Letters from Paul: Some Letters from Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Who Wrote Science Fiction as Cordwainer Smith

Edited by Rosana Hart

Would you like to glimpse behind the scenes and read family letters from Paul M.A. Linebarger (who was Cordwainer Smith), many written in his own hand?

I've compiled a 54-page book which is now out of stock.  We will not reprint more anytime soon. We may bring it out as a paperback book sometime, and you might be able to find a used copy someplace.

It's comb-bound, 8.5" by 11" and contains a dozen letters written between 1933 and 1962. Two of the longest letters, written to me when I was a baby, spell out his personal philosophy—written, I'm sure, in case he never returned from the war. (The legibility of a few of the letters is a little bad, specially when he wrote in red ink or didn't change his typewriter ribbon. But it's all readable.)

I've put one of the letters on another page in its entirety.

It also includes a list of my father's travels from birth to 1957.

Contents of Letters from Paul

• Introduction, by Rosana Hart
• Letter to his parents from London, March 1933...page 6
• Poem, July 1943...page 13
• First letter from India, September 1943...page 14
• A Letter on Right and Wrong, September 1943...page 16
• A Letter on Permissible Wrong, October 1943...page 23
• The Message from a Living God, Chungking, March 28, 1944...page 31
• Two letters to his mother, 1944...page 39
• Letter from Tokyo,1951...page 42
• Letter from Singapore, 1954...page 44
• Letter from Canberra, 1957...page 45
• Letter about Cuban Missile Crisis, 25 October 1962...page 47
• Emergency Family Passport, 1922, Shanghai...page 49
• Map and edited list of travels of Paul Linebarger through 1957... page 51
  (Letters not specified are to me.—Rosana)