Friday, May 28, 2010
Cordwainer Smith - Don D'Ammassa
From his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction :
"Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonym of Paul Linebarger, a specialist in political science who spent extensive time in Asia and who wrote three mainstream novels under other pen names. Al-though his first science fiction story appeared in 1928, he would not return to that form until the appearance of “SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN” (1948),
the first of his stories of the Instrumentality, a complex future history in which star travel is dangerous because of the existence of discorporate and malevolent intelligences. Space travel is achieved in safety only after humans learn to enhance the intelligence of certain lower animals and develop their own psi powers. Smith began to develop the concept in more detail with a series of short stories during the 1950s, including excellent tales like “THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON” (1955).
Smith hit his stride as a short story writer during the 1960s, producing one classic tale after an-other, most of them set in the Instrumentality universe. The Instrumentality begins as a rigid dictatorship. The uplifted animals are virtually slaves, and the repressive rulers tighten their grip by discovering and monopolizing the secret of immortality. Opposed to the rule of the Instrumentality are the Underpeople, an amorphous rebel group consisting of humans and uplifted animals. Smith never directly resolves this conflict, although some of his stories appear to be set in a distant future in which the inequities of the Instrumentality have been largely overcome. Stories like “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul” (1960), “A Planet Named Shayol” (1961), “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” (1962), and “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” (1964) expanded and embellished Smith’s universe while telling distinct and often emotionally moving stories. His first collection, You Will Never Be the Same (1963), mixed Instrumentality stories with others not in the series.
The Planet Buyer (1964) was the first Instrumentality novel. The protagonist has literally purchased the Earth, but when he sets out to visit his new property, he discovers that various people would much prefer it if he failed to arrive. It was meant to be published jointly with the collection, The Underpeople (1968). Eventually they did appear in one volume as Norstrilia (1975). Several other collections followed including Space Lords (1965), Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (1970), and Stardreamer (1971), which in combination reprinted virtually all of Smith’s short fiction. Virtually the same contents were later recombined as The Best of Cordwainer Smith (1975, also published as The Rediscovery of Man) and The Instrumentality of Mankind (1979). A subset of stories set in the latter days of the Instrumentality formed the quasi-novel, Quest of Three Worlds (1966). An even more comprehensive omnibus volume, also titled The Rediscovery of Man, appeared in 1993.
The proliferation of titles disguises the fact that Smith’s actual output was quite small, which makes his high stature among genre writers even more impressive. He had a distinct narrative style that often makes the reader accept a situation that might otherwise seem ludicrous, like a love affair between a human and a semi-intelligent cat. Many of his characters seem to have stepped out of a legend, although without losing their human qualities. Images from genuine legends, like the Trojan Horse, occur periodically in his work. Although there is an element of satire in most of the stories, it is subtle and never approaches parody. We always care about what is happening because he makes even the most bizarre situations seem real. Smith was one of a handful of writers whose literary sensibilities dramatically transformed science fiction during the 1960s, and the fact that he is rarely imitated is an indication of the uniqueness of his talent and not of a lack of influence on his fellow writers."
4.5 out of 5
"Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonym of Paul Linebarger, a specialist in political science who spent extensive time in Asia and who wrote three mainstream novels under other pen names. Al-though his first science fiction story appeared in 1928, he would not return to that form until the appearance of “SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN” (1948),
the first of his stories of the Instrumentality, a complex future history in which star travel is dangerous because of the existence of discorporate and malevolent intelligences. Space travel is achieved in safety only after humans learn to enhance the intelligence of certain lower animals and develop their own psi powers. Smith began to develop the concept in more detail with a series of short stories during the 1950s, including excellent tales like “THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON” (1955).
Smith hit his stride as a short story writer during the 1960s, producing one classic tale after an-other, most of them set in the Instrumentality universe. The Instrumentality begins as a rigid dictatorship. The uplifted animals are virtually slaves, and the repressive rulers tighten their grip by discovering and monopolizing the secret of immortality. Opposed to the rule of the Instrumentality are the Underpeople, an amorphous rebel group consisting of humans and uplifted animals. Smith never directly resolves this conflict, although some of his stories appear to be set in a distant future in which the inequities of the Instrumentality have been largely overcome. Stories like “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul” (1960), “A Planet Named Shayol” (1961), “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” (1962), and “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” (1964) expanded and embellished Smith’s universe while telling distinct and often emotionally moving stories. His first collection, You Will Never Be the Same (1963), mixed Instrumentality stories with others not in the series.
The Planet Buyer (1964) was the first Instrumentality novel. The protagonist has literally purchased the Earth, but when he sets out to visit his new property, he discovers that various people would much prefer it if he failed to arrive. It was meant to be published jointly with the collection, The Underpeople (1968). Eventually they did appear in one volume as Norstrilia (1975). Several other collections followed including Space Lords (1965), Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (1970), and Stardreamer (1971), which in combination reprinted virtually all of Smith’s short fiction. Virtually the same contents were later recombined as The Best of Cordwainer Smith (1975, also published as The Rediscovery of Man) and The Instrumentality of Mankind (1979). A subset of stories set in the latter days of the Instrumentality formed the quasi-novel, Quest of Three Worlds (1966). An even more comprehensive omnibus volume, also titled The Rediscovery of Man, appeared in 1993.
The proliferation of titles disguises the fact that Smith’s actual output was quite small, which makes his high stature among genre writers even more impressive. He had a distinct narrative style that often makes the reader accept a situation that might otherwise seem ludicrous, like a love affair between a human and a semi-intelligent cat. Many of his characters seem to have stepped out of a legend, although without losing their human qualities. Images from genuine legends, like the Trojan Horse, occur periodically in his work. Although there is an element of satire in most of the stories, it is subtle and never approaches parody. We always care about what is happening because he makes even the most bizarre situations seem real. Smith was one of a handful of writers whose literary sensibilities dramatically transformed science fiction during the 1960s, and the fact that he is rarely imitated is an indication of the uniqueness of his talent and not of a lack of influence on his fellow writers."
4.5 out of 5
Cordwainer Smith - John Clute
From the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited with Peter Nicholls
"Most famous pseudonym of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-1966), US writer, political scientist, military adviser in Korea and Malaya (though not Vietnam). A polyglot, he spent many of his early years in Europe, Japan and China, in the footsteps of his father, Paul M.W. Linebarger, a sinologist and propagandist for Sun Yat-sen. He was a devout High Anglican, deeply interested in psychoanalysis and expert in "brainwashing" techniques, on which he wrote an early text, Psychological Warfare (1948; rev 1954). Right-wing in politics, he played an active role in propping up the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China before the communist takeover.His
interest in China was profound - he studied there, and there edited his father's The Gospel of Chuang Shan (1932 chap France), writing as well several texts of his own, beginning with Government in Republican China (1938); the style of some of his later stories reflects his attempts to translate a Chinese narrative and structural style into his sf writing, not perhaps with complete success, as the fabulist's voice he assumed (FABULATION) verged towards the garrulous when opened out into English
prose. He began to publish sf with "War No. 81-Q" as by Karloman Jungahr for The Adjutant - a high-school journal - in 1928; the tale bore some relationship to the Instrumentality of Mankind Universe into which almost all his mature work fitted. Before beginning to write that mature work, however, CS served with the US Army Intelligence Corps in China during WWII and published 3 non-sf novels: Ria (1947) and Carola (1948), both as by Felix C. Forrest, and Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense (1949) as by Carmichael Smith. After that date he published fiction only as CS.His
first CS story, and one of the finest of his mature tales, "Scanners Livein Vain" (1950), appeared obscurely in FANTASY BOOK 5 years after it had been rejected by the more prestigious sf journals (although John W. CAMPBELL Jr had penned an encouraging rejection note from ASF), perhaps because its foreboding intensity made the editors of the time uneasy, perhaps because it plunges in medias res into the Instrumentality
Universe, generating a sense that much remains untold beyond the dark edges of the tale. Scanners are space pilots; the rigours of their job entail the functional loss of the sensory region of their brains. The story deals with their contorted lives and with the end of the form of space travel necessitating the contortions: it is clear that much has happened in the Universe before the tale begins, and that much will ensue. The Instrumentality dominated the rest of CS's creative life, which lasted 1955-66, with individual stories making up the bulk of several collections
- including You Will Never Be the Same (coll 1963), Space Lords (coll 1965), Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (coll 1970 UK) and Stardreamer (coll 1971) - before being re-sorted into 2 definitive vols, The Best of Cordwainer Smith (coll 1975; vt The Rediscovery of Man 1988 UK) ed John J. PIERCE and The Instrumentality of Mankind (coll 1979); and subsequently resorted again, this time definitively, as The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (coll 1993). A similar complexity obscured the publication of his only full-scale sf novel,
Norstrilia (1975), which first appeared as 2 separate novels - each in fact an extract from the original single manuscript - as The Planet Buyer (1964 Gal as "The Boy who Bought Old Earth"; rev 1964) and The Underpeople (1964 Worlds of If as "The Store of Heart's Desire"; rev 1968). Along with Quest of the Three Worlds (coll of linked stories 1966), the 2 re-sorted collections and Norstrilia assemble all of CS's sf.The Instrumentality of Mankind covers several millennia of humanity's uncertain progress into a FAR-FUTURE plenitude. Before the period of "Scanners Live in Vain" a shattered Earth is dubiously revitalized by the family of a Nazi scientist
who awake from SUSPENDED ANIMATION to found the Instrumentality, a hereditary caste of rulers, under whose hegemony space is explored by scanners, then by ships which sail by photonic winds, then via planoforming, which is more or less instantaneous. Genetically modified animals are bred as slaves ( GENETIC ENGINEERING). On the Australian colony planet of Norstrilia, an IMMORTALITY drug called stroon is
discovered, making the planet very rich indeed and granting the oligarchy on Earth eternal dominance, with no one but Norstrilians and members of the Instrumentality being permitted to live beyond 400 years. (Norstrilia deals with a young heir to much of the planet's wealth who travels to Earth, which he has purchased, discovering en passant a great deal about the animal-descended Underpeople.) Human life becomes baroque, aesthetical, decadent. But a fruitful concourse of Underpeople and aristocrats generates the Rediscovery of Man - as witnessed in tales like
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (1964), "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" (1961) and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (1962), which embodies a sympathetic response to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s - through which disease, ethnicity and strife are deliberately reintroduced into the painless world. Much later an adventurer makes a Quest through Three Worlds in a Universe seemingly benign.The Instrumentality of Mankind remains, all the same, a fragment - as, therefore, does CS's work as a whole - for the long conflict between Underpeople and Instrumentality, the details of which are recounted by CS with what might be called oceanic sentiment, is never resolved; and CS's habitual teasing of the reader with implications of a fuller yet never-told tale only strengthens the sense of an almost coy incompletion. This sense is also reinforced by the Chinese ancestry of some of CS's devices, which inspired in him a narrative voice that, in ruminating upon a tale of long ago, seemed to confer, both with the reader and with general tradition, about the tale's meaning. Alfred Doblin (1878-1957) ( GERMANY) has also been suggested as a significant influence, both for his early expressionist work set in China, like Die drei Sprunge
des Wang-Lun ["The Three Leaps of Wang-Lun"] (1915), and for his surreal metamorphic sf novels - none translated - like Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfmaschine ["Wadzek's Struggle with the Steam-Machine"] (1918) and Berge, Meere und Giganten ["Mountains, Sea and Giants"] (1924; rev vt Giganten ["Giants"] 1931). CS's best later stories glow with an air of complexity and antiquity that, on analysis, their plots do not not always sustain. Much of the structuring of the series is lyrical and incantatory
(down to the literal use of rather bad poetry, and much internal rhyming) but, beyond stroon, and Norstrilia, and Old Earth and the absorbingly described SPACESHIPS, much of the CS Universe remains only glimpsed. Whether such a Universe, recounted in such a voice, could ever be fully seen is a question which, of course, cannot be answered."
