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,
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 More
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 More
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 More
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 More
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,
Alan Elms has been working on a biography of CS / PMAL for years, and I often turn to him for answers to questions that readers send me… Here are some of these, reprinted from old ezines of mine. I think the questions are obvious from the answers:
Paul Linebarger wrote a book manuscript called ‘Ethical Dianetics,’ which was in part a response to Ron Hubbard’s book ‘Dianetics.’ Read More
This must be old news to serious fans, but I am constantly amazed at all the articles that turn up about Cordwainer Smith. I discover some of them through using Google Alerts, but today’s post is about an ezine that one of the writers told me about.
It’s a downloadable pdf, available at no cost: efanzines.com/SFC/SteamEngineTime/SET05.pdf I’ve set that PDF link to open in a new window or tab. There are two CS articles in this fanzine, both about Norstrilia. Harry Buerkett, Read More
