Cordwainer Smith Blog

Laminated Rat Brains

Cordwainersdaughter — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:33:36 +0000

Thanks to CS scholar for this find… scroll down a ways: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10372708-23.html Laminated Rat Brains is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

Laminated Rat Brains is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

Damien Broderick’s New Story and Cordwainer Smith Comments

Cordwainersdaughter — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:57:03 +0000

A while back, I had some correspondance with Damien Broderick, often called the dean of Australian science fiction, and he is kindly allowing me to post this article which includes interesting CS comments. You can read The Ruined Queen of Harvest World online here. — Rosana

An Introduction to “The Ruined Queen of Harvest World”

Damien Broderick

It’s as if I’d always lived part of my dream life—these memories of the future—in the strange, terrible universe of the Instrumentality of Man, with its animal-derived Underpeople and laminated robot brains, its enigmatic Lords and Ladies, ancient Daimoni, planoforming ships crossing the terrors of the Up and Out, Viola Siderea, the vast mushroom tower of Earthport rising from fabled Meeya Meefla… I seem to recall these gorgeous, wistful, alarming worlds of the imagination from childhood, alongside Homer and the Grimm Brothers. Yet few of those memorable tales were published until the early 1960s, when I was already 15 or 16, or older, coming into manhood, writing my own first stories. Those extraordinary titles (maybe of them provided by editor Fred Pohl, but drawn from the tales themselves)! “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” “The Lady Who Sailed The Soul,” “The Ballad of Lost C’mell,” “Golden the Ship Was—Oh, Oh, Oh!” They twined into me, pressed tendrils into my brain and heart. And best of all, for this gauche Australian living on the edge of the rind of the world, they uttered a vast future where my homeland was not marginal, not ignored, not forgotten, but transfigured and central.

These days I live in downtown San Antonio, Texas, with my Texan wife Barbara, amid Mexicans for the most part, writing science fiction and popular-science fact and occasionally literary criticism. I have to admit this dislocation still surprises me. But in 1977, half my life ago, I had not yet left Australia’s shores even on a brief pilgrimage to the wider world, except endlessly in mediated imagination. Here’s what I wrote then, introducing an anthology of Aussie science fiction stories:

Australians subsist, as everyone agrees, in a hand-me-down culture. It is of the essence of culture, admittedly, as much to be transmitted as to be renewed, but ours is curiously threadbare and ill-fitting. If a son asks for bread, the odds are high indeed that his father will give him a stone… It’s an inevitable irony, then—and so, perhaps, no irony at all—that the world’s finest science fiction to date was forged to a significant degree in the Australian experience…
…of an American writer, “Cordwainer Smith”.

I had gone in search of Cordwainer Smith twelve years before that, late in 1965, when his second paperback collection of sf stories, Space Lords, revealed that he was living at the time in Canberra, the Australian national capital. Astonishing! It named his stockbroker, a Mr. Greenish—how weirdly suitable, how star-craving mad, a greenish financial advisor!—and invited his American readers to look in on that worthy and “ask him if my credit is good.” A penniless student clutching my own just published scrawny first book of stories, a foolish gift I hoped to press into his hands, I flew at once from Melbourne on a prop jet to find him out, and found only that I had missed him. (Yes, I began my search with the Yellow Pages and a phone call to Mr. Greenish, who surely was aghast at my impertinence.) I did learn Smith’s real name—Dr. Paul M. A. Linebarger—after speaking to Bob Brissenden, reader in the English Department at the Australian National University, a decade or so later chairman of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, and a resolute supporter of funds for “genre writing” in the arts. Brissenden knew Smith’s secret identity. Alas, Linebarger had recently left, I was told, to visit some Pacific islands; if so, he never returned because, on August 6 of the following year, precisely 21 years after a nuclear weapon had obliterated Hiroshima, illness killed him at the appalling age of 53.