4.5 out of 5
"Most famous pseudonym of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-1966), US writer, political scientist, military adviser in Korea and Malaya (though not Vietnam). A polyglot, he spent many of his early years in Europe, Japan and China, in the footsteps of his father, Paul M.W. Linebarger, a sinologist and propagandist for Sun Yat-sen. He was a devout High Anglican, deeply interested in psychoanalysis and expert in "brainwashing" techniques, on which he wrote an early text, Psychological Warfare (1948; rev 1954). Right-wing in politics, he played an active role in propping up the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China before the communist takeover.His
interest in China was profound - he studied there, and there edited his father's The Gospel of Chuang Shan (1932 chap France), writing as well several texts of his own, beginning with Government in Republican China (1938); the style of some of his later stories reflects his attempts to translate a Chinese narrative and structural style into his sf writing, not perhaps with complete success, as the fabulist's voice he assumed (FABULATION) verged towards the garrulous when opened out into English
prose. He began to publish sf with "War No. 81-Q" as by Karloman Jungahr for The Adjutant - a high-school journal - in 1928; the tale bore some relationship to the Instrumentality of Mankind Universe into which almost all his mature work fitted. Before beginning to write that mature work, however, CS served with the US Army Intelligence Corps in China during WWII and published 3 non-sf novels: Ria (1947) and Carola (1948), both as by Felix C. Forrest, and Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense (1949) as by Carmichael Smith. After that date he published fiction only as CS.His
first CS story, and one of the finest of his mature tales, "Scanners Livein Vain" (1950), appeared obscurely in FANTASY BOOK 5 years after it had been rejected by the more prestigious sf journals (although John W. CAMPBELL Jr had penned an encouraging rejection note from ASF), perhaps because its foreboding intensity made the editors of the time uneasy, perhaps because it plunges in medias res into the Instrumentality
Universe, generating a sense that much remains untold beyond the dark edges of the tale. Scanners are space pilots; the rigours of their job entail the functional loss of the sensory region of their brains. The story deals with their contorted lives and with the end of the form of space travel necessitating the contortions: it is clear that much has happened in the Universe before the tale begins, and that much will ensue. The Instrumentality dominated the rest of CS's creative life, which lasted 1955-66, with individual stories making up the bulk of several collections
- including You Will Never Be the Same (coll 1963), Space Lords (coll 1965), Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (coll 1970 UK) and Stardreamer (coll 1971) - before being re-sorted into 2 definitive vols, The Best of Cordwainer Smith (coll 1975; vt The Rediscovery of Man 1988 UK) ed John J. PIERCE and The Instrumentality of Mankind (coll 1979); and subsequently resorted again, this time definitively, as The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (coll 1993). A similar complexity obscured the publication of his only full-scale sf novel,
Norstrilia (1975), which first appeared as 2 separate novels - each in fact an extract from the original single manuscript - as The Planet Buyer (1964 Gal as "The Boy who Bought Old Earth"; rev 1964) and The Underpeople (1964 Worlds of If as "The Store of Heart's Desire"; rev 1968). Along with Quest of the Three Worlds (coll of linked stories 1966), the 2 re-sorted collections and Norstrilia assemble all of CS's sf.The Instrumentality of Mankind covers several millennia of humanity's uncertain progress into a FAR-FUTURE plenitude. Before the period of "Scanners Live in Vain" a shattered Earth is dubiously revitalized by the family of a Nazi scientist
who awake from SUSPENDED ANIMATION to found the Instrumentality, a hereditary caste of rulers, under whose hegemony space is explored by scanners, then by ships which sail by photonic winds, then via planoforming, which is more or less instantaneous. Genetically modified animals are bred as slaves ( GENETIC ENGINEERING). On the Australian colony planet of Norstrilia, an IMMORTALITY drug called stroon is
discovered, making the planet very rich indeed and granting the oligarchy on Earth eternal dominance, with no one but Norstrilians and members of the Instrumentality being permitted to live beyond 400 years. (Norstrilia deals with a young heir to much of the planet's wealth who travels to Earth, which he has purchased, discovering en passant a great deal about the animal-descended Underpeople.) Human life becomes baroque, aesthetical, decadent. But a fruitful concourse of Underpeople and aristocrats generates the Rediscovery of Man - as witnessed in tales like
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (1964), "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" (1961) and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (1962), which embodies a sympathetic response to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s - through which disease, ethnicity and strife are deliberately reintroduced into the painless world. Much later an adventurer makes a Quest through Three Worlds in a Universe seemingly benign.The Instrumentality of Mankind remains, all the same, a fragment - as, therefore, does CS's work as a whole - for the long conflict between Underpeople and Instrumentality, the details of which are recounted by CS with what might be called oceanic sentiment, is never resolved; and CS's habitual teasing of the reader with implications of a fuller yet never-told tale only strengthens the sense of an almost coy incompletion. This sense is also reinforced by the Chinese ancestry of some of CS's devices, which inspired in him a narrative voice that, in ruminating upon a tale of long ago, seemed to confer, both with the reader and with general tradition, about the tale's meaning. Alfred Doblin (1878-1957) ( GERMANY) has also been suggested as a significant influence, both for his early expressionist work set in China, like Die drei Sprunge
des Wang-Lun ["The Three Leaps of Wang-Lun"] (1915), and for his surreal metamorphic sf novels - none translated - like Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfmaschine ["Wadzek's Struggle with the Steam-Machine"] (1918) and Berge, Meere und Giganten ["Mountains, Sea and Giants"] (1924; rev vt Giganten ["Giants"] 1931). CS's best later stories glow with an air of complexity and antiquity that, on analysis, their plots do not not always sustain. Much of the structuring of the series is lyrical and incantatory
(down to the literal use of rather bad poetry, and much internal rhyming) but, beyond stroon, and Norstrilia, and Old Earth and the absorbingly described SPACESHIPS, much of the CS Universe remains only glimpsed. Whether such a Universe, recounted in such a voice, could ever be fully seen is a question which, of course, cannot be answered."
4.5 out of 5
Monday, May 24, 2010
Think Blue, Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Seiun Award for Best Foreign Short Fiction 1990.
3.5 out of 5
3.5 out of 5
Sunday, May 23, 2010
You Will Never Be the Same - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
You Will Never Be The Same : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Scanners Live In Vain - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : The Game Of Rat And Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : The Burning Of The Brain - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Golden The Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Mark Elf - Cordwainer Smith
4.5 out of 5
You Will Never Be The Same : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Scanners Live In Vain - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : The Game Of Rat And Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : The Burning Of The Brain - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Golden The Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
You Will Never Be The Same : Mark Elf - Cordwainer Smith
4.5 out of 5
When the People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
When the People Fell : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Mark Elf - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Queen of the Afternoon - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : When the People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : From Gustible's Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Himself in Anachron - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Drunkboat - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : On the Gem Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : On the Storm Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : On the Sand Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Three to a Given Star - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Down to a Sunless Sea - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Good Friends
4.5 out of 5
When the People Fell : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Mark Elf - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Queen of the Afternoon - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : When the People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : From Gustible's Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Himself in Anachron - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Drunkboat - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : On the Gem Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : On the Storm Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : On the Sand Planet - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Three to a Given Star - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Down to a Sunless Sea - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
When the People Fell : The Good Friends
4.5 out of 5
Under Old Earth and Other Explorations - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
Under Old Earth and other explorations : The Game Of Rat And Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : On The Sand Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : The Ballad Of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : The Crime And The Glory Of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
4.5 out of 5
Under Old Earth and other explorations : The Game Of Rat And Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : On The Sand Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : The Ballad Of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : The Crime And The Glory Of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Under Old Earth and other explorations : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
4.5 out of 5
Stardreamer - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
Stardreamer : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : The Crime And The Glory Of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : The Good Friends - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : The Fife Of Bodhidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : When The People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
3 out of 5
Stardreamer : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : The Crime And The Glory Of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : The Good Friends - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : The Fife Of Bodhidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : When The People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Stardreamer : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
3 out of 5
The Instrumentality Of Mankind - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
Instrumentality Of Mankind : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Mark Elf - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Queen Of The Afternoon - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : When The People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Colonel Came Back From Nothing-At-All - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : From Gustible's Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Drunkboat - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Fife Of Bodhidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Good Friends - Cordwainer Smith
4 out of 5
Instrumentality Of Mankind : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Mark Elf - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Queen Of The Afternoon - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : When The People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Colonel Came Back From Nothing-At-All - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : From Gustible's Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Drunkboat - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Nancy - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Fife Of Bodhidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Instrumentality Of Mankind : The Good Friends - Cordwainer Smith
4 out of 5
Space Lords - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
Space Lords : Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : The Dead Lady Of Clown Town – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : Drunkboat – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : The Ballad Of Lost C'Mell – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : A Planet Named Shayol – Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
Space Lords : Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : The Dead Lady Of Clown Town – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : Drunkboat – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : The Ballad Of Lost C'Mell – Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords : A Planet Named Shayol – Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
We the Underpeople - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
We the Underpeople : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : The Ballad of Lost C'mell - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Norstrilia - Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
We the Underpeople : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : The Ballad of Lost C'mell - Cordwainer Smith
We the Underpeople : Norstrilia - Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing all the stories :
Rediscovery of Man : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : War No. 81-Q revised - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Mark Elf [Mark XI Vom Acht sisters] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Queen of the Afternoon [Vom Acht sisters] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : When the People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Colonel Came Back from Nothing-at-All - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : From Gustible's Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Himself in Anachron - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Golden the Ship Was— Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Drunkboat - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : On the Gem Planet [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : On the Storm Planet [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : On the Sand Planet [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Three to a Given Star [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Down to a Sunless Sea - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Nancy [The Nancy Routine] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Good Friends - Cordwainer Smith
4.5 out of 5
Rediscovery of Man : No No Not Rogov! - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : War No. 81-Q revised - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Mark Elf [Mark XI Vom Acht sisters] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Queen of the Afternoon [Vom Acht sisters] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : When the People Fell - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Think Blue Count Two - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Colonel Came Back from Nothing-at-All - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : From Gustible's Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Himself in Anachron - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Golden the Ship Was— Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Drunkboat - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : On the Gem Planet [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : On the Storm Planet [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : On the Sand Planet [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Three to a Given Star [Casher O'Neill] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Down to a Sunless Sea - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : War No. 81-Q - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Western Science Is So Wonderful - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Nancy [The Nancy Routine] - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Fife of Bodidharma - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : Angerhelm - Cordwainer Smith
Rediscovery of Man : The Good Friends - Cordwainer Smith
4.5 out of 5
The Rediscovery Of Man - Cordwainer Smith
A variant title :
A collection containing these stories : -
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Golden the Ship Was Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
A collection containing these stories : -
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Golden the Ship Was Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
Quest of the Three Worlds - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories :
Quest Of the Three Worlds : On The Gem Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Quest Of the Three Worlds : On The Storm Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Quest Of the Three Worlds : On The Sand Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Quest Of the Three Worlds : Three To A Given Star - Cordwainer Smith
3.5 out of 5
Quest Of the Three Worlds : On The Gem Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Quest Of the Three Worlds : On The Storm Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Quest Of the Three Worlds : On The Sand Planet - Cordwainer Smith
Quest Of the Three Worlds : Three To A Given Star - Cordwainer Smith
3.5 out of 5
The Best of Cordwainer Smith - Cordwainer Smith
A collection containing these stories : -
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Golden the Ship Was Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Scanners Live in Vain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Burning of the Brain - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Golden the Ship Was Oh! Oh! Oh! - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Dead Lady of Clown Town - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Under Old Earth - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Cordwainer Smith
Best of Cordwainer Smith : A Planet Named Shayol - Cordwainer Smith
5 out of 5
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Wikipedia - Instrumentality Of Mankind
Instrumentality of Mankind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith, the Instrumentality of Mankind refers both to Smith's personal future history and universe and to the central government of humanity. The Instrumentality of Mankind is also the title of a paperback collection of short stories by Cordwainer Smith published in 1979 (now superseded by the later The Rediscovery of Man, which collects all of Smith's short stories).Contents [hide]
1 Origin and History
2 Characteristics
3 Individual members
4 Possible sources of inspiration
5 Cultural references
6 Selected bibliography
7 External links
[edit]
Origin and History
In the history of Cordwainer Smith's "Instrumentality" universe, the Instrumentality originated as the police force of the Jwindz or "perfect ones" on a post-nuclear-holocaust Earth. After attaining power and the expansion of humans in space, they eventually entered a somewhat stagnant phase in which a fixed lifespan of four-hundred years was imposed on the human inhabitants of the planets where the Instrumentality directly ruled, all the hard physical labor was done by rightless animal-derived "underpeople", and children were never raised by their biological parents. This somewhat empty and sterile system was reformed and enlivened by the "Rediscovery of Man", the backdrop against which Smith's novel Norstrilia and the majority of his short stories, covering thousands of years of fictional time, are set. The cycle does not come to a final resolution (there were hints dropped about a mysterious trio of "robot, rat, and Copt" which were not followed up, possibly because of Smith's own death).
[edit]
Characteristics
Though the Instrumentality does not directly administer every planet, it claims ultimate guardianship over the destiny of the human race. For example, it strictly bans the export of religion from planet to planet. Its members, the Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality, are collectively all-powerful and often somewhat callously arbitrary. Although their motives are genuinely benign, they act with utmost brutality when survival is at stake.
Here is an explanation from the story "Drunkboat":
"The Instrumentality was a self-perpetuating body of men with enormous powers and a strict code. Each was a plenum of the low, the middle, and the high justice. Each could do anything he found necessary or proper to maintain the Instrumentality and keep the peace between the worlds. But if he made a mistake or committed a wrong—ah, then, it was suddenly different. Any Lord could put another Lord to death in an emergency, but he was assured of death and disgrace himself if he assumed this responsibility. The only difference between ratification and repudiation came in the fact that Lords who killed in an emergency and were proved wrong were marked down on a very shameful list, while those who killed other Lords rightly (as later examination might prove) were listed on a very honorable list, but still killed. With three Lords, the situation was different. Three Lords made an emergency court; if they acted together, acted in good faith, and reported to the computers of the Instrumentality, they were exempt from punishment, though not from blame or even reduction to civilian status. Seven Lords, or all the Lords on a given planet at a given moment, were beyond any criticism except that of a dignified reversal of their actions should a later ruling prove them wrong.
