I had to skip last week’s entry due to time pressures and promised that I’d be taking a look at Norstrilia this week after having just re-read it.

I’m still pressed for time but I dared not skip another post here; I’ve been stealing bits and pieces of time here and there trying to come up with a way to look at Norstrilia that was anything but a review.  Doing a review would have been fairly easy, but fairly boring too.

As these thing happen, it suddenly occurred to me that there is a great deal of concision between Norstrilia and another novel that I’ve probably read twice as much over the years (though not as recently) – Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.

The Planet Buyer (the first half of Norstrilia) first appeared in Galaxy a few years after SIASL was published – so there is a possibility that it is an ‘answer’ to that work.

It’s probably more likely that both stories share ur-tale (or perhaps xtian allegory) roots and that is about their only commanality.  But the similarities – across the divide of vastly different styles – remain intriguing.

Valentine Michael Smith is raised by Martians – and comes to Earth.  Rod McBan the 151st is raised by humans – on a world that has remained outside the Instrumentality, and comes to Earth.

Both characters endure a resurrection of sorts – Rod in the Garden of Death (after having been forced into childhood numerous times); Smith IS a child and spends the first half of SIASL maturing (after being ‘resurrected’ back to Earth).

Both are beset by strange powers – Rod by a lack of hiering and spieking, Smith by his posession of arcane Martian abilities:  both characters are set outside the mainstream by this conflict of normal with abnormal.

Both spend a period of time at the circus – Smith literally as a carny and Rod in his trip through the market to the shop of Heart’s Desire.  Interestingly, a specific detail joins these two – both feature money in barrels, free for the taking.

Rod ‘buys’ thousands of wives – Smith sleeps with just about everyone.

Each is strongly influenced by a single woman – Smith by Jillian Boardman, Rod by C’Mell and each acquires an aged mentor – Smith in Jubal Harshaw, Rod through several stand-ins – Jestocost and the E’telikeli primary among them.

The women share many traits, even down to being in similar professions.

Both are seeking to be ‘truly human’, and both find that their plan for accomplishing this task falls short of the mark; Smith is sacrificed while Rod goes home to Norstrilia to await the coming of the Queen:  each of them reaches their goal following a period if intense self-examination – Smith through grokking what it means to be a person, and Rod figuring out that he really didn’t need a Penny Black after all.

Perhaps it’s just a shared homage to Campbellian themes – but I still think there remains a chance that Norstrilia was commentary on Stranger and that it found Stranger wanting: you don’t need to die in order to change the world – all you have to do is buy it…

Is Rod McBan a Stranger in a Strange Land? is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

Can’t you just see the marquee?

THE BALLAD OF LOST C’MELL

or

THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON

although, given Hollywood’s penchant for stepping on things, that story would probably be entitled The Rat Game by the time it finally made it to the theaters.

Complaining about Hollywood’s treatment of well-known SF works has become a pretty common hobby on the internet: if you want to start a riot, all you have to do is mention I, Robot – the MOVIE, or Starship Troopers – the MOVIE and disappointed fans will make it their sworn duty to let you know just exactly how they feel.

The complaints, however,  still don’t stop anyone from wishing that their favorite story or novel will someday get the Hollywood treatment. 

I’m no different than anyone else.  I’ve often wondered if Smith’s stories, like Ballad or Game or Littul Kittons could be adapted for the screen, let alone survive the experience.  I alternate between thinking that it might be very interesting to watch a movie audience as it gets dropped right into the middle of the Instrumentality of Mankind, and thinking that there’s so much back-story that would need to be front-story that it would be impossible to translate successfully.

But on the other hand, there’s always Norstrilia.  I imagine the promo for that movie sounding something like ‘A Boy, A Cat and a Computer conquer the Earth – to buy a postage stamp!’

A lot of the tropes found in Norstrilia have already made it up onto the screen – think girly-girls, then think ‘furniture’ from Soylent Green or the immortal line from Alien:Resurrection – “Yeah, like you’ve never ****** a robot!”, or even Woody Allen’s Orgasmotron from Sleeper.  Replicants in revolt from Blade Runner, mile-high cities from The Fifth Element, politicians controlling unimaginable power like the Emporer in Star Wars.

It certainly wouldn’t be difficult these days to replicate the imagery from Smith’s stories:  I’d be particularly interested in getting a look at those giant sheep making stroon or watching the bullman B’Dank jump off the tower, or taking a visit to the underground realms of the Underpeople.

But I think what I’d most like to see would be C’Mell in all her red-haired, glory.  I just can’t imagine who they’d cast to play the part of the courtesan’s courtesan, the geisha’s geisha, the woman who’s job it is to make off-world VIPS happy with unrequited love.

She’s worked her magic on me.  Maybe, given Hollywood’s relatively poor track record, my desire to see C’Mell in the flesh ought to remain unrequited.  But there’s still a part of me that really wants to see Smith’s universe up there on the screen.

What do you all think?   Would it be a good idea to see C’Mell up there on the screen, or should we all just leave well enough alone?

Cordwainer Smith at the Movies is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

Has anyone, to your knowledge, yet found the connection between the two works Norstrilia and Dune?

The life of Mohammed, perhaps (with which I am almost completely ignorant)?

That they were both written at or about the same time suggests a common precursor (or something in the air?).

Whenever someone touts Dune, I always refer them to the superior (forgive me, Frank Herbert) Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith.

This email came to me from Harry Buerkett, in 2002. No, I’m not that slow at answering emails… I’m recycling some old ezine material into this blog. I encouraged Harry to expand on his thoughts, and he wrote:

I’ve found yet another parallel: Both Lavinia and Chani bear twins (Ted & Rich at the end of NORSTRILIA (or THE UNDERPEOPLE; Leto II and Ghanima at the end of the “third half” of DUNE, DUNE MESSIAH). The more I look, the more I find. I’m fairly well-versed in SF, and ornithopters are not common in the literature (authors preferring flying cars, jets, rockets, etc.), yet both your father and Frank Herbert use “ornithopters” in each novel.

I forwarded Harry’s email to Alan C. Elms, and here is part of Alan’s reply:

Thanks to Rosana for passing your question along to me and thank you for your enthusiastic assessment of “Norstrilia,” with which I agree.

Your question is an interesting one, which I can’t answer definitively because I never asked it of either Paul Linebarger or Frank Herbert. (I never met Linebarger; I could have asked Herbert at one convention or another, but didn’t think to do so.)

I’m pretty sure neither book was a direct influence on the other, since they were both written over several years’ time and were published at about the same time (or in the case of the second half of “Norstrilia,” a couple of years later), and Linebarger and Herbert did not correspond with each other.

A “common precursor” also seems unlikely in any specific sense. Herbert may have had the life of Mohammed in mind, but Linebarger did not; as I’ve discussed in my introduction to the NESFA edition of “Norstrilia,” that novel is based instead on the Chinese classic “A Journey to the West.”

I would not be surprised, though, if Herbert had gained some inspiration for such aspects of “Dune” as the role of the drug “spice” by reading Linebarger’s earlier stories, several of which alluded to the similar drug “stroon.”

Both Herbert and Linebarger were very familiar with the whole of golden-age SF; both were very interested in psychological theory and psychotherapy; both had strong interests in religion, in international [translated into intergalactic] politics, and in basic philosophical questions about what makes an individual (of any physical form) human. So it’s not surprising that they wrote novels with certain striking similarities at about the same time.

Readers, please add your own thoughts.

Norstrilia and Dune is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.