Cordwainer Smith – pronounced
CORDwainer – was the
pseudonymA pseudonym is a fictitious name used by a person, or sometimes, a group.Pseudonyms are often used to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre and computer hackers' handles. Actors, musicians, and other...
used by
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913–August 6, 1966) for his
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
works. Linebarger was also a noted
East AsiaEast Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about , or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang,...
scholar and expert in
psychological warfareThe U.S. Department of Defense defines psychological warfare as:"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national...
.
Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller
AtomskAtomsk, first published in 1949, is a Cold War spy novel by "Carmichael Smith", one of several pseudonyms used by Paul Linebarger, who wrote fiction most prolifically as Cordwainer Smith....
), "Anthony Bearden" (for his
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels
Ria and
Carola).
Biography
Linebarger was born in
Milwaukee, WisconsinMilwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin and 23rd largest in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. Its estimated 2008 population was 604,477. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the...
. His father was Paul M. W. Linebarger, a
lawyerA lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person licensed to practice law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain stability, and deliver...
and political
activistActivism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social change, political change, economic justice, or environmental wellbeing...
with close ties to the leaders of the
Chinese revolution of 1911The Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution , also known as the 1911 Revolution or the Chinese Revolution, began with the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911 and ended with the abdication of Emperor Puyi on February 12, 1912...
. As a result of those connections, Linebarger's
godfatherA godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. Judaism has this equivalent in the circumcision ceremony. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother...
was
Sun Yat-senSun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Republican China, Sun is frequently referred to as the Father of the Nation. Sun played an instrumental role in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty in October 1911, the last imperial dynasty of China...
, considered the father of Chinese nationalism. As a child, Linebarger was
blindedBlindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
in his right eye; the vision in his remaining eye was impaired by infection. When he later pursued his father's interest in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, Linebarger became a close confidant of
Chiang Kai-shekChiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He was an influential member of the Kuomintang and Sun Yat-sen's close ally. He became the commandant of Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy and took Sun's place in the party when the latter died in 1925...
. His father moved his family to
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and then
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
while Sun Yat-sen was struggling against contentious warlords in China. As a result, Linebarger was familiar with six languages by adulthood.
At the age of 23, he received a Ph.D. in Political Science from
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
. From 1937 to 1946, Linebarger held a faculty appointment at
Duke UniversityDuke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892...
, where he began producing highly regarded works on Far Eastern affairs. While retaining his professorship at Duke after the beginning of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he began serving as a second lieutenant of the
United States ArmyThe United States Army is the branch of the United States Military responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military and is one of seven uniformed services...
, where he was involved in the creation of the
Office of War InformationOWI the government agency should not be confused with OWI the hobby robotics companyThe United States Office of War Information was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945...
and the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. He also helped organize the Army's first psychological warfare section. In 1943, he was sent to China to coordinate military intelligence operations. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of major.
In 1936, Linebarger married Margaret Snow. They had a daughter in 1942 and another in 1947. They divorced in 1949. In 1950, Linebarger married Genevieve Collins; they remained married until his death from a heart attack in 1966, in Baltimore,
MarylandMaryland is a state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia to the south and west, Pennsylvania to the north, and Delaware to the east. It is comparable in size to the European country of Belgium. According to the U.S...
.
In 1947, Linebarger moved to the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where he served as Professor of Asiatic Studies. He used his experiences in the war to write the book
Psychological Warfare (1948), which is regarded by many in the field as a classic text. He eventually rose to the rank of colonel in the reserves. He was recalled to advise the British forces in the
Malayan EmergencyThe Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army , the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, from 1948 to 1960....
and the U.S. Eighth Army in the
Korean WarThe Korean War is a war that started between North Korea and South Korea on 25 June 1950 and paused with an armistice signed 27 July, 1953...
. While he was known to call himself a "visitor to small wars", he refrained from becoming involved in
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
, but is known to have done undocumented work for the
Central Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
. He traveled extensively and became a member of the
Foreign Policy Association“The complexity and multiplicity of the foreign policy questions facing the U.S. today places a premium on intelligent understanding of the issues by the widest possible cross-section of citizens…I am particularly impressed with the approach which the Foreign Policy Association has taken.”- , 1960...
, and was called upon to advise then–U.S. President
John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
.
