Artificial Animal People: The Underpeople from the Instrumentality series, who are animals engineered to have human intelligence and a more humanoid form.However, they are devoted to protecting humanity and are benevolent, creating a utopia for mankind. They are corrupt, ruthless, callous, and make arbitrary decisions. Aristocrats Are Evil: Played with in the case of the Lords of the Instrumentality.Arc Number: "Five-six" appears in several of Smith's tales, mostly as names of people and places in different languages.Even then, however, they insist on paying cash on the nose, which is considered bad form in a credit-driven society. On the bright side, they do pay for their meals. Given their superior telepathic powers and equal weaponry, mankind can do nothing but put up with these rude guests. Aliens Are Bastards: The Apicians are a downplayed case."Mark Elf" and "Queen of the Afternoon" are set in an era following some recovery, and even in stories set millennia later, the scars of the war remain.
After the End: A good chunk of the Instrumentality cycle is set after the Ancient Wars, which left only Morons and Saints barely surviving on a wasted, poison world, hiding from death machines." Western Science Is So Wonderful" (1958).No description can do justice to discovering the wonder of Smith's words firsthand.įrank Zappa named him in his influences list on the Freak Out album.ĭo not confuse him with "Cordwainer Bird", the pseudonym fellow author Harlan Ellison used for works he personally disowned. Strong suggestion: read the stories first.
Influenced by Chinese short stories, Smith's books cannot be mistaken for the work of any other writer. note And no, it's not that Instrumentality, but the name came from Smith's stories.
The majority of his Science Fiction work describes the future history of the Instrumentality of Mankind, which was richly described but left much to the reader's imagination. His godfather was Sun Yat-sen, and he and his father were confidants of Chiang Kai-shek. He was a man of the world, but had particular ties to China and the Far East. During the Korean War, he was asked to write a set of qualifications for the head of psychological operations for the US army he got interested enough in the possibilities of the job and so set things up that he was the only person qualified to do it. He looked like a classic nerd, wrote weird little Science Fiction stories about cats, and was apparently regarded with respect by a generation of top US diplomatic and intelligence specialists. In fact, he literally Wrote the Book on psychological warfare - the standard US Army textbook on the subject. Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Doctor Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (J– August 6, 1966): Science Fiction writer, poet, and psychological warfare expert.
0 kommentar(er)