"This was all the business of the Instrumentality. The Instrumentality had the perpetual slogan 'Watch, but do not govern; stop war, but do not wage it; protect, but do not control; and first, survive!'"
[edit]
Individual members
Some prominent Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality:
Lord Jestocost, descendant of Lady Goroke
Lady Panc Ashash (as a posthumous personality recording)
Lord Femtiosex
Lord Sto Odin
Lord Crudelta
Lady Alice More, partner of the seventh Lord Jestocost.
Lady Arabella Underwood
Lady Johanna Gnade
The names Goroke, Femtiosex, Sto Odin and Panc Ashash are number-word names of the type common during the Instrumentality's decadent period: "five-six" in Japanese is Go-Roku, in Hindi it is Panc-Ashash, and in Swedish Femtiosex (literally "fifty-six"). 'Tiga-belas' and 'Veesey-koosey', the names of supporting and main characters of the Instrumentality story Think Blue, Count Two, also mean 'thirteen' (Indonesian tiga and belas) and 'five-six' (Finnish viisi and kuusi), respectively. Sto Odin is "a hundred and one" in Russian. The name Jestocost is based on the word for "cruelty" in Russian (жестокость), and Crudelta is the equivalent in Italian (crudeltà, feminine). Gnade is a German word meaning "grace" or "mercy".
[edit]
Possible sources of inspiration
The term "Lords of the Instrumentality" may have been partly inspired by the Lords of the Admiralty, an institution of prime importance in the history of the British Empire. The Instrumentality also has similarities to the future world government of Rudyard Kipling's short stories "With the Night Mail" and "As Easy as ABC". Anglican Christianity, to which Smith belonged, refers frequently to "instrumentality", meaning agent or intermediary.
[edit]
Cultural references
The Human Instrumentality Project in the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series is a reference to Cordwainer's works.
A password used in the anime Serial Experiments Lain, "Think Bule Count One Tow" (used by Lain's father) is a misspelled reference to Think Blue, Count Two.
The Dreadstar comic book features the Church of the Instrumentality which is a space empire. The church has created a race of cat-people, similar to the underpeople of the Instrumentality of Mankind.
[edit]
Selected bibliography
The Rediscovery of Man (short story collection, including all of the Instrumentality of Mankind stories)
Norstrilia (novel; set relatively late in the chronology of the future history)
[edit]
External links
On idealism and morality in the Instrumentality of Mankind
4.5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentality_of_Mankind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith, the Instrumentality of Mankind refers both to Smith's personal future history and universe and to the central government of humanity. The Instrumentality of Mankind is also the title of a paperback collection of short stories by Cordwainer Smith published in 1979 (now superseded by the later The Rediscovery of Man, which collects all of Smith's short stories).Contents [hide]
1 Origin and History
2 Characteristics
3 Individual members
4 Possible sources of inspiration
5 Cultural references
6 Selected bibliography
7 External links
[edit]
Origin and History
In the history of Cordwainer Smith's "Instrumentality" universe, the Instrumentality originated as the police force of the Jwindz or "perfect ones" on a post-nuclear-holocaust Earth. After attaining power and the expansion of humans in space, they eventually entered a somewhat stagnant phase in which a fixed lifespan of four-hundred years was imposed on the human inhabitants of the planets where the Instrumentality directly ruled, all the hard physical labor was done by rightless animal-derived "underpeople", and children were never raised by their biological parents. This somewhat empty and sterile system was reformed and enlivened by the "Rediscovery of Man", the backdrop against which Smith's novel Norstrilia and the majority of his short stories, covering thousands of years of fictional time, are set. The cycle does not come to a final resolution (there were hints dropped about a mysterious trio of "robot, rat, and Copt" which were not followed up, possibly because of Smith's own death).
[edit]
Characteristics
Though the Instrumentality does not directly administer every planet, it claims ultimate guardianship over the destiny of the human race. For example, it strictly bans the export of religion from planet to planet. Its members, the Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality, are collectively all-powerful and often somewhat callously arbitrary. Although their motives are genuinely benign, they act with utmost brutality when survival is at stake.
Here is an explanation from the story "Drunkboat":
"The Instrumentality was a self-perpetuating body of men with enormous powers and a strict code. Each was a plenum of the low, the middle, and the high justice. Each could do anything he found necessary or proper to maintain the Instrumentality and keep the peace between the worlds. But if he made a mistake or committed a wrong—ah, then, it was suddenly different. Any Lord could put another Lord to death in an emergency, but he was assured of death and disgrace himself if he assumed this responsibility. The only difference between ratification and repudiation came in the fact that Lords who killed in an emergency and were proved wrong were marked down on a very shameful list, while those who killed other Lords rightly (as later examination might prove) were listed on a very honorable list, but still killed. With three Lords, the situation was different. Three Lords made an emergency court; if they acted together, acted in good faith, and reported to the computers of the Instrumentality, they were exempt from punishment, though not from blame or even reduction to civilian status. Seven Lords, or all the Lords on a given planet at a given moment, were beyond any criticism except that of a dignified reversal of their actions should a later ruling prove them wrong.
"This was all the business of the Instrumentality. The Instrumentality had the perpetual slogan 'Watch, but do not govern; stop war, but do not wage it; protect, but do not control; and first, survive!'"
[edit]
Individual members
Some prominent Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality:
Lord Jestocost, descendant of Lady Goroke
Lady Panc Ashash (as a posthumous personality recording)
Lord Femtiosex
Lord Sto Odin
Lord Crudelta
Lady Alice More, partner of the seventh Lord Jestocost.
Lady Arabella Underwood
Lady Johanna Gnade
The names Goroke, Femtiosex, Sto Odin and Panc Ashash are number-word names of the type common during the Instrumentality's decadent period: "five-six" in Japanese is Go-Roku, in Hindi it is Panc-Ashash, and in Swedish Femtiosex (literally "fifty-six"). 'Tiga-belas' and 'Veesey-koosey', the names of supporting and main characters of the Instrumentality story Think Blue, Count Two, also mean 'thirteen' (Indonesian tiga and belas) and 'five-six' (Finnish viisi and kuusi), respectively. Sto Odin is "a hundred and one" in Russian. The name Jestocost is based on the word for "cruelty" in Russian (жестокость), and Crudelta is the equivalent in Italian (crudeltà, feminine). Gnade is a German word meaning "grace" or "mercy".
[edit]
Possible sources of inspiration
The term "Lords of the Instrumentality" may have been partly inspired by the Lords of the Admiralty, an institution of prime importance in the history of the British Empire. The Instrumentality also has similarities to the future world government of Rudyard Kipling's short stories "With the Night Mail" and "As Easy as ABC". Anglican Christianity, to which Smith belonged, refers frequently to "instrumentality", meaning agent or intermediary.
[edit]
Cultural references
The Human Instrumentality Project in the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series is a reference to Cordwainer's works.
A password used in the anime Serial Experiments Lain, "Think Bule Count One Tow" (used by Lain's father) is a misspelled reference to Think Blue, Count Two.
The Dreadstar comic book features the Church of the Instrumentality which is a space empire. The church has created a race of cat-people, similar to the underpeople of the Instrumentality of Mankind.
[edit]
Selected bibliography
The Rediscovery of Man (short story collection, including all of the Instrumentality of Mankind stories)
Norstrilia (novel; set relatively late in the chronology of the future history)
[edit]
External links
On idealism and morality in the Instrumentality of Mankind
4.5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentality_of_Mankind
Wikipedia - The Rediscovery Of Man
The Rediscovery of Man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (ISBN 0-915368-56-0) is a 1993 book containing the complete collected short fiction of science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. It was edited by James A. Mann and published by NESFA Press.
Most of the stories take place in Smith's future history set in the universe of the Instrumentality of Mankind; the collection is arranged in the chronological order in which the stories take place in the fictional timeline. The collection also contains short stories which do not take place in this universe.
Within the context of the future history, the Rediscovery of Mankind refers to the Instrumentality's re-introduction of chance and unhappiness into the sterile utopia that they had created for humanity. Other than Smith's novel, Norstrilia, which takes place in the same future history, the book collects all of Smith's known science fiction writing.
[edit]
List of Instrumentality of Man stories
"No, No, Not Rogov!"
"War No. 81-Q" (version 2) (not previously collected)
"Mark Elf"
"The Queen of the Afternoon"
"Scanners Live in Vain"
"The Lady Who Sailed The Soul"
"When the People Fell"
"Think Blue, Count Two"
"The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All"
"The Game of Rat and Dragon"
"The Burning of the Brain"
"From Gustible's Planet"
"Himself in Anachron" (first publication)
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal"
"Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town"
"Under Old Earth"
"Drunkboat" (much rewritten version of "The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All")
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons"
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell"
"A Planet Named Shayol"
The stories which comprise the novel Quest of the Three Worlds:
"On the Gem Planet"
"On the Storm Planet"
"On the Sand Planet"
"Three to a Given Star"
"Down to a Sunless Sea"
[edit]
Other stories
"War No. 81-Q"
"Western Science Is So Wonderful"
"Nancy" (originally published as "The Nancy Routine")
"The Fife of Bodidharma"
"Angerhelm"
"The Good Friends"
[edit]
External link
E-texts available as part of Baen books' "Webscription" service:
"We the Underpeople" contents
"When the People Fell" contents
3 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rediscovery_of_Man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (ISBN 0-915368-56-0) is a 1993 book containing the complete collected short fiction of science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. It was edited by James A. Mann and published by NESFA Press.
Most of the stories take place in Smith's future history set in the universe of the Instrumentality of Mankind; the collection is arranged in the chronological order in which the stories take place in the fictional timeline. The collection also contains short stories which do not take place in this universe.
Within the context of the future history, the Rediscovery of Mankind refers to the Instrumentality's re-introduction of chance and unhappiness into the sterile utopia that they had created for humanity. Other than Smith's novel, Norstrilia, which takes place in the same future history, the book collects all of Smith's known science fiction writing.
[edit]
List of Instrumentality of Man stories
"No, No, Not Rogov!"
"War No. 81-Q" (version 2) (not previously collected)
"Mark Elf"
"The Queen of the Afternoon"
"Scanners Live in Vain"
"The Lady Who Sailed The Soul"
"When the People Fell"
"Think Blue, Count Two"
"The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All"
"The Game of Rat and Dragon"
"The Burning of the Brain"
"From Gustible's Planet"
"Himself in Anachron" (first publication)
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal"
"Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town"
"Under Old Earth"
"Drunkboat" (much rewritten version of "The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All")
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons"
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell"
"A Planet Named Shayol"
The stories which comprise the novel Quest of the Three Worlds:
"On the Gem Planet"
"On the Storm Planet"
"On the Sand Planet"
"Three to a Given Star"
"Down to a Sunless Sea"
[edit]
Other stories
"War No. 81-Q"
"Western Science Is So Wonderful"
"Nancy" (originally published as "The Nancy Routine")
"The Fife of Bodidharma"
"Angerhelm"
"The Good Friends"
[edit]
External link
E-texts available as part of Baen books' "Webscription" service:
"We the Underpeople" contents
"When the People Fell" contents
3 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rediscovery_of_Man
Wikipedia - Norstrilia
Norstrilia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Norstrilia is the only novel published by Paul Linebarger under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith, which he used for his science-fiction works (though several related short stories were once packaged together as a short novel The Quest of the Three Worlds). It takes place in Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind universe, and was heavily influenced by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.Contents [hide]
1 Plot
1.1 Setting
1.2 Plot summary
2 Publication history
3 References
[edit]
Plot
[edit]
Setting
The central character of Norstrilia is Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan the Hundred and Fifty-First, an inhabitant of a planet known as "Old North Australia", or simply "Norstrilia"; this is the only location in the Instrumentality of Mankind fictional universe which produces the precious immortality drug "stroon", which indefinitely delays aging in humans. Stroon (or the "Santaclara drug") is a substance harvested from the huge diseased sheep the Norstrilians raise, and which has the curious property of being resistant to all attempts at artificial synthesis by the most advanced science of the period. Since the Norstrilians have an effective monopoly, stroon sells for astronomical prices, and Norstrilia is fabulously wealthy (wealthier than any other single planet). To safeguard their archaic way of life (resembling Australian ranchers with a British cultural inheritance), the Norstrilians are forced to develop the most advanced defense force and weaponry known (see Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons); to protect their culture, imports from other worlds are taxed at rates exceeding 20 million per cent, reducing what would be a staggering fortune on another planet to humble penury on Norstrilia itself. Since stroon permits what is practically immortality, they are also forced to cull their young in order to prevent overpopulation (only those children who pass the tests of the "Garden of Death" enter adulthood).
