About the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award

"So there's a resplendent new award in the science fiction universe: the Cordwainer," observes Robert Silverberg in his "Reflections" column in the March 2002 issue of Asimov's. He continues:

"The Cordwainer -- or to give it its formal name, the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award -- is intended, so its bylaws declare, to recognize the creative output of 'a science fiction or fantasy writer whose work deserves renewed attention or 'Rediscovery.' This writer's work should display unusual originality and should embody the spirit of Cordwainer Smith's fiction, according to one or more criteria identified by the Awards Committee from time to time."

The Awards Committee is a highly distinguished panel with an encyclopedic knowledge of science fiction past and present: Robert Silverberg, Gardner Dozois, John Clute and Scott Edelman. In 2001 the panel awarded the first Cordwainer to Olaf Stapledon, presented in conjunction with the Hugos at the Millennium Philcon.

The Award itself was inspired by an earlier 'Reflections' column by Silverberg, puzzling over the phenomenon of the evaporation of reputations into obscurity. This observation led Cordwainer Smith Foundation trustee Professor Alan C. Elms, past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, and biographer of the man behind the Cordwainer Smith nom de plume, Paul M. A. Linebarger, to propose a Rediscovery Award as the guiding purpose of the Cordwainer. The Foundation's other trustees include Paul M A Linebarger's two daughters and Washington consultant Ralph Benko.

Additional information on the Cordwainer, its background, history, purposes and administration, may be found at www.cordwainer-smith.com, a highly regarded website maintained by Rosana Hart and devoted to her father's life and work.

Cordwainer Smith's masterpieces of science fiction include such works as "Scanners Live in Vain,""The Lady Who Sailed the Soul," "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell," and "the Game of Rat and Dragon," reprinted in his collected stories, The Rediscovery of Man (NESFA Press, Box 809, Framingham, MA 07101, $24.95), and the novel Norstrilia, (also available from NESFA).