Cordwainer Smith Blog

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

There’s a page on my website that has a photo gallery of the science fiction art of Craig Moore, or at least his Cordwainer Smith art. I really like his work and with his permission have put some of the images onto t-shirts that you can see at my Cafepress Cordwainer Smith t-shirt store.

Recently Craig emailed me that he had done more Cordwainer Smith art,

Read the rest of this entry »

by Steve Davidson, The Crotchety Old Fan

I’ve made no secret (elsewhere) of my gushing fanboy affliction for the science fiction author A Bertram Chandler.   I’m about to inflict it upon you all here within the hallowed pages of another author who’s star burns as brightly as Chandler’s  in my science fictional heaven.

I do so for two very Smith-related reasons.  First, I’ll abuse my privileges a bit to mention, briefly, that I think Chandler is deserving of the Rediscovery Award Committee’s consideration.  There. I said it, and I’m not ashamed to have done so.  I don’t know of any place more appropriate to champion the cause of non-corporeal authors than here.  I’ll close this interlude by saying that if the Committee wants a dissertation, presentation, slides, graphs or an impassioned telephone call, all they have to do is ask.

My second reason for raising Chandler is the homage he paid to Cordwainer Smith in no less than two of his novels. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess some of my ancestors in the US South were slaveholders, because there are black Linebargers. Readers from other countries may not know that after slavery ended in the United States, after our Civil War, it was not uncommon for newly emancipated people to take the last name of the former slave-owners.

I get Google Alerts for Paul Linebarger, and the other day an obituary turned up for Read the rest of this entry »

by Steve Davidson – The Crotchety Old Fan

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.  Read the rest of this entry »

For decades, there has been discussion about whether Paul M. A. Linebarger, also known as Cordwainer Smith and some other names, was also Kirk Allen. No, he didn’t use that name. But Robert Lindner wrote a book titled The Fifty-Minute Hour, and ever since then, people have been speculating as to whether the Kirk Allen of the story called “The Jet-Propelled Couch” was in fact my father – or at least a character based on my father. Read the rest of this entry »

by Steve Davidson – The Crotchety Old Fan

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 – Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I got an email from a sharp-eyed employee of the Library of Congress who is also a Cordwainer Smith fan. He had come across this photo and thought it might be mislabeled. It said that it was of W.W. Linebarger; click on the image to see the LOC page about it.

W.W. Linebarger was Wayne Wentworth Linebarger, my father’s younger brother. There’s a strong family resemblance but I was pretty sure the photo was of Wentworth (as we always called him). I emailed his daughter and she agreed that it’s definitely him. It was taken in 1943.

It’s a pleasure to me to see Wentworth in a photo again, as he is in large part responsible for my love of photography. He gave me my first good camera, and whenever I saw him we’d talk photography. He loved boating too.

Guest Blogger Steve Davidson blogs as The Crotchety Old Fan, maintains the Classic Science Fiction Channel website and is currently trying his hand at a science fiction novel, following a 20 year career in non-fiction.  His latest non-fiction book, A Parent’s Guide to Paintball, will be released this coming April.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m Cordwainer Smith’s daughter, but I’m not really a serious science fiction fan. So while I can do this blog okay, I’m thinking that there may be some of you readers who actually have more interesting things to say about Cordwainer Smith stories, his vision, his place in science fiction, or whatever. Commentary on other science fiction authors that you like and why you think other CS fans would like them would also be welcome. If you write science fiction yourself, what influence has CS had on your writing. Come to think of it, if you don’t write science fiction, how about a post on how CS influenced your life?

Would you like to do a guest blog post, or several?

If you are interested,

Read the rest of this entry »