[edit]
Plot summary
Rod McBan is the last male descendent of one of the oldest Norstrilian families, and is the last heir to one of the best ranches, the Station of Doom. As such, he has been spared the culling three times, though he is generally considered unfit, as his ability to communicate telepathically with other Norstrilians is erratic and unreliable. After his last test — which he finally passes with the aid of a Lord of the Instrumentality and his own freak telepathic talents — he learns that an envious former friend, who suffers from an allergy to stroon and so is condemned to live a mere 150 years or so, seeks to kill him, using the pretext that the test was biased and administered unfairly.
Rod survives one assassination attempt. To escape the danger, he amasses an immense fortune overnight by playing the futures market in stroon, following a plan formulated by his ancient computer (which has certain more-or-less illegal quasi-military capabilities) which was passed down to him by an eccentric ancestor. By the next day, he is the wealthiest person in history. Noticing this, the Instrumentality changes the rules so it cannot happen again, but in typical fashion, lets him keep his money to see what he will do with it. Wild rumors begin to circulate about him. He is believed to have "bought Old Earth" (the home planet of mankind), though the reality of his convoluted financial deals and investments is considerably more complex.
For his safety, Rod is sent to Earth, where his unprecedented fortune quickly makes him a magnet for all manner of crooks and revolutionaries. After a series of adventures among the "underpeople" (animals genetically modified to resemble humans and possessing intellects that sometimes surpass their masters, used as slaves and generally despised) in the company of the bewitching Cat-woman C'mell, he meets their leader, E'Telekeli, an experimental creature of bird origin with enormous psychic powers. In exchange for most of Rod's immense fortune (to be used to campaign for the rights of the underpeople), he and Lord Jestocost, a Lord of the Instrumentality who is sympathetic to the underpeople's cause, send Rod safely back to Norstrilia, after fixing his telepathic disability and providing a psychological remedy for Rod's enemy.
[edit]
Publication history
Before being published in a single novel in 1975, portions of Norstrilia were published as two short novels: The Planet Buyer in 1964, and as The Underpeople in 1968.
[edit]
References
Norstrilia, 1975. Cordwainer Smith, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-345-24366-8
Norstrilia, 1995. Cordwainer Smith, NESFA Press, ISBN 0-915368-61-7
We the Underpeople, 2006. Cordwainer Smith, Baen Books, ISBN 1-4165-2095-3
4 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norstrilia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Norstrilia is the only novel published by Paul Linebarger under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith, which he used for his science-fiction works (though several related short stories were once packaged together as a short novel The Quest of the Three Worlds). It takes place in Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind universe, and was heavily influenced by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.Contents [hide]
1 Plot
1.1 Setting
1.2 Plot summary
2 Publication history
3 References
[edit]
Plot
[edit]
Setting
The central character of Norstrilia is Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan the Hundred and Fifty-First, an inhabitant of a planet known as "Old North Australia", or simply "Norstrilia"; this is the only location in the Instrumentality of Mankind fictional universe which produces the precious immortality drug "stroon", which indefinitely delays aging in humans. Stroon (or the "Santaclara drug") is a substance harvested from the huge diseased sheep the Norstrilians raise, and which has the curious property of being resistant to all attempts at artificial synthesis by the most advanced science of the period. Since the Norstrilians have an effective monopoly, stroon sells for astronomical prices, and Norstrilia is fabulously wealthy (wealthier than any other single planet). To safeguard their archaic way of life (resembling Australian ranchers with a British cultural inheritance), the Norstrilians are forced to develop the most advanced defense force and weaponry known (see Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons); to protect their culture, imports from other worlds are taxed at rates exceeding 20 million per cent, reducing what would be a staggering fortune on another planet to humble penury on Norstrilia itself. Since stroon permits what is practically immortality, they are also forced to cull their young in order to prevent overpopulation (only those children who pass the tests of the "Garden of Death" enter adulthood).
[edit]
Plot summary
Rod McBan is the last male descendent of one of the oldest Norstrilian families, and is the last heir to one of the best ranches, the Station of Doom. As such, he has been spared the culling three times, though he is generally considered unfit, as his ability to communicate telepathically with other Norstrilians is erratic and unreliable. After his last test — which he finally passes with the aid of a Lord of the Instrumentality and his own freak telepathic talents — he learns that an envious former friend, who suffers from an allergy to stroon and so is condemned to live a mere 150 years or so, seeks to kill him, using the pretext that the test was biased and administered unfairly.
Rod survives one assassination attempt. To escape the danger, he amasses an immense fortune overnight by playing the futures market in stroon, following a plan formulated by his ancient computer (which has certain more-or-less illegal quasi-military capabilities) which was passed down to him by an eccentric ancestor. By the next day, he is the wealthiest person in history. Noticing this, the Instrumentality changes the rules so it cannot happen again, but in typical fashion, lets him keep his money to see what he will do with it. Wild rumors begin to circulate about him. He is believed to have "bought Old Earth" (the home planet of mankind), though the reality of his convoluted financial deals and investments is considerably more complex.
For his safety, Rod is sent to Earth, where his unprecedented fortune quickly makes him a magnet for all manner of crooks and revolutionaries. After a series of adventures among the "underpeople" (animals genetically modified to resemble humans and possessing intellects that sometimes surpass their masters, used as slaves and generally despised) in the company of the bewitching Cat-woman C'mell, he meets their leader, E'Telekeli, an experimental creature of bird origin with enormous psychic powers. In exchange for most of Rod's immense fortune (to be used to campaign for the rights of the underpeople), he and Lord Jestocost, a Lord of the Instrumentality who is sympathetic to the underpeople's cause, send Rod safely back to Norstrilia, after fixing his telepathic disability and providing a psychological remedy for Rod's enemy.
[edit]
Publication history
Before being published in a single novel in 1975, portions of Norstrilia were published as two short novels: The Planet Buyer in 1964, and as The Underpeople in 1968.
[edit]
References
Norstrilia, 1975. Cordwainer Smith, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-345-24366-8
Norstrilia, 1995. Cordwainer Smith, NESFA Press, ISBN 0-915368-61-7
We the Underpeople, 2006. Cordwainer Smith, Baen Books, ISBN 1-4165-2095-3
4 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norstrilia
Wikipedia - A Planet Named Shayol
A Planet Named Shayol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "A Planet Named Shayol"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in Galaxy Science Fiction
Publication type Periodical
Publisher World Editions
Media type Print (Magazine)
Publication date October 1961
Preceded by "Norstrilia"
Followed by "Quest of the Three Worlds"
A Planet Named Shayol is a story by Cordwainer Smith (penname of Paul Linebarger) set in his Instrumentality universe. It was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1961.
In the story, a man convicted of crimes against the Empire is sent for punishment on the planet Shayol — a name derived from Sheol, the Hebrew version of Hades, the abode of the dead.
[edit]
Plot summary
Mercer has been convicted of a crime that has no name. He is condemned to the planet Shayol, from where they broadcast the screams of the damned on the occasion of the Emperor's birthday. He is conducted to a satellite orbiting the planet, where he expects his punishment to start, but is treated like a patient in a hospital.
After medical procedures to prepare his body for survival on Shayol, he is sent down to the surface and received by B'dikkat, a bovine-derived underperson who is the caretaker of the prisoners there. Underpeople are human in appearance but derived from domestic animals, and are treated as property. Depending on their ancestry, they may be bigger or smaller than a true human. B'dikkat is much larger. He checks Mercer to see that he is ready and sends him outside the reception building. B'dikkat himself never leaves without a huge, heavy protective suit.
Soon after stepping outside, Mercer is stung by what appears to be a flash of light. Then he collapses in excruciating pain. This seems to last forever, but when he recovers, he finds himself face to face with his fellow prisoners. There are people with extra limbs, noses, eyes, organs, and in one case a string of human torsos attached to them.
Shayol, it is revealed, is inhabited by tiny symbiotic creatures called dromozoans that try to help people. They put food in their stomachs, remove waste from their kidneys, and cause new parts to grow, even if they are not needed. The attentions of the dromozoa are what cause the pain suffered by the inmates. On the satellite, Mercer had been offered the chance to have his mind, his eyes, or both destroyed. He elected not to have anything done. He is not alone in this, but there are many mindless bodies which spend their entire time buried in the sand.
The prisoners are given super-condamine (the "ultimate drug") by B'dikkat to alleviate the immense pain of their punishment. He gives doses whenever he comes out to harvest the body parts they are growing. These parts are then used in medicine across the Empire.
The first man to set foot on Shayol, Go-Captain Alvarez, has been on Shayol so long that the dromozoa have greatly increased his size — all that is seen of him is an enormous foot, six stories high. Mercer develops a relationship with another prisoner, the Lady Da, who was sent there as part of a royal power struggle. He also briefly meets Commander Suzdal, sentenced to Shayol after the events of "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal".
Decades pass, but nothing changes, so that the inmates lose all sense of time. One day, B'dikkat drags Mercer and Lady Da into the building. They find that children have been sent to Shayol, and their brains have been removed. B'dikkat is horrified and refuses to send them outside. Lady Da knows how to contact the Lords of the Instrumentality, and soon these guardians of humanity arrive on Shayol. They are shocked by what they find. The children are the heirs to the throne — apparently the Imperium has become so bureaucratic and corrupt that it condemned them to prevent them committing treason when they grew up.
The Instrumentality decides to void the agreement by which it allowed the Empire to exist and maintain Shayol. All the prisoners with functioning minds refuse to live without super-codamine, but eventually they agree to be sent to another planet, where there is no dromozoa, and the drug will be replaced by an electronic "cap" that causes a similar effect. The mindless ones are decapitated, leaving their bodies to be handled by the dromozoa while their heads are destroyed. Lady Da claims Mercer as her consort.
[edit]
External links
A Planet Named Shayol publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Planet_Named_Shayol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "A Planet Named Shayol"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in Galaxy Science Fiction
Publication type Periodical
Publisher World Editions
Media type Print (Magazine)
Publication date October 1961
Preceded by "Norstrilia"
Followed by "Quest of the Three Worlds"
A Planet Named Shayol is a story by Cordwainer Smith (penname of Paul Linebarger) set in his Instrumentality universe. It was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1961.
In the story, a man convicted of crimes against the Empire is sent for punishment on the planet Shayol — a name derived from Sheol, the Hebrew version of Hades, the abode of the dead.
[edit]
Plot summary
Mercer has been convicted of a crime that has no name. He is condemned to the planet Shayol, from where they broadcast the screams of the damned on the occasion of the Emperor's birthday. He is conducted to a satellite orbiting the planet, where he expects his punishment to start, but is treated like a patient in a hospital.
After medical procedures to prepare his body for survival on Shayol, he is sent down to the surface and received by B'dikkat, a bovine-derived underperson who is the caretaker of the prisoners there. Underpeople are human in appearance but derived from domestic animals, and are treated as property. Depending on their ancestry, they may be bigger or smaller than a true human. B'dikkat is much larger. He checks Mercer to see that he is ready and sends him outside the reception building. B'dikkat himself never leaves without a huge, heavy protective suit.
Soon after stepping outside, Mercer is stung by what appears to be a flash of light. Then he collapses in excruciating pain. This seems to last forever, but when he recovers, he finds himself face to face with his fellow prisoners. There are people with extra limbs, noses, eyes, organs, and in one case a string of human torsos attached to them.
Shayol, it is revealed, is inhabited by tiny symbiotic creatures called dromozoans that try to help people. They put food in their stomachs, remove waste from their kidneys, and cause new parts to grow, even if they are not needed. The attentions of the dromozoa are what cause the pain suffered by the inmates. On the satellite, Mercer had been offered the chance to have his mind, his eyes, or both destroyed. He elected not to have anything done. He is not alone in this, but there are many mindless bodies which spend their entire time buried in the sand.
The prisoners are given super-condamine (the "ultimate drug") by B'dikkat to alleviate the immense pain of their punishment. He gives doses whenever he comes out to harvest the body parts they are growing. These parts are then used in medicine across the Empire.
The first man to set foot on Shayol, Go-Captain Alvarez, has been on Shayol so long that the dromozoa have greatly increased his size — all that is seen of him is an enormous foot, six stories high. Mercer develops a relationship with another prisoner, the Lady Da, who was sent there as part of a royal power struggle. He also briefly meets Commander Suzdal, sentenced to Shayol after the events of "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal".
Decades pass, but nothing changes, so that the inmates lose all sense of time. One day, B'dikkat drags Mercer and Lady Da into the building. They find that children have been sent to Shayol, and their brains have been removed. B'dikkat is horrified and refuses to send them outside. Lady Da knows how to contact the Lords of the Instrumentality, and soon these guardians of humanity arrive on Shayol. They are shocked by what they find. The children are the heirs to the throne — apparently the Imperium has become so bureaucratic and corrupt that it condemned them to prevent them committing treason when they grew up.