His last book was Norstrilia—named in the broad country accent of outback Australia, Nor-strile-yuh—about the boy Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBann from the immensely rich world Old North Australia. Here is how he described that planet, a place not altogether different from my homeland, with its gray-green landscape:

Somebody once singsonged it up, like this:
“Gray lay the land, oh. Gray grass from sky to sky. Not near the weir, dear. Not a mountain, low or high—only hills and gray gray. Watch the dappled dimpled twinkles blooming on the star bar.
“That is Norstrilia…
“Beige-brown sheep lie on blue-gray grass while the clouds rush past, low overhead, like iron pipes ceilinging the world…”

“It is incantatory stuff,” I commented years later, “taking us away from ourselves (if we allow it to) to bring us back. No Australian employing the multiple tongues of science fiction has written so well out of his native experience as Linebarger did from several visits.” I could have gone farther. Perhaps nobody in all the world had ever written the future so well, hauntingly, yearningly.

And then he had gone, barely more than half a century old.

We would never learn the rest of those stories, that history of the deep future, that golden journey—oh, oh, oh.

Well, certainly I’m not foolish enough to imagine I might add to them, might emulate that distinctive voice building layer by layer its deceptively simple confection of East and West, English old as Chaucer’s Tales, Chinese and Japanese voyages into myth and unfamiliar histories, echoes of Rimbaud, and who knew what else? But some reverberation of the voice of Cordwainer Smith drums away down inside, and finally I let it speak… not mimicry of the inimitable, but a respectful bow toward Linebarger’s shade, with a wry grin and maybe a wink.

Damien Broderick, regarded as the dean of Australian sf, has published more than 40 books in the last four and half decades. His two forthcoming short story collections, gatherings of his best short work from that long period, will be released this year by Wilder Publications: Uncle Bones: Four Science Fiction Novellas, and The Qualia Engine: Science Fiction Short Stories.

Damien Broderick’s New Story and Cordwainer Smith Comments is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

2009 Rediscovery Award Goes to A. Merritt

Cordwainersdaughter — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:56:57 +0000

The annual Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award went to A. Merritt this year. The link takes you to the page where I describe what the award is. It is given every summer at Readercon.

Don’t know much about A. Merritt? Or like me, know nothing of him?

Ah, that’s probably part of why our panel of judges — Mike Resnick, Barry Malzberg, Martin H. Greenberg, and Robert J. Sawyer — felt that he needed rediscovery. The most important part being that his works are worth reading and keeping alive.

To find out more about Merritt, you can start at wikipedia, and don’t miss the external links at the end of the page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Merritt

Readers, your thoughts are most welcome.

2009 Rediscovery Award Goes to A. Merritt is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

How to Keep Up with Cordwainer Smith Around the Internet

Cordwainersdaughter — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:21:27 +0000

Here’s how I keep up with Cordwainer Smith blogging and other news: I have google alerts that come into my email, one set for Cordwainer Smith and another set for Paul Linebarger.

Much of what I get this way isn’t very interesting, but there are often fascinating bits. Sometimes I in turn blog about those here, but not usually.

You can sign up for Google Alerts here, and here is their FAQ page.

How to Keep Up with Cordwainer Smith Around the Internet is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

I Haven’t Disappeared to Any Other Galaxy

Cordwainersdaughter — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:33:17 +0000

Since I haven’t posted for a while, I just wanted to let my regular readers know that I’m fine, just very busy with some other websites, not to mention life. I expect to write less often here. But I’ve got some good tidbits on my to-do list. Rosana I Haven’t Disappeared to Any Other Galaxy is a post [...]

I Haven’t Disappeared to Any Other Galaxy is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

You Can Read Several Cordwainer Smith Science Fiction Stories Online Free

Cordwainersdaughter — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:27:00 +0000

There is an ebook edition of Cordwainer Smith’s stories and the publisher (with our agent’s permission) put several of the stories online where you can read them free. If you have never read Cordwainer Smith, this is an easy way to get started. If you are a fan already, you might like to refresh your memory. If you want to get the ebook, I expect you can get to it from the stories.