Linebarger expressed a wish to retire to
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
, which he had visited in his travels, but died at age 53 in the U.S. Colonel Linebarger is buried in
Arlington National CemeteryArlington National Cemetery, in Arlington County, Virginia is a military cemetery in the United States, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a descendant of Martha Washington. The...
, Section 35, Grave Number 4712. His widow, Genevieve Collins Linebarger, was interred with him on 16 November 1981.
Linebarger was long rumored to have been the original for "Kirk Allen," the fantasy-haunted subject of "The Jet-Propelled Couch," a chapter in psychologist Robert M. Lindner's best-selling 1954 collection of case histories,
The Fifty-Minute Hour. According to Cordwainer Smith scholar Alan C. Elms, this fannish speculation first reached print in
Brian AldissBrian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is a prolific English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by SF pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
's 1973 history of science fiction,
Billion Year Spree; Aldiss, in turn, claimed to have gotten the information from
Leon StoverLeon Eugene Stover was an anthropologist, a Sinologist, and a science fiction fan, who wrote both fiction and nonfiction. He was a scholar of the works of H. G. Wells and Robert A. Heinlein.-Scholarly career:...
. More recently, both Elms and librarian Lee Weinstein have gathered much circumstantial evidence to support the case for Linebarger being "Allen," but both concede that there is no direct proof that Linebarger was ever a patient of Lindner's or that he suffered from a disorder similar to that of "Kirk Allen." Even if one accepted the likelihood that there is some connection, one would also have to conclude that the case history is so heavily fictionalized that "Kirk Allen" might be a
compositeA composite character is a character in a fictional work or non-fictional work that is composed of two or more individuals.In fictional works the composite character may be real historical or biographical figures used as models for an original piece of fiction, or they may be fictional themselves...
of Linebarger and another patient, and that it is impossible to assign biographical details from "Allen" to Linebarger.
Science fiction
A notable characteristic of Linebarger's science fiction is that most of his stories are set in the same universe, with a unified chronology; some anthologies of Linebarger's fiction include a chart, with each of his stories inserted into the appropriate slot in the timeline.
Linebarger's stories are unusual, even by the standards of
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
, sometimes being written in narrative styles closer to traditional
Chinese storiesChinese literature extends back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novel that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese...
than to most English-language fiction. The total volume of his science fiction output is relatively small, due to his time-consuming profession and his early death: Smith's writings consist of a single novel, originally published in two volumes in edited form as
The Planet Buyer (also known as
The Boy Who Bought Old Earth (1964) and
The Underpeople (1968), and later restored to its original form as
NorstriliaNorstrilia is the only novel published by Paul Linebarger under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith, which he used for his science-fiction works...
(1975)), and 32 short stories (all of them gathered in
The Rediscovery of ManThe Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith is a 1993 book containing the complete collected short fiction of science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. It was edited by James A...
, including two versions of the short story "War No. 81-Q"). All these writings suggest a rich universe developing over a long period of time, but leave much to be guessed by the reader.
Linebarger's cultural links to China are partially expressed in the pseudonym "Felix C. Forrest", which he used in addition to "Cordwainer Smith":
Sun Yat-SenSun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Republican China, Sun is frequently referred to as the Father of the Nation. Sun played an instrumental role in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty in October 1911, the last imperial dynasty of China...
suggested to Linebarger, his godson, that he adopt the Chinese name "Lin Bai-lo" , which may be roughly translated as "Forest of Incandescent Bliss". In his later years, Linebarger proudly wore a tie with the
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
characters for this name embroidered on it.
As an expert in psychological warfare, Linebarger was very interested in the then newly-developing fields of
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
and
psychiatryPsychiatry is a medical specialty officially devoted to the treatment and study of mental disorders. The term was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808....
, and inserted many of their concepts into his fiction. His fiction often has religious overtones or motifs, particularly evident in characters who have no control over their actions. In "Christianity in the Science Fiction of 'Cordwainer Smith'", James P. Jordan argued for the importance of Anglicanism to Linebarger's works back to 1949. However, Linebarger's daughter Rosana Hart has indicated that he did not become an Anglican until 1950 and was not strongly interested in religion until later still. In the introduction to the collection
Rediscovery of Man it is indicated that from around 1960 he became more devout and expressed this in his writing. Linebarger's works are sometimes included in analyses of Christianity in fiction, along with the works of authors such as
C. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist...
and J.R.R. Tolkien.