The Instrumentality decides to void the agreement by which it allowed the Empire to exist and maintain Shayol. All the prisoners with functioning minds refuse to live without super-codamine, but eventually they agree to be sent to another planet, where there is no dromozoa, and the drug will be replaced by an electronic "cap" that causes a similar effect. The mindless ones are decapitated, leaving their bodies to be handled by the dromozoa while their heads are destroyed. Lady Da claims Mercer as her consort.
[edit]
External links
A Planet Named Shayol publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Planet_Named_Shayol
Wikipedia - The Ballad Of Lost C'Mell
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in Galaxy Magazine
Publication type Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publisher Galaxy Publishing
Publication date October 1962
Preceded by "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
Followed by "Norstrilia"
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" is a classic science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith. It was first published in October 1962 in Galaxy Magazine, and since reprinted in several compilations and omnibus editions.
The main characters are C'Mell, a cat-derived "underperson" (or animal given many human characteristics), and Jestocost, a lord of the Instrumentality of Mankind. The plot centers around a scheme to help the oppressed underpeople to gain more rights. Smith's novel Norstrilia is partly a sequel to this story (it is set a few years later, includes most of the story's characters, and is concerned with some of the same issues). C'Mell also appears in Smith's story "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard".[1]
[edit]
Notes
^ [1]
[edit]
External links
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" at WikiFur
Review of We The Underpeople (compilation)
3 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Lost_C'Mell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in Galaxy Magazine
Publication type Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publisher Galaxy Publishing
Publication date October 1962
Preceded by "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
Followed by "Norstrilia"
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" is a classic science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith. It was first published in October 1962 in Galaxy Magazine, and since reprinted in several compilations and omnibus editions.
The main characters are C'Mell, a cat-derived "underperson" (or animal given many human characteristics), and Jestocost, a lord of the Instrumentality of Mankind. The plot centers around a scheme to help the oppressed underpeople to gain more rights. Smith's novel Norstrilia is partly a sequel to this story (it is set a few years later, includes most of the story's characters, and is concerned with some of the same issues). C'Mell also appears in Smith's story "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard".[1]
[edit]
Notes
^ [1]
[edit]
External links
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" at WikiFur
Review of We The Underpeople (compilation)
3 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Lost_C'Mell
Wikipedia - Alpha Ralpha Boulevard
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Publication type Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publisher Mercury Press
Publication date June 1961
Preceded by "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons"
Followed by "A Planet Named Shayol"
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" is a science fiction story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind universe, concerning the opening days of a sudden radical shift from a controlling, benevolent, but sterile society, to one with individuality, danger and excitement. The story has been reprinted a number of times, including in The Rediscovery of Man[1] collection.
In an interview, Ursula K. Le Guin said about it:
To me encountering his works was like a door opening. There is one story of his called "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" that was as important to me as reading Pasternak for the first time. [2]
The story is one of many set in a far future of mankind, with a wealth of history and social detail which remain hinted at or unwritten. Like J.R.R. Tolkien, Smith worked on this universe over years, and other stories were planned at the time of his death. The reader often has an uneasy sense that actual events underlie aspects of Smith's writing. Alpha Ralpha Boulevard was inspired in part by a painting from his childhood The Storm by Pierre-Auguste Cot, of two young lovers fleeing along a darkening path. Additionally, the names of the two principal characters, together with the conscious attempt to revive a French culture, recall the 18th century French novel Paul et Virginie. According to his widow and second wife, it was also partly about his first wife's attraction to another man. [3][4]Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Footnotes
3 See also
4 External links
[edit]
Plot summary
The all-powerful Instrumentality government, which in its overprotectiveness has driven the purpose from human existence, decides to turn back the clock to a less sheltered historical human era of 14,000 years before. (i.e., our era.) Virginia and Paul are enjoying the first moments of the recreations of the old human language, French, reading their first newspapers, and going to their first cafe, where the bugs in process are not resolved to the point of understanding how to use money.
With the restoration of cultural differences and new individuality, old friends Paul and Virginia fall in love. Not everything from the Instrumentality era has vanished, especially the underpeople, a subclass of people bred with animals such as dogs, cats, and bulls to provide manual labor. Paul is accosted by a provocative dog-girl, then by a drunk bull-man, who attacks them. Another cat-girl, C'mell, rescues them from physical danger. She directs them to a cafe where Virginia begins to have qualms about the artificial aspects of the personality she's been given, and wonders whether her love for Paul is real or synthesized. She then meets another man she also finds attractive, Macht. Macht tells her of a computer, never understood by the Instrumentality, which has reached the status of a God, able to foretell the future. It can only be reached walking a ruined processional highway leading into the clouds: Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.
The rest of the story deals with their interactions with Macht and C'mell, and the death and awakening caused by their choices along the road closed to mankind for 10,000 years.
[edit]
Footnotes
^ Mann, James A. (ed.), The Rediscovery of Man, NESFA Press, 1993.
^ MacCaffery, Larry and Gregory, Sinda, Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s, p. 177, University of Illinois Press, 1987.
^ Hellekson, Karen, The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, p. 107, McFarland & Company, 2001.
^ Elms, Alan C., Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology, p. 26, University of Oxford Press, 1994.
[edit]
See also
Ralph Alpher
[edit]
External links
The Remarkable Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Ralpha_Boulevard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Publication type Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publisher Mercury Press
Publication date June 1961
Preceded by "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons"
Followed by "A Planet Named Shayol"
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" is a science fiction story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind universe, concerning the opening days of a sudden radical shift from a controlling, benevolent, but sterile society, to one with individuality, danger and excitement. The story has been reprinted a number of times, including in The Rediscovery of Man[1] collection.
In an interview, Ursula K. Le Guin said about it:
To me encountering his works was like a door opening. There is one story of his called "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" that was as important to me as reading Pasternak for the first time. [2]
The story is one of many set in a far future of mankind, with a wealth of history and social detail which remain hinted at or unwritten. Like J.R.R. Tolkien, Smith worked on this universe over years, and other stories were planned at the time of his death. The reader often has an uneasy sense that actual events underlie aspects of Smith's writing. Alpha Ralpha Boulevard was inspired in part by a painting from his childhood The Storm by Pierre-Auguste Cot, of two young lovers fleeing along a darkening path. Additionally, the names of the two principal characters, together with the conscious attempt to revive a French culture, recall the 18th century French novel Paul et Virginie. According to his widow and second wife, it was also partly about his first wife's attraction to another man. [3][4]Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Footnotes
3 See also
4 External links
[edit]
Plot summary
The all-powerful Instrumentality government, which in its overprotectiveness has driven the purpose from human existence, decides to turn back the clock to a less sheltered historical human era of 14,000 years before. (i.e., our era.) Virginia and Paul are enjoying the first moments of the recreations of the old human language, French, reading their first newspapers, and going to their first cafe, where the bugs in process are not resolved to the point of understanding how to use money.
With the restoration of cultural differences and new individuality, old friends Paul and Virginia fall in love. Not everything from the Instrumentality era has vanished, especially the underpeople, a subclass of people bred with animals such as dogs, cats, and bulls to provide manual labor. Paul is accosted by a provocative dog-girl, then by a drunk bull-man, who attacks them. Another cat-girl, C'mell, rescues them from physical danger. She directs them to a cafe where Virginia begins to have qualms about the artificial aspects of the personality she's been given, and wonders whether her love for Paul is real or synthesized. She then meets another man she also finds attractive, Macht. Macht tells her of a computer, never understood by the Instrumentality, which has reached the status of a God, able to foretell the future. It can only be reached walking a ruined processional highway leading into the clouds: Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.
The rest of the story deals with their interactions with Macht and C'mell, and the death and awakening caused by their choices along the road closed to mankind for 10,000 years.
[edit]
Footnotes
^ Mann, James A. (ed.), The Rediscovery of Man, NESFA Press, 1993.
^ MacCaffery, Larry and Gregory, Sinda, Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s, p. 177, University of Illinois Press, 1987.
^ Hellekson, Karen, The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, p. 107, McFarland & Company, 2001.
^ Elms, Alan C., Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology, p. 26, University of Oxford Press, 1994.
[edit]
See also
Ralph Alpher
[edit]
External links
The Remarkable Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Ralpha_Boulevard
Wikipedia - Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" is a classic science fiction short story written by Cordwainer Smith, first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1961. It is collected most recently in The Rediscovery of Man. It details the methods by which the Norstrilians (or "Old North Australians") of Smith's fictional "Instrumentality" universe maintain their monopoly on the precious immortality drug stroon. The story details part of the background to the novel Norstrilia (which references the Kittons once in its introduction as a sure method of death).Contents [hide]
1 Background
1.1 Norstrilia
1.2 Stroon
1.3 Viola Siderea
1.4 Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
2 References
3 External links
[edit]
Background
Cordwainer Smith, a noted China expert, wrote most of his published science fiction stories within the setting of the Instrumentality of Mankind. For many millennia, the rather static structure of this society (on those planets which the Instrumentality directly administered) was of Lords of the Instrumentality ruling over humans (who were allowed a fixed 400-year lifespan) and a large number of exploited animal-derived "Underpeople" servants. The use of the immortality drug "stroon" from the world of Norstrilia was a vital tool in maintaining this order.
[edit]
Norstrilia
The planet of Norstrilia, or in full the Commonwealth of Old North Australia, was settled by sheep farmers ultimately from a post-nuclear-war Australia (though with many historical vicissitudes — such as a stay on the hell-world Paradise VII — before they found their current prosperity). The political system is based on a monarchy with "her absent majesty" the Queen as nominal head of state. However, the Queen has been lost for millennia ("But she might bloody well turn up one of these days."[1]), and a local deputy and Commonwealth Council fulfill her role until she returns. The organization of the planet is based on Stations, or large farm allotments passed down through generations.
[edit]
Stroon
The sheep that were brought to this planet by the Australian immigrants have over time been affected by the planet's environment in two ways. Firstly, the sheep have grown enormously due to a local disease and are now larger than houses and completely immobile, requiring constant attention. Secondly, the sheep began to produce the immortality drug stroon.
Norstrilia is the richest planet in the entire Instrumentality due to the value of the immortality drug stroon, and as such it and its people are targets of kidnap and theft attempts. The citizens are highly trained in self-defense, but the planet maintains "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" for its defense.
[edit]
Viola Siderea
This is a robber planet, once rich and civilized, but now reduced to a dog-eat-dog existence which has created a ruling class of highly sophisticated thieves. Benjacomin Bozart is a Warden of the Thieves' Guild, trained and prepared to raid Norstrilia for its stroon. Due to the impossibility of overpowering a Norstrilian adult, he ruthlessly drugs and kills a small Norstrillian boy on a vacation world to find out the nature of the planet's defenses, but the only information he gets is the name "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" scrawled in the sand at a beach.
He consults the Guild's encyclopedia, which says that the phrase is an archaic term for the disease caused by the stroon virus - no-one being aware that this is a cover story planted by a Norstrilian agent. Confident of obtaining the stroon, Bozart pays out immense bribes using Viola Siderea's credit to illicitly charter ships, further unaware that he is paying other Norstrilian agents who have tracked him since he murdered the child. The last leg of the journey drops his space yacht into orbit around Norstrilia.
[edit]
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
A 21-faceted moon and a network of relay stations are placed around the planet. Resident on the moon is Mother Hitton, a woman who is the "weapons mistress" and in charge of the care and feeding of the "Littul Kittons", which are in fact mink that have been selectively bred for centuries for psychotic, self-destructive madness. They (necessarily) spend almost all their lives under anaesthesia, only allowed to waken to mate or when needed for defense. The brain patterns of these mad mink are focused into an intense telepathic beam that can be directed at any incoming space ship from the relay station, driving all humans into a self-destructive madness — as Bozart discovers first-hand.
After his death the extent of the Norstrilians' revenge is revealed: Bozart's bribes have incurred a debt of 400 million man megayears for Viola Siderea.
[edit]
References
^ Norstrilia, 1995. Cordwainer Smith, NESFA Press, ISBN 0-915368-61-7, page 7
[edit]
External links
eText of story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Hitton's_Littul_Kittons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" is a classic science fiction short story written by Cordwainer Smith, first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1961. It is collected most recently in The Rediscovery of Man. It details the methods by which the Norstrilians (or "Old North Australians") of Smith's fictional "Instrumentality" universe maintain their monopoly on the precious immortality drug stroon. The story details part of the background to the novel Norstrilia (which references the Kittons once in its introduction as a sure method of death).Contents [hide]
1 Background
1.1 Norstrilia
1.2 Stroon
1.3 Viola Siderea
1.4 Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
2 References
3 External links
[edit]
Background
Cordwainer Smith, a noted China expert, wrote most of his published science fiction stories within the setting of the Instrumentality of Mankind. For many millennia, the rather static structure of this society (on those planets which the Instrumentality directly administered) was of Lords of the Instrumentality ruling over humans (who were allowed a fixed 400-year lifespan) and a large number of exploited animal-derived "Underpeople" servants. The use of the immortality drug "stroon" from the world of Norstrilia was a vital tool in maintaining this order.