Here they are:

No, No, Not Rogov!

War No. 81-Q (Rewritten Version)

Mark Elf

The Queen of the Afternoon

Scanners Live in Vain

The Lady Who Sailed The Soul

When the People Fell

There is also a very interesting article by Frederick Pohl, the introduction to a Cordwainer Smith collection called When the People Fell.

I had not realized that my father was beginning to meet science fiction people not long before he died. Here’s a bit from Pohl’s article:

Paul Linebarger kept his pseudonym private. He stayed away from gatherings where science-fiction readers and writers were present. When the World Science Fiction Convention was in Washington in 1963, not more than a mile or two from his home, I urged him to drop in and test the water. I would not tell a soul who he was. If he chose, he could turn around and leave. If not . . . well, then not.

Paul weighed the thought and then, reluctantly, decided against the risk. But, he said, there were a couple of individuals whom he would like to meet if they wouldn’t mind coming to his house. And so it happened. And of course it was a marvelous afternoon. It had to be. Paul was a fine host, and Genevieve—once his student, then his wife—a splendid hostess. Under the scarlet and gold birth scroll calligraphed by Paul’s godfather, Sun Yat-sen, drinking "pukka pegs" (ginger ale and brandy highball, which, Paul said, were what had kept the British army alive in India), in that discovering company the vibrations were optimal…

He enjoyed his guests—particularly, he said, Judith Merril and Algis Budrys—enough so that he felt easier about meeting others in the field. Little by little he did. Some in person, some only by mail, most by phone, and I think that the time was not far off when Paul Linebarger would have made an appearance at a science-fiction convention. Maybe a lot of them. But time ran out. He died of a stroke in 1966, at the bitterly unfair age of fifty-three.

You Can Read Several Cordwainer Smith Science Fiction Stories Online Free is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

Cordwainer Smith on Top 100 or Other Top Lists?

Cordwainersdaughter — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:54:00 +0000

Sometimes my Google Alerts show me places where Cordwainer Smith or his works are on some sort of “best” science fiction list. I’m putting down the ones I know of, and hope that readers will add to this over time.

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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:

The Rediscovery of Man

Space Lords

The Best of Cordwainer Smith

Stardreamer

You Will Never Be the SameHe comments that the first collection listed contains the older stuff.

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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.

NEW: Cordwainer Smith and Paul Linebarger Bookstore Here

Cordwainersdaughter — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:51:46 +0000

Do you ever wonder what odd and interesting things by Cordwainer Smith or Paul M A Linebarger might be out there in the universe of books? I’ve just created another section to this website:

http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/thestore/shop.php

In association with Amazon.com, I’ve made a bookstore with the following areas to browse:

Cordwainer Smith

Paul M A Linebarger

Atomsk, which he wrote under the name Carmichael Smith

Ria, by Felix C Forrest

Carola, by Felix C Forrest

What’s on the Kindle by Cordwainer Smith?

The Kindle Itself

All Science Fiction Books at Amazon

I do love messing around with software, and I think the store came out pretty well. I kept the look of the main website, but what makes it particularly useful is that

You can see what’s at Amazon at the moment.
You can read descriptions and readers’ comments without leaving this site.

If you click through to Amazon, and buy something, I make a small commission, which helps fund this website and my time into it. So it’s much appreciated.

Rosana

NEW: Cordwainer Smith and Paul Linebarger Bookstore Here is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

His Niece Remembers Paul Linebarger

Cordwainersdaughter — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:06:00 +0000

I stay in email and phone contact with my cousin Helen, daughter of my father’s brother Wentworth. She wrote me this:

He has quite a following….who knew! I don’t think we had any idea as children that this facet of his life would receive such recognition. I once asked him how he got the ideas for his science fiction (he had a character in one of his later works who was a girlie-girl –whom he told me was based on something I came up with…cloudy-clouds). His explanation to me at the time was that he had very strange dreams when he had been under anesthesia in the past and that he turned those dreams into his science fiction.

