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Here’s one where Norstrilia is #46 on a list of the best 100  science fiction books from 1949 to 1984. UPDATE: I had said it was ranked #46 but Damien Broderick pointed out that they are by publication date.

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Gardner Dozois has a long list of recommended novels and short stories on his “Recommended Reading List” page at sfwa.org, the Science Fiction Writers of America site. He says its cutoff date is roughly the early 80s and he comments that the list “was devised to point younger readers toward older stuff that they might not have heard of, or long out-of-print writers whose work they might be unfamiliar with.” He lists Norstrilia in the novels, and here’s his list of anthologies for the short stories:

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More? Please add if you see something.

Cordwainer Smith on Top 100 or Other Top Lists? is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

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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.

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A few short years ago, the Cordwainer Smith Foundation introduced the C.S. Rediscovery Award.

It’s purpose is to honor a “science fiction or fantasy writer whose work displays unusual originality, embodies the spirit of Cordwainer Smith’s fiction, and deserves renewed attention or ‘Rediscovery.’”

Since 2001, the award has been given to none other than: Olaf Stapleton, R.A. Lafferty, Edgar Pangborn, Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, William Hope Hodgson and Daniel F. Galouye.

If you enjoy Smith’s work, you will certainly find something of interest in the writings of these fine authors.  If you’d like to check them out, some representative works are available online -Olaf Stapledon – online works
More information
I personally recommend Odd John, Last and First Men and Sirius.

R. A. Lafferty – online works
More information
I recommend The Devil is Dead, and Strange Doings

Edgar Pangborn – online works
More information
I recommend A Mirror for Observers and West of the Sun

Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore (amongst my favoritist favorite writers). Online works – unfortunately unavailable (at least in legal form)
More information – Lewis Padgett (pseudonym)
Henry Kuttner
C. L. Moore
I SERIOUSLY recommend – Mimsy Were The Borogoves,  Fury, The Twonky, Vintage Season, the Gallagher stories.

Leigh Brackett – online works
More information
I recommend – The Sorcerer of Rhiannon, Lorelei of the Red Mist, Stark and the Star Kings – and just about everything else

William Hope Hodgson – online works
More information – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hope_Hodgson
I recommend – The House on the Borderland, The Ghost Pirates
Daniel F. Galouye – online works – unfortunately none (legally) available
More information
I recommend Simulacron 3 and Dark Universe

If you know of any additional (legal and free) on-line sources for these author’s works, we’d sure like to hear from you – and if you’ve got a tribute page, let us know too!

Awards like this one perform an invaluable service to the SF community.  Sometimes it’s good to remember where we came from.

The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

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I’ve been a Cordwainer Smith fan since I first laid eyes on Scanners Live in Vain within the pages of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (Silverberg, ed), the anthology of shorts selected by the Science Fiction Writers of American (SFWA) as one of the finest SF stories published from the beginning of the genre up till 1965.

I devoured that anthology and did so not long after its initial publication – perhaps three or four years at most; I’d recently discovered SF in the pages of Heinlein’s Starman Jones, Del Rey’s The Runaway Robot and Campbell’s Astounding Tales of Space and Time.

That SF Hall of Fame anthology was a godsend: it introduced me to so many fine new writers, Cordwainer Smith not the least among them.

Now what you have to remember is that this all took place something like forty years ago and that the publishing landscape – especially for genre fiction like SF – was not anything like it was today; Asimov’s The Hugo Winners had just been published a few years before, Ellison’s Dangerous Visions was burning up the bookshelves and F&SF, the recently retitled Analog, Galaxy, Amazing Stories, New Worlds and lesser known magazines were the primary sources for short science fiction. Anthologies were few and far between, with Wollheim and Carr’s and Merrill’s Best of the Year collections being one of the few places that the magazine fiction would be reprinted.

There was no such thing as a bookstore chain – no Amazon, no Ebay (nor even personal home computers). The interested and avid science fiction fan was limited to waiting for the monthly installments of the magazines to arrive and was considered lucky if they had a local bookstore that bothered to stock a half-way decent selection of SF.

At the time, I loved anthologies. I could purchase a single book (usually for anywhere from 15 to 50 cents!) and meet a whole slew of authors I’d never been exposed to before; I could then use this research to hunt up novels by the writers who’s work I enjoyed. There really were only three ways to discover new works and new writers – the anthologies and magazines, the huckster’s rooms at conventions and used bookstores.