[edit]
Norstrilia
The planet of Norstrilia, or in full the Commonwealth of Old North Australia, was settled by sheep farmers ultimately from a post-nuclear-war Australia (though with many historical vicissitudes — such as a stay on the hell-world Paradise VII — before they found their current prosperity). The political system is based on a monarchy with "her absent majesty" the Queen as nominal head of state. However, the Queen has been lost for millennia ("But she might bloody well turn up one of these days."[1]), and a local deputy and Commonwealth Council fulfill her role until she returns. The organization of the planet is based on Stations, or large farm allotments passed down through generations.
[edit]
Stroon
The sheep that were brought to this planet by the Australian immigrants have over time been affected by the planet's environment in two ways. Firstly, the sheep have grown enormously due to a local disease and are now larger than houses and completely immobile, requiring constant attention. Secondly, the sheep began to produce the immortality drug stroon.
Norstrilia is the richest planet in the entire Instrumentality due to the value of the immortality drug stroon, and as such it and its people are targets of kidnap and theft attempts. The citizens are highly trained in self-defense, but the planet maintains "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" for its defense.
[edit]
Viola Siderea
This is a robber planet, once rich and civilized, but now reduced to a dog-eat-dog existence which has created a ruling class of highly sophisticated thieves. Benjacomin Bozart is a Warden of the Thieves' Guild, trained and prepared to raid Norstrilia for its stroon. Due to the impossibility of overpowering a Norstrilian adult, he ruthlessly drugs and kills a small Norstrillian boy on a vacation world to find out the nature of the planet's defenses, but the only information he gets is the name "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" scrawled in the sand at a beach.
He consults the Guild's encyclopedia, which says that the phrase is an archaic term for the disease caused by the stroon virus - no-one being aware that this is a cover story planted by a Norstrilian agent. Confident of obtaining the stroon, Bozart pays out immense bribes using Viola Siderea's credit to illicitly charter ships, further unaware that he is paying other Norstrilian agents who have tracked him since he murdered the child. The last leg of the journey drops his space yacht into orbit around Norstrilia.
[edit]
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
A 21-faceted moon and a network of relay stations are placed around the planet. Resident on the moon is Mother Hitton, a woman who is the "weapons mistress" and in charge of the care and feeding of the "Littul Kittons", which are in fact mink that have been selectively bred for centuries for psychotic, self-destructive madness. They (necessarily) spend almost all their lives under anaesthesia, only allowed to waken to mate or when needed for defense. The brain patterns of these mad mink are focused into an intense telepathic beam that can be directed at any incoming space ship from the relay station, driving all humans into a self-destructive madness — as Bozart discovers first-hand.
After his death the extent of the Norstrilians' revenge is revealed: Bozart's bribes have incurred a debt of 400 million man megayears for Viola Siderea.
[edit]
References
^ Norstrilia, 1995. Cordwainer Smith, NESFA Press, ISBN 0-915368-61-7, page 7
[edit]
External links
eText of story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Hitton's_Littul_Kittons
Wikipedia - The Dead Lady Of Clown Town
The Dead Lady of Clown Town
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1964. It was included in the collection The Best of Cordwainer Smith and most recently in The Rediscovery of Man short story collection. A graphic novel adaptation by Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta was to have appeared in DC Comics during the late 1980s, but never materialized.Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Plot summary
3 See also
4 References
[edit]
Background
Cordwainer Smith wrote several stories set in a fictional milieu called the Instrumentality of Mankind. Although humanity achieves a utopian state, people live sterile and shallow lives. The underpeople are animals who have been heavily modified to look human and have human intelligence. Despite this, they have no rights and are treated like animals, to be used and destroyed without qualm. The story takes obvious inspiration from the story of Joan of Arc. There are also points of commonality with the Civil Rights movement and the early Christians.[1]
The story tells how D'Joan becomes a martyr for the underpeople, which leads to the founding of the religion of 'The Robot, the Rat, and the Copt' that stands behind the future vision of love and equality that forms the basis for the end of the novel Norstrilia.
It is set at least seven generations before another short story, "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell".
[edit]
Plot summary
The story is set on the planet Fomalhaut III. A therapist named Elaine becomes involved with a group of fugitive underpeople, who are being helped by Lady Panc Ashash (a personality recording) and a telepath called The Hunter. Panc Ashash had predicted Elaine's coming, and how she would help the dog-girl D'joan create history.
With help by Elaine and the Hunter, D'joan leads the fugitive underpeople from their hiding place in a march into a city. The underpeople go knowingly to their deaths professing their love and asserting that they too are people to the various humans they meet. Soldiers eventually arrive and end the revolution by killing all the underpeople, with the sole exception of D'joan. One of the Ladies of the Instrumentally on the scene chooses to put D'joan on trial, remarkable since underpeople did not have any such right. D'joan is sentenced to be burned to death.
However, the martyrdom of D'joan and the underpeople affect the human participants and witnesses in powerful, unanticipated ways. The lasting consequences eventually lead to the rebirth of religion, rights for the underpeople, and the Rediscovery of Man. One of those most moved is a Lady of the Instrumentality. She decides to gene code a son to strive for justice for the underpeople. He is an ancestor of Lord Jestocost, who plays a critical role in "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" and Norstrilia.
[edit]`
See also
Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc
[edit]
References
^ McIntyre, Angus (2001). "Cats, cruelty and children: Idealism and morality in the Instrumentality of Mankind" (in English) (HTML). Outsider Magazine. Retrieved 2007-03-11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Lady_of_Clown_Town
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1964. It was included in the collection The Best of Cordwainer Smith and most recently in The Rediscovery of Man short story collection. A graphic novel adaptation by Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta was to have appeared in DC Comics during the late 1980s, but never materialized.Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Plot summary
3 See also
4 References
[edit]
Background
Cordwainer Smith wrote several stories set in a fictional milieu called the Instrumentality of Mankind. Although humanity achieves a utopian state, people live sterile and shallow lives. The underpeople are animals who have been heavily modified to look human and have human intelligence. Despite this, they have no rights and are treated like animals, to be used and destroyed without qualm. The story takes obvious inspiration from the story of Joan of Arc. There are also points of commonality with the Civil Rights movement and the early Christians.[1]
The story tells how D'Joan becomes a martyr for the underpeople, which leads to the founding of the religion of 'The Robot, the Rat, and the Copt' that stands behind the future vision of love and equality that forms the basis for the end of the novel Norstrilia.
It is set at least seven generations before another short story, "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell".
[edit]
Plot summary
The story is set on the planet Fomalhaut III. A therapist named Elaine becomes involved with a group of fugitive underpeople, who are being helped by Lady Panc Ashash (a personality recording) and a telepath called The Hunter. Panc Ashash had predicted Elaine's coming, and how she would help the dog-girl D'joan create history.
With help by Elaine and the Hunter, D'joan leads the fugitive underpeople from their hiding place in a march into a city. The underpeople go knowingly to their deaths professing their love and asserting that they too are people to the various humans they meet. Soldiers eventually arrive and end the revolution by killing all the underpeople, with the sole exception of D'joan. One of the Ladies of the Instrumentally on the scene chooses to put D'joan on trial, remarkable since underpeople did not have any such right. D'joan is sentenced to be burned to death.
However, the martyrdom of D'joan and the underpeople affect the human participants and witnesses in powerful, unanticipated ways. The lasting consequences eventually lead to the rebirth of religion, rights for the underpeople, and the Rediscovery of Man. One of those most moved is a Lady of the Instrumentality. She decides to gene code a son to strive for justice for the underpeople. He is an ancestor of Lord Jestocost, who plays a critical role in "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" and Norstrilia.
[edit]`
See also
Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc
[edit]
References
^ McIntyre, Angus (2001). "Cats, cruelty and children: Idealism and morality in the Instrumentality of Mankind" (in English) (HTML). Outsider Magazine. Retrieved 2007-03-11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Lady_of_Clown_Town
Wikipedia - The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal
The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in Smith's "Instrumentality" universe. It was first published in Amazing Stories in May 1964, and is collected in The Rediscovery of Man compendium.
[edit]
Plot
Commander Suzdal is a captain of "The Navy and the Instrumentality" sent on a "one man" mission of exploration (in actuality he is accompanied by several generations of "Turtle-People"). He hibernates in cryogenic sleep while long-lived turtle underpeople run the ship, until the need for a "true human" arises.
A deep space probe is found. It tells a brilliantly conceived but utterly false story about the plight of a group of settlers calling themselves the Arachosians. Suzdal is deceived and turns his ship towards the planet Arachosia and reenters hibernation.
When he arrives he learns the horrible truth. The original settlers nearly went extinct, succumbing to a plague that (in Smith's words) rendered "femininity carcinogenic." They were only able to save their women by chemically (and later genetically) making them male. However, the resulting society is deeply unbalanced by the lack of females and ordinary family structure. The Arachosians, not truly male or female and calling themselves "klopts", realize on an instinctive level what they are missing and as a result, hate normal human beings with unbridled fervor and regard them as abominations to be destroyed (even though they have not seen one in many generations). To carry out this plan, they have dispatched traps in the form of messages, such as the one Suzdal encountered, throughout the galaxy.
When Suzdal wakes up, the Arachosians are already crawling over the outside of his ship. On the advice of an artificial security officer, he uses an emergency device intended to send his large spacecraft back a few seconds in time to instead hurl feline genetic material (coded to evolve for intelligence and to obey Suzdal) millions of years back on the far side of the local moon. A race of advanced, space-faring cat-descendants appears instantaneously and hail Sudzal as their god and creator. They engage the Arachosians at his order, allowing him to escape.
Despite saving the ship and successfully concealing Earth's location from the Arachosians, Sudzal is stripped of rank, name, life and finally death, finding himself sentenced to the prison planet Shayol for his misuse of the time device. He is later seen in the story "A Planet Named Shayol".
[edit]
External links
The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crime_and_the_Glory_of_Commander_Suzdal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in Smith's "Instrumentality" universe. It was first published in Amazing Stories in May 1964, and is collected in The Rediscovery of Man compendium.
[edit]
Plot
Commander Suzdal is a captain of "The Navy and the Instrumentality" sent on a "one man" mission of exploration (in actuality he is accompanied by several generations of "Turtle-People"). He hibernates in cryogenic sleep while long-lived turtle underpeople run the ship, until the need for a "true human" arises.
A deep space probe is found. It tells a brilliantly conceived but utterly false story about the plight of a group of settlers calling themselves the Arachosians. Suzdal is deceived and turns his ship towards the planet Arachosia and reenters hibernation.
When he arrives he learns the horrible truth. The original settlers nearly went extinct, succumbing to a plague that (in Smith's words) rendered "femininity carcinogenic." They were only able to save their women by chemically (and later genetically) making them male. However, the resulting society is deeply unbalanced by the lack of females and ordinary family structure. The Arachosians, not truly male or female and calling themselves "klopts", realize on an instinctive level what they are missing and as a result, hate normal human beings with unbridled fervor and regard them as abominations to be destroyed (even though they have not seen one in many generations). To carry out this plan, they have dispatched traps in the form of messages, such as the one Suzdal encountered, throughout the galaxy.
When Suzdal wakes up, the Arachosians are already crawling over the outside of his ship. On the advice of an artificial security officer, he uses an emergency device intended to send his large spacecraft back a few seconds in time to instead hurl feline genetic material (coded to evolve for intelligence and to obey Suzdal) millions of years back on the far side of the local moon. A race of advanced, space-faring cat-descendants appears instantaneously and hail Sudzal as their god and creator. They engage the Arachosians at his order, allowing him to escape.
Despite saving the ship and successfully concealing Earth's location from the Arachosians, Sudzal is stripped of rank, name, life and finally death, finding himself sentenced to the prison planet Shayol for his misuse of the time device. He is later seen in the story "A Planet Named Shayol".
[edit]
External links
The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crime_and_the_Glory_of_Commander_Suzdal
Wikipedia - The Game of Rat and Dragon
The Game of Rat and Dragon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Game of Rat and Dragon" is a short story written by Cordwainer Smith[1] in 1955.