I asked her if I could use that in the blog, and she kindly said yes and added this:

When we (your dad, Genevieve, Marcia, me, and Erica Lindsey) all traveled by car to Mexico (I was 14 at the time), we often had to entertain ourselves because the radio didn’t offer anything more than static in certain areas of the country. One of the songs I sang was Home on the Range. Instead of singing "where the skies are not cloudy all day" instead I sang "where the clouds are not cloudy all day." When your dad asked me what in the world a cloudy cloud was — I explained that it was a gray, dark cloud. A normal cloud was a white, puffy cloud.

Erica Lindsay was about our age too, daughter of a good friend of my father’s. I wasn’t along on the trip because I had my first summer job, for young people who showed promise as scientists. It was a very interesting job, being part of a research team that came up with an estimate of how many people the world could support. I forget what number we came up with, but I think it was smaller than the current total. I didn’t pursue science as a career, but it may have influenced my becoming a librarian later.

His Niece Remembers Paul Linebarger is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

Is Rod McBan a Stranger in a Strange Land?

crotchetyoldfan — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:01:40 +0000

By Steve Davidson

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.

No, No, Not Rogov: A Review by Jim Black

Cordwainersdaughter — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:45:02 +0000

Thanks to new guest blogger Jim Black for today’s article which first appeared on his website. He says:

My interest in science fiction began in the early 70s when I read a copy of Del Rey’s The Runaway Robot. Little did I know that it would be the start of a life time of reading sf. Hundreds of books later I still enjoy reading everything from the classic through the modern authors. My reviews and comments can be found on the Science Fiction Times(http://sciencefictiontimes.blogspot.com/) site.

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Now this is an example of a great science fiction short story. Cordwainer (Paul Linebarger) Smith was one of the best writers the field had to offer. When you read his fiction, it becomes obvious that he influenced later writers such as Roger Zelazny. Some of the same themes and ideas that layed the groundwork for Smith also appear in Zelazny’s fiction. This is most evident in the naming of characters, the classic fiction characters, and the blending of fantastic elements with the more mundane modern settings. Another author whose fiction shows ties to Smith’s is George R. R. Martin. Especially in his early science fiction stories. The way the characters persevere in the face of their inevitable fates is a trademark of both writers. Take “No, No, Not Rogov” as an example.

The prologue describes events in the year A. D. 13,582. It shows us events that do not appear to connect with the rest of the story until the end. The majority of the story takes place in the 1940s and features a team of Soviet scientists. Rogov is the top scientist. His wife Anastasia is a brilliant scientist in her own right. They are working on at top secret project. The only other people with them are 2 security guards. The female guard is secretly in love with Rogov and resents his wife. This is the story of the project and what happens when they are successful. The life of Rogov and the characters who inhabit his world is an example of how dedication can inspire people to achieve great things.

Modern writers would learn a lot by going back and rereading Smith’s short stories.

Highly recommended.

Rating: 10 out of 10.

This story is available on line by clicking here.

No, No, Not Rogov: A Review by Jim Black is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.

The Copt Out

crotchetyoldfan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:55:35 +0000

by Steve Davidson, The Crotchety Old Fan

No, that’s not a misspelling. I’ve just re-read Norstrilia.

Unfortunately, I’ve not had time this week to write up my thoughts and have utterly failed to come up with something else appropriately Cordwainer Smith for this week’s entry.

I’ll have to copt-out this week and simply suggest that you all keep on reading his works – maybe try a re-read (or first-read) of Norstrilia yourselves and please come back next week. By then I’ll have written up the experience – or will submit myself to the Instrumentality for sentencing on Shayol.

The Copt Out is a post from the Cordwainer Smith Blog, run by his daughter.