The bulk of Cordwainer Smith's stories are set in an era starting some 14,000 years in the future. The
Instrumentality of MankindIn the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith, the Instrumentality of Mankind refers both to Smith's personal future history and universe and to the central government of humanity...
rules Earth and goes on to control other planets later inhabited by humanity. The Instrumentality attempts to revive old cultures and languages in a process known as the Rediscovery of Man. This rediscovery can be seen either as the initial period when humankind emerges from a mundane utopia and the nonhuman Underpeople gain freedom from slavery, or as a continuing process begun by the Instrumentality, encompassing the whole cycle, where mankind is constantly at risk of falling back into its bad old ways.
Smith's stories describe a long
future historyA future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors in the subgenre of speculative fiction to construct as a common background for fiction...
of Earth, from a postapocalyptic landscape with walled cities defended by agents of the Instrumentality to a state of sterile utopia in which freedom can be found only deep below the surface, in long-forgotten and buried
anthropogenicAnthropogenic effects, processes or materials are those that are derived from human activities, as opposed to those occurring in biophysical environments without human influence....
strata. These features may place Smith's works within the
Dying Earth subgenreThe Dying Earth subgenre is a sub-category of science fantasy which takes place either at the end of life on Earth, or the End of Time, when the laws of the universe themselves fail. More generally, the Dying Earth sub-genre encompasses science fiction works set in the far distant future in a...
of
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
, but it can be argued that they are ultimately more optimistic and distinctive.
Smith's most celebrated short story is his first-published, "
Scanners Live in Vain"Scanners Live in Vain" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith , set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in the magazine Fantasy Book in 1950...
", which led many of its earliest readers to assume that "Cordwainer Smith" was a new pen name for one of the established giants of the genre. It was selected as one of the best science fiction short stories of the pre-
Nebula AwardThe Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years...
period by the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of AmericaScience Fiction Writers of America, or SFWA , was founded in 1965 by Damon Knight. The organization has since changed its name to Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., but continues with the acronym SFWA after a very brief use of the acronym SFFWA.SFWA is a nonprofit association of...
, and appeared in
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 is a 1970 anthology of science fiction short stories, edited by Robert Silverberg. It is generally considered one of the best, if not the best, of the many science fiction anthologies...
.
Linebarger's stories feature strange and vivid creations, such as:
- the planet Norstrilia
Norstrilia is the only novel published by Paul Linebarger under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith, which he used for his science-fiction works...
(Old North Australia), a semi-arid planet where an immortality drug called stroon is harvested from gigantic, virus-infected sheep each weighing more than 100 tons. Norstrilians are nominally the richest people in the galaxy and defend their immensely valuable stroon with sophisticated weapons (as shown in the story "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" is a classic science fiction short story written by Cordwainer Smith, first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1961. It is collected most recently in The Rediscovery of Man...
"). However, extremely high taxes ensure that everyone on the planet lives a frugal, rural life, like the farmers of old Australia, to keep the Norstrilians tough.
- the punishment world of Shayol (cf. Sheol
Sheol , in Hebrew שאול , is the "abode of the dead", the "underworld", or "pit". Sheol is the common destination of both the righteous and the unrighteous dead, as recounted in Ecclesiastes and Job....
), where criminals are punished by the regrowth and harvesting of their organs for transplanting
- planoforming spacecraft
A spacecraft is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space then returns to the Earth. For an orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters a closed orbit around the planetary body. Spacecraft used for human spaceflight carry people on board as...
, which are crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats to defend against the attacks of malevolent entities in space, who are perceived by the humans as dragons, and by the cats as gigantic rats, in "The Game of Rat and Dragon".
- the Underpeople, animals modified genetically into human form and intelligence to fulfill servile roles, and treated as property. Several stories feature clandestine efforts to liberate the underpeople and grant them civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights and freedoms that protect individuals from unwarranted government action and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression....
. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality. Names of Underpeople are based on their animal species. Thus C'Mell is based on a cat; and D'Joan, a Joan of ArcSaint Joan of Arc is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII...
figure, is a dog by origin. See "The Dead Lady of Clown Town"The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1964. It was included in the collection The Best of Cordwainer Smith and most recently in The...
" and "The Ballad of Lost C'MellThe Ballad of Lost C'Mell is a classic science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith. It was first published in October 1962 in Galaxy Magazine, and since reprinted in several compilations and omnibus editions....
".
- Habermans and their supervisors, Scanners, who are essential for space travel, but at the cost of having their sensory nerve
A nerve is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of peripheral axons . A nerve provides a common pathway for the electrochemical nerve impulses that are transmitted along each of the axons. Nerves are found only in the peripheral nervous system...
s cut to block the "pain of space", and who perceive only by vision and various life-support implants. A technological breakthrough removes the need for the treatment, but resistance among the Scanners to their perceived loss of status ensues, forming the basis of the story "Scanners Live in Vain".
- Early works in the timeline include neologism
A neologism ; from Greek νές is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event...
s which are not explained to any great extent, but serve to produce an atmosphere of strangeness. These words are usually derived from non-English words. For instance, manshonyagger derives from the German words "menschen" meaning, in some senses, "men" or "mankind", and "jäger", meaning a hunter; referring to war machines that roam the wild lands between the walled cities and prey on men, except for those they can identify as Germans. Another example is "Meeya Meefla", the only city to have preserved its name from the pre-atomic era (evidently Miami, Fla.).
- Character names in the stories often derive from words in languages other than English. Smith seemed particularly fond of using numbers for this purpose. For instance, the name "Lord Sto Odin" in the story "Under Old Earth" is derived from the Russian words for "One hundred and one", сто один. Quite a few of the names mean "five-six" in different languages, including both the robot Fisi (fi[ve]-si[x]), the dead Lady Panc Ashash (in Sanskrit "pañcha" [पञ्च] is "five" and "ṣaṣ" [षष्] is "six"), Limaono (lima-ono, both in Hawaiian and/or Fijian), Englok (ng5-luk6 [五-六], in Cantonese), Goroke (go-roku [五-六], Japanese) and Femtiosex ("fifty-six" in Swedish) in "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" as well as the main character in "Think Blue, Count Two", Veesey-koosey, which is an English transcription of the Finnish words "viisi" (five) and "kuusi" (six). Four of the characters in "Think Blue, Count Two" are called "Thirteen" in different languages: Tiga-belas (both in Indonesian and Malay), Trece (Spanish), Talatashar (based on an Arabic dialect form ثلاث عشر, thalāth ʿashar) and Sh'san (based on Mandarin 十三, shísān, where the "í" is never pronounced). Other names, notably that of Lord Jestocost (Russian Жестокость, Cruelty), are non-English but not numbers.
- Remnants of our own contemporary culture accordingly appear as valued antiquities or sometimes just as unrecognized survivals, lending a rare feeling of nostalgia for the present to the stories.
Published non-fiction
- 1937, The Political Doctrines of Sun-Yat-Sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press
- 1938, Government in Republican China, London: McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-88355-081-4
- 1941, The China of Chiang K'ai-shek: A Political Study, Boston: World Peace Foundation, ISBN 0-8371-6779-5
- 1948, Psychological Warfare, Washington: Infantry Journal Press; revised second edition, 1954, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce
- 1951, Foreign milieux (HBM 200/1), Dept. of Defense, Research and Development Board
- 1951, Immediate improvement of theater-level psychological warfare in the Far East, Operations Research Office
The Operations Research Office was a civilian military research center founded in 1948 by the United States Army. It was run under contract by Johns Hopkins University. The organization's offices were originally at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. They moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland in 1952...
, Johns Hopkins University
- 1954, Far Eastern Government and Politics: China and Japan (with Djang Chu and Ardath W. Burks), Van Nostrand
- 1956, "Draft statement of a ten-year China and Indochina policy, 1956-1966", Foreign Policy Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania
- 1965, Essays on military psychological operations, Special Operations Research Office, American University
American University is a private United Methodist-affiliated research university in Washington, D.C., USA, the main campus of which comes to a corner at the intersection of Nebraska and Massachusetts Avenues at Ward Circle, straddling the Spring Valley, Wesley Heights, and American University Park...
External links