[edit]
Plot Summary
The story takes place in the far future. Human travel in outer space is threatened by strange creatures known as the Dragons. Imperceptible to ordinary people, Dragons are experienced as nothing but a sudden death or insanity. Dragons can only be destroyed by very strong light, but they move too fast for conventional defense methods. Both human and telepathic cats (who perceive the dragons as rats) are able to sense the creatures within milliseconds. The humans and cats work together as teams to protect interstellar spaceships traveling via planoforming (a type of faster than light speed travel). The cats ride outside of the spaceships in their own tiny crafts, waiting for the order from their human partner to attack. Pin-sets (telepathic amplifiers) heighten a telepath’s senses and allowed the humans to communicate with their partner cats. The cats then destroy the Dragons with "pinlights", miniature nuclear bombs whose blast gives off pure visible radiance that can destroy the dragons. Thanks to the combination of the human mind and the cats' quick reactions, the battle against the Dragons is not only possible, but usually ended in victory.
Underhill, Woodley, Father Moontree, and a girl named West are the group of current telepaths fighting the war. The cats fighting alongside them are Captain Wow, Lady May, Murr and others. Woodley and West team up with Captain Wow, Underhill with Lady May, and Father Moontree gets stuck with an old, unnamed, greedy male cat. While others are not particularly interested in their partner cats, Underhill has a strong connection with Lady May and enjoys being telepathically connected with her.
The team travel to the depths of space, searching for their enemy. During an attack, Underhill is unable to follow Lady May’s thoughts fast enough and the Dragon touches his mind, sending excruciating pain throughout his body. The battle lasts less than the blink of an eye, and the ship lands safely. Underhill is hospitalized and a doctor tells him that he was within a tenth of a millisecond from going insane, but the only thing that concerns Underhill is his partner, Lady May, and her well-being. A secretly jealous and angry nurse walks in and Underhill compares her to Lady May. Logically, he understands that Lady May is only a cat, but his mind tells him that no woman will ever equal her.
[edit]
References
Hartwell, David G., and Kathryn Cramer. The Space Opera Renaissance. New York: Orb Books, 2007.
Cordwainer Smith website [2]
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Rat_and_Dragon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Game of Rat and Dragon" is a short story written by Cordwainer Smith[1] in 1955.
[edit]
Plot Summary
The story takes place in the far future. Human travel in outer space is threatened by strange creatures known as the Dragons. Imperceptible to ordinary people, Dragons are experienced as nothing but a sudden death or insanity. Dragons can only be destroyed by very strong light, but they move too fast for conventional defense methods. Both human and telepathic cats (who perceive the dragons as rats) are able to sense the creatures within milliseconds. The humans and cats work together as teams to protect interstellar spaceships traveling via planoforming (a type of faster than light speed travel). The cats ride outside of the spaceships in their own tiny crafts, waiting for the order from their human partner to attack. Pin-sets (telepathic amplifiers) heighten a telepath’s senses and allowed the humans to communicate with their partner cats. The cats then destroy the Dragons with "pinlights", miniature nuclear bombs whose blast gives off pure visible radiance that can destroy the dragons. Thanks to the combination of the human mind and the cats' quick reactions, the battle against the Dragons is not only possible, but usually ended in victory.
Underhill, Woodley, Father Moontree, and a girl named West are the group of current telepaths fighting the war. The cats fighting alongside them are Captain Wow, Lady May, Murr and others. Woodley and West team up with Captain Wow, Underhill with Lady May, and Father Moontree gets stuck with an old, unnamed, greedy male cat. While others are not particularly interested in their partner cats, Underhill has a strong connection with Lady May and enjoys being telepathically connected with her.
The team travel to the depths of space, searching for their enemy. During an attack, Underhill is unable to follow Lady May’s thoughts fast enough and the Dragon touches his mind, sending excruciating pain throughout his body. The battle lasts less than the blink of an eye, and the ship lands safely. Underhill is hospitalized and a doctor tells him that he was within a tenth of a millisecond from going insane, but the only thing that concerns Underhill is his partner, Lady May, and her well-being. A secretly jealous and angry nurse walks in and Underhill compares her to Lady May. Logically, he understands that Lady May is only a cat, but his mind tells him that no woman will ever equal her.
[edit]
References
Hartwell, David G., and Kathryn Cramer. The Space Opera Renaissance. New York: Orb Books, 2007.
Cordwainer Smith website [2]
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Rat_and_Dragon
Wikipedia - When the People Fell
When the People Fell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "When the People Fell"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in Galaxy Science Fiction
Publication type Periodical
Publisher World Editions
Media type Print (Magazine)
Publication date April 1959
Preceded by "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul"
Followed by "Think Blue, Count Two"
"When the People Fell" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his "Instrumentality" universe. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in April, 1959, and is most recently collected in The Rediscovery of Man. The story takes place relatively early in the Instrumentality timeline, and a "scanner Vomact" appears both in this story and the classic story "Scanners Live in Vain".
The story recounts, in "flashback" form — an interview between a reporter and a crusty old-timer — a risky attempt by a future Chinese government to claim and settle the planet Venus, at a time when China is the only ethnic nation on Earth which has survived as a separate entity through a global nuclear war and a long dark age which followed. The story implicitly compares Western and Chinese approaches to solving an impossible problem and has the Chinese solution succeed, but at a cost Westerners would find repugnant.
[edit]
Plot summary
The setting is the type of benign Venus imagined before the first space probes penetrated the clouds of that planet. Colonization has become stymied by the native inhabitants (loudies), who are apparently sentient bubbles that float around the landscape, getting in the way of human progress. Attempts to communicate with them produce no response. Confining them is useless (they drift back) and killing them produces a deadly explosion that contaminates a thousand acres. The non-Chinese authorities of the early Instrumentality government have no answer.
The ruler of Goonhogo (the entity that replaced China under the early Instrumentality) decrees that 82 million Chinesians (men, women, and children) be dropped from space, parachuting down to the surface. Each one has a simple mission — herd the bubbles together. Many die in the process, both in landing and from the bubbles exploding. The rest corralled the loudies together into herds, where they eventually starve, wiping out the species. Meanwhile, more Chinese parachute down with rice seeds and begin planting. Eventually, by sheer weight of numbers, the Chinese conquer Venus.
Smith's point in the story is evidently to demonstrate how Chinese attitudes such as fatalism and obedience to authority, coupled with their large numbers, could outperform the "Yankee ingenuity" and "self-reliant individual" attitudes predominant in mainstream 1950s American science fiction of the time. (However, it is implied that the separate Chinese government and Chinese ethnic identity of the time of the Venus colonization no longer exist in the same form by the time of the story's "frame" interview.)
[edit]
External links
When the People Fell publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Online e-text
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_People_Fell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "When the People Fell"
Author Cordwainer Smith
Country USA
Language English
Series Instrumentality of Mankind
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in Galaxy Science Fiction
Publication type Periodical
Publisher World Editions
Media type Print (Magazine)
Publication date April 1959
Preceded by "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul"
Followed by "Think Blue, Count Two"
"When the People Fell" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his "Instrumentality" universe. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in April, 1959, and is most recently collected in The Rediscovery of Man. The story takes place relatively early in the Instrumentality timeline, and a "scanner Vomact" appears both in this story and the classic story "Scanners Live in Vain".
The story recounts, in "flashback" form — an interview between a reporter and a crusty old-timer — a risky attempt by a future Chinese government to claim and settle the planet Venus, at a time when China is the only ethnic nation on Earth which has survived as a separate entity through a global nuclear war and a long dark age which followed. The story implicitly compares Western and Chinese approaches to solving an impossible problem and has the Chinese solution succeed, but at a cost Westerners would find repugnant.
[edit]
Plot summary
The setting is the type of benign Venus imagined before the first space probes penetrated the clouds of that planet. Colonization has become stymied by the native inhabitants (loudies), who are apparently sentient bubbles that float around the landscape, getting in the way of human progress. Attempts to communicate with them produce no response. Confining them is useless (they drift back) and killing them produces a deadly explosion that contaminates a thousand acres. The non-Chinese authorities of the early Instrumentality government have no answer.
The ruler of Goonhogo (the entity that replaced China under the early Instrumentality) decrees that 82 million Chinesians (men, women, and children) be dropped from space, parachuting down to the surface. Each one has a simple mission — herd the bubbles together. Many die in the process, both in landing and from the bubbles exploding. The rest corralled the loudies together into herds, where they eventually starve, wiping out the species. Meanwhile, more Chinese parachute down with rice seeds and begin planting. Eventually, by sheer weight of numbers, the Chinese conquer Venus.
Smith's point in the story is evidently to demonstrate how Chinese attitudes such as fatalism and obedience to authority, coupled with their large numbers, could outperform the "Yankee ingenuity" and "self-reliant individual" attitudes predominant in mainstream 1950s American science fiction of the time. (However, it is implied that the separate Chinese government and Chinese ethnic identity of the time of the Venus colonization no longer exist in the same form by the time of the story's "frame" interview.)
[edit]
External links
When the People Fell publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Online e-text
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_People_Fell
Wikipedia - Scanners Live In Vain
Scanners Live in Vain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Scanners Live in Vain" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Linebarger), set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in the magazine Fantasy Book in 1950. It was judged by the Science Fiction Writers of America to be one of the finest short stories prior to 1965 and was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Plot summary
3 Notes
4 External links
[edit]
Background
This was Linebarger's first published SF story as an adult (his short story "War No. 81-Q", which he wrote at age 15 was published in his high school magazine), and the first appearance of the Cordwainer Smith pen name. It was written in 1945, and had been rejected by a number of magazines before its acceptance and publication in Fantasy Book in 1950. It was in that obscure magazine that it was noticed by SF writer Frederik Pohl who, impressed with the story's powerful imagery and style, subsequently re-published it in 1952 in the more widely read anthology Beyond the End of Time.
Part of the appeal of the story was its uniqueness, from the strange future world to the cynical ending. Robert Silverberg called it "one of the classic stories of science fiction" and noted its "sheer originality of concept" and its "deceptive and eerie simplicity of narrative."[1] John J Pierce, in his introduction to the anthology The Best of Cordwainer Smith, commented the strong sense of religion it shares with Smith's other works, likening the Code of the Scanners to the Saying of the Law in H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.[2]
[edit]
Plot summary
The story is set circa 6000 A.D. Mankind has colonized planets around other stars, but interstellar travel is constrained by the mysterious "First Effect", which causes the "Great Pain of Space" and induces a death wish in humans. Passengers on interstellar voyages are stored in cold sleep, while the crew of the spaceship is composed of Habermans: convicts and other riff-raff who have undergone an operation in which the brain is severed from all sensory input except that from the eyes. This blocks the Pain of Space but puts them somewhere between men and machines, with zombie-like behavior and disturbed psyches, dependent on constant monitoring and adjustment of their vital functions via implanted dials and regulatory instruments.
The Habermans are supervised in space by Scanners, who undergo the operation voluntarily; they are permitted, unlike the Habermans, to monitor themselves and are respected by themselves and others as essential to keeping the space lanes open and uniting the Earths of Mankind. The Scanners live a horribly lonely and difficult life, punctuated by brief intervals of cranching — use of a device that temporarily restores normal neural connectivity. They compensate by maintaining a fanatically elitist confraternity, with secret rituals and body language, absolute loyalty, and a demand for autonomy maintained by the threat that "No ships go" if any Scanner is wronged. No Scanner has ever killed another Scanner.
The protagonist of the story is Scanner Martel, set apart by his marriage to a normal woman. At the start of the story he has cranched and is trying to relax at home, but is ordered to an emergency meeting of the confraternity (such a major emergency that it even over-rides the protocol permitting a cranched member to decline to attend). The leader of the Scanners, Vomact (a member of the vom Acht or Vomact family which plays a prominent role through much of Smith's Instrumentality future history), informs the meeting that one Adam Stone is about to make public a method to prevent the Pain of Space in normal people, thereby rendering Scanners obsolete. The Scanners vote to kill Stone, and only Martel in his cranched state and his Chinese friend Chang (the only Scanner who, via long practice, can appear "normal" when not cranched) can grasp the moral and practical wrongness of this decision. When they are the only two dissenters to the murder vote, Martel tries to reach Stone before the appointed assassin and warn him. In order to entering the city where Stone lives without revealing himself to be a Scanner, Martel breaks off his specially formed fingernail, used by scanners to communicate by writing on a board attached to their chests, and symbolic of the status of being a scanner.
Martel succeeds in warning Stone, who explains that ships with walls packed with living oysters shield the passengers from the Pain. At this point the assassin arrives, who turns out to be Martel's other best friend, Parizianski. In a high-speed battle, Martel ends up killing Parizianski before lapsing into unconsciousness from the pain of operating in high-speed while cranched. When he awakens, he finds that he is the first Scanner that Stone has restored to normality; the Instrumentality plans to appoint all of them to be spaceship pilots, allowing them to maintain their guild, and they have agreed, albeit some reluctantly. At the very end, Martel learns from his unsuspecting wife that people have been told that Parizianski died because he was so happy upon learning the truth from Stone that he forgot to self-monitor.
[edit]
Notes
^ Silverberg, Robert. Science Fiction 101: Robert Silverberg's Worlds of Wonder. ibooks, New York, 2001.