The one thing that they all shared in common was time. Acquiring new works back then was not a pro-active activity, it was a re-active one. Waiting for the magazines to arrive (waiting 30 days for what you’d consume in one) waiting for something interesting to show up at the used bookstore (I went weekly, if not more frequently), waiting for a con to take place close enough that my parents would allow me to go.

The upshot of all this waiting was that if you found an author who’s work you really liked, chances were you just couldn’t go out and find something else by them. And when you did find something by them you’d never seen before, you often felt that you’d made the find of a century. Then you’d enjoy that new book as fast as you could (usually less than a day for me – most SF back then ran to something like 180 to 240 pages in paperback) – and then you’d be sitting around waiting again.

Such was my experience with Cordwainer Smith. I read Scanners and to say that it was unusual and unlike anything else I’d read up until then is to merely echo what just about everyone else has said about his work. He simply drowned me in new concepts and visions of the future, starting with the idea that space was so dangerous and painful that a special breed of man had to be built in order to be able to handle it. The whole complex life of a Scanner – writing nails, an abbreviated form of English, new names for everything (the ‘Up and Out’ for space), records full of smells – it was simply an overwhelming experience to read that story for the first time.

In Scanners, Smith exposes us to the future of mankind, the far future, and it is called the Instrumentality. A word I’d never heard before when used as a name for a government. The chosen name alone bespoke difference, the rest of the story hinted at greatness and detail that had to be left to my imagination because, despite the fact that it was in its third incarnation as a collected story, and despite the fact that several other collections of Smith’s work had previously been published, it would be several years before I would be able to lay my hands on them.

Finally, in the mid-70s, there occurred a Smith Revival, if you will, when Doubleday included a volume of his short stories amongst their Best Of series and Ballentine released Norstrilia, the complete novel, for the first time.

I eagerly snapped these up; Norstrilia has remained one of my go to ‘comfort food’ books over the years. I have also managed to acquire everything else Smith over the years. But it has taken a long time.

Most recently I was teased, disappointed and finally rewarded for perseverance when I managed to snag a copy of Fantasy Book #6, the 1950s semi-prozine that published Smith’s first story for the very first time (not counting his high school work).

Scanners had made the rounds and, no doubt due to the strangeness of the tale and its unconventional style of presentation, had been rejected numerous times. Fantasy Book was a cheap little publication, somewhat akin to a small press magazine, something like a fanzine, edited and published by William Crawford under the name of Garrett Ford.

The magazine had started publication in 1947 and only lasted through 1951. In fact, only two more issues would be produced after the appearance of Scanners Live in Vain; Smith made it into print almost by the skin of his teeth.

Fantasy Book #6 made an appearance on Ebay not that long ago; I stuck it on my watch list and was hopeful of picking it up for a song, but the price quickly went through the roof and I had to abandon my hopes of a really good buy. A couple of weeks later someone else listed another copy – but this time they weren’t showing it off in the usual categories. I lucked out and got it for a song.

Smith would wait until 1952 for the story to be collected by one Frederic Pohl, an SF writer, editor and agent who kept his hand in watching the small presses. This, after waiting five years for it to be accepted by any publication (he’d originally written it in 1945).

But Pohl knew what he was doing. William Crawford was no ordinary editor and small press publisher. He’d been the editor and publisher of Marvel Tales and eventually established the Fantasy Publishing Company; he published one of the first SF books ever appearing in book form in 1936, the only book by Lovecraft to appear while the author was still alive and a whole host of other authors who would eventually come to be recognized as masters in the field.

Pohl’s practiced eye saw what Crawford had seen when he wrote this introduction to Scanners: “…the author’s treatment of the subject is so completely different that it makes “SCANNERS” one of the most outstanding stories to appear in any magazine!”

Eleven years after Pohl’s inclusion of Scanners in his anthology Beyond the End of Time, Smith’s first collection – You Will Never Be The Same – appeared in print.

And just a few years later I’d be reading it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. I’d soon embark on my own long quest to acquire his works and, like Cordwainer Smith, I’d wait far too long to accomplish the task.

Here’s a copy of the cover of Fantasy Book featuring an illustration for Scanners:  Martel appears to be adjusting his breathing rate – or perhaps his volume.

And here’s the first page of the story as originally published:

A Few Notes on Collecting Cordwainer is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

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