^ The Best of Cordwainer Smith, ed. John J Pierce, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975
[edit]
External links
Text of story
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Scanners Live in Vain" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Linebarger), set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in the magazine Fantasy Book in 1950. It was judged by the Science Fiction Writers of America to be one of the finest short stories prior to 1965 and was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Plot summary
3 Notes
4 External links
[edit]
Background
This was Linebarger's first published SF story as an adult (his short story "War No. 81-Q", which he wrote at age 15 was published in his high school magazine), and the first appearance of the Cordwainer Smith pen name. It was written in 1945, and had been rejected by a number of magazines before its acceptance and publication in Fantasy Book in 1950. It was in that obscure magazine that it was noticed by SF writer Frederik Pohl who, impressed with the story's powerful imagery and style, subsequently re-published it in 1952 in the more widely read anthology Beyond the End of Time.
Part of the appeal of the story was its uniqueness, from the strange future world to the cynical ending. Robert Silverberg called it "one of the classic stories of science fiction" and noted its "sheer originality of concept" and its "deceptive and eerie simplicity of narrative."[1] John J Pierce, in his introduction to the anthology The Best of Cordwainer Smith, commented the strong sense of religion it shares with Smith's other works, likening the Code of the Scanners to the Saying of the Law in H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.[2]
[edit]
Plot summary
The story is set circa 6000 A.D. Mankind has colonized planets around other stars, but interstellar travel is constrained by the mysterious "First Effect", which causes the "Great Pain of Space" and induces a death wish in humans. Passengers on interstellar voyages are stored in cold sleep, while the crew of the spaceship is composed of Habermans: convicts and other riff-raff who have undergone an operation in which the brain is severed from all sensory input except that from the eyes. This blocks the Pain of Space but puts them somewhere between men and machines, with zombie-like behavior and disturbed psyches, dependent on constant monitoring and adjustment of their vital functions via implanted dials and regulatory instruments.
The Habermans are supervised in space by Scanners, who undergo the operation voluntarily; they are permitted, unlike the Habermans, to monitor themselves and are respected by themselves and others as essential to keeping the space lanes open and uniting the Earths of Mankind. The Scanners live a horribly lonely and difficult life, punctuated by brief intervals of cranching — use of a device that temporarily restores normal neural connectivity. They compensate by maintaining a fanatically elitist confraternity, with secret rituals and body language, absolute loyalty, and a demand for autonomy maintained by the threat that "No ships go" if any Scanner is wronged. No Scanner has ever killed another Scanner.
The protagonist of the story is Scanner Martel, set apart by his marriage to a normal woman. At the start of the story he has cranched and is trying to relax at home, but is ordered to an emergency meeting of the confraternity (such a major emergency that it even over-rides the protocol permitting a cranched member to decline to attend). The leader of the Scanners, Vomact (a member of the vom Acht or Vomact family which plays a prominent role through much of Smith's Instrumentality future history), informs the meeting that one Adam Stone is about to make public a method to prevent the Pain of Space in normal people, thereby rendering Scanners obsolete. The Scanners vote to kill Stone, and only Martel in his cranched state and his Chinese friend Chang (the only Scanner who, via long practice, can appear "normal" when not cranched) can grasp the moral and practical wrongness of this decision. When they are the only two dissenters to the murder vote, Martel tries to reach Stone before the appointed assassin and warn him. In order to entering the city where Stone lives without revealing himself to be a Scanner, Martel breaks off his specially formed fingernail, used by scanners to communicate by writing on a board attached to their chests, and symbolic of the status of being a scanner.
Martel succeeds in warning Stone, who explains that ships with walls packed with living oysters shield the passengers from the Pain. At this point the assassin arrives, who turns out to be Martel's other best friend, Parizianski. In a high-speed battle, Martel ends up killing Parizianski before lapsing into unconsciousness from the pain of operating in high-speed while cranched. When he awakens, he finds that he is the first Scanner that Stone has restored to normality; the Instrumentality plans to appoint all of them to be spaceship pilots, allowing them to maintain their guild, and they have agreed, albeit some reluctantly. At the very end, Martel learns from his unsuspecting wife that people have been told that Parizianski died because he was so happy upon learning the truth from Stone that he forgot to self-monitor.
[edit]
Notes
^ Silverberg, Robert. Science Fiction 101: Robert Silverberg's Worlds of Wonder. ibooks, New York, 2001.
^ The Best of Cordwainer Smith, ed. John J Pierce, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975
[edit]
External links
Text of story
5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain
We the Underpeople Introduction - Robert Silverberg
"Nobody—with the possible exception of A.E. van Vogt, whose dreamlike, surreal The World of Null-A was first published around the time Cordwainer Smith was writing "Scanners"—wrote science fiction that sounded like that. The lucid, unadorned prose setting forth the immeasurably strange—it was a new kind of voice.
I read on and on. One bizarre term after another tumbled forth: Scanners, the Up-and-Out, the habermans, the Cranching Wire. In time, it all made sense. By the end of the story, forty pages later, I knew that some incomparable master of science fiction had taken me to an invented world like none that had ever been portrayed before.
But who was this Cordwainer Smith?
Suddenly, everybody in the little inner world of science fiction—there couldn't have been more than a few hundred who really cared about it in any more than a casual way—was asking that question. But no answers came forth. William Crawford let it be known that the name was a pseudonym—but for whom? Van Vogt? Hardly. If he had written it, he would have been proud to publish it under his own name. The prolific Henry Kuttner, famous for his innumerable pseudonyms? Heinlein? Sturgeon? None of the theories seemed to add up. The name itself provided no clue. ("Cordwainer" is an archaic term meaning "leather-worker" or "shoemaker.")
The hubbub died down within a few months, and the unknown Mr. Smith and his remarkable story receded into obscurity and might have remained there forever but for Frederik Pohl, not only a writer but an editor of s-f anthologies. Pohl knew about "Scanners" because he had had a story in that same issue of Fantasy Book, and he republished it in 1952 in a paperback called Beyond the End of Time, a fine fat collection that also included work by Bradbury, Asimov, van Vogt, and Heinlein. Science-fiction paperbacks were few and far between back then, and everybody who liked s-f pounced on the Pohl anthology. Thousands of readers who had never so much as heard of Fantasy Book now discovered Cordwainer Smith and clamored for more of his work."
4.5 out of 5
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520953/1416520953.htm
I read on and on. One bizarre term after another tumbled forth: Scanners, the Up-and-Out, the habermans, the Cranching Wire. In time, it all made sense. By the end of the story, forty pages later, I knew that some incomparable master of science fiction had taken me to an invented world like none that had ever been portrayed before.
But who was this Cordwainer Smith?
Suddenly, everybody in the little inner world of science fiction—there couldn't have been more than a few hundred who really cared about it in any more than a casual way—was asking that question. But no answers came forth. William Crawford let it be known that the name was a pseudonym—but for whom? Van Vogt? Hardly. If he had written it, he would have been proud to publish it under his own name. The prolific Henry Kuttner, famous for his innumerable pseudonyms? Heinlein? Sturgeon? None of the theories seemed to add up. The name itself provided no clue. ("Cordwainer" is an archaic term meaning "leather-worker" or "shoemaker.")
The hubbub died down within a few months, and the unknown Mr. Smith and his remarkable story receded into obscurity and might have remained there forever but for Frederik Pohl, not only a writer but an editor of s-f anthologies. Pohl knew about "Scanners" because he had had a story in that same issue of Fantasy Book, and he republished it in 1952 in a paperback called Beyond the End of Time, a fine fat collection that also included work by Bradbury, Asimov, van Vogt, and Heinlein. Science-fiction paperbacks were few and far between back then, and everybody who liked s-f pounced on the Pohl anthology. Thousands of readers who had never so much as heard of Fantasy Book now discovered Cordwainer Smith and clamored for more of his work."
4.5 out of 5
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520953/1416520953.htm
Wikipedia - Atomsk
Atomsk (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Atomsk, first published in 1949, is a Cold War spy novel by "Carmichael Smith", one of several pseudonyms used by Paul Linebarger, who wrote fiction most prolifically as Cordwainer Smith.
Linebarger's third published novel, it has long been out of print. Copies regularly command figures in the hundreds of U.S. dollars in the second-hand market.
As well as drawing on Linebarger's own expertise in the field of psychological warfare, it is a study of the personality of an U.S. operative (Major Michael Dugan) who has little in common with James Bond except his extreme resourcefulness under cover and in danger. A man of many identities who sees himself to some extent as a blank sheet, he goes from calling himself "Comrade Nobody" to saying "I'm anybody". It also has an underlying, albeit devious and ambiguous, message of peace. As one character says, learning to like people is "the only way to win wars, or even better, to get out of them."
[edit]
External links
Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense (cordwainersmith.com)
3.5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomsk_(novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Atomsk, first published in 1949, is a Cold War spy novel by "Carmichael Smith", one of several pseudonyms used by Paul Linebarger, who wrote fiction most prolifically as Cordwainer Smith.
Linebarger's third published novel, it has long been out of print. Copies regularly command figures in the hundreds of U.S. dollars in the second-hand market.
As well as drawing on Linebarger's own expertise in the field of psychological warfare, it is a study of the personality of an U.S. operative (Major Michael Dugan) who has little in common with James Bond except his extreme resourcefulness under cover and in danger. A man of many identities who sees himself to some extent as a blank sheet, he goes from calling himself "Comrade Nobody" to saying "I'm anybody". It also has an underlying, albeit devious and ambiguous, message of peace. As one character says, learning to like people is "the only way to win wars, or even better, to get out of them."
[edit]
External links
Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense (cordwainersmith.com)
3.5 out of 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomsk_(novel)
Project Gutenberg - Cordwainer Smith
Have done an edition of The Game Of Rat and Dragon.
4 out of 5
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a34034
4 out of 5
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a34034
Librivox - Cordwainer Smith
Have done an edition of The Game of Rat and Dragon.
4 out of 5
http://librivox.org/short-science-fiction-collection-025/
4 out of 5
http://librivox.org/short-science-fiction-collection-025/
Rosana Hart - Cordwainer Smith
His daughter has published an ebook edition of the spy novel Atomsk, available here :-
4 out of 5
http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/atomsk.htm
4 out of 5
http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/atomsk.htm
Atomsk - Cordwainer Smith
"Sarah saw, with a flash of intuition, that she had caught him betraying himself -- for the first distinguishable second in days of their being together. For once, Dugan had gone back to his wartime role and had responded with the manner of a Japanese, the dead formal silence with which Japanese men bore news of disaster. He must have had many friends among the Japanese during his years of wartime spying; and of them, many must have died, so that the expression of quick military sorrow could have become habitual."
3.5 out of 5
http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/atomsk.htm
3.5 out of 5
http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/atomsk.htm
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Dikty 02 : The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
Friday, May 14, 2010
Wildside Press - Cordwainer Smith
Have produced this book :-
Scanners and Others: Three Science Fiction Stories
4 out of 5
http://www.amazon.com/Scanners-Others-Science-Fiction-Stories/dp/155742120X%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJYODRJUNT64YDW3A%26tag%3Dtravel0fd-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D155742120X
Scanners and Others: Three Science Fiction Stories
4 out of 5
http://www.amazon.com/Scanners-Others-Science-Fiction-Stories/dp/155742120X%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJYODRJUNT64YDW3A%26tag%3Dtravel0fd-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D155742120X
Friday, May 7, 2010
The Animal Down-Deep: Cordwainer Smith’s Late Tales of the Underpeople - Carol McGuirk
"“The Animal Down-Deep: Cordwainer Smith’s Late Tales of the Underpeople,” Carol McGuirk, professor of English at Florida Atlantic University and an editor of Science Fiction Studies. During the 1980s she wrote a column on science fiction for the New York Daily News, and she has written three books about the poet Robert Burns. As a science fiction scholar, one of her research interests is the author Cordwainer Smith. Her talk is part of her ongoing project “Dominion,” which considers literary representations of animals from Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667) to Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (1968)."
Unseen.
Unseen.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Ballad of Lost C'Mell - Virgil Finlay
An interior illustration from the Galaxy story.
4 out of 5
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XhAzekAG0tg/S972shHA3BI/AAAAAAAADpo/iMkbpK-kCko/s320/Virgil+Finlay+-+The+Ballad+Of+Lost+C'Mell.jpg
4 out of 5
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XhAzekAG0tg/S972shHA3BI/AAAAAAAADpo/iMkbpK-kCko/s320/Virgil+Finlay+-+The+Ballad+Of+Lost+C'Mell.jpg
Saturday, April 17, 2010
The Game Of Rat and Dragon - Mel Hunter
Interior illustration for the story :-
4 out of 5
http://www.collectorshowcase.fr/images2/intgy_5510.jpg
4 out of 5
http://www.collectorshowcase.fr/images2/intgy_5510.jpg
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