The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal
Encyclopedia
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" is a science fiction
short story
by Cordwainer Smith
, set in Smith's "Instrumentality
" universe. It was first published in Amazing Stories
in May 1964, and is collected in The Rediscovery of Man
compendium.
while long-lived turtle underpeople run the ship, until the need for a "true human" arises.
A deep space probe is found. It tells a brilliantly conceived but utterly false story about the plight of a group of settlers calling themselves the Arachosians. Suzdal is deceived and turns his ship towards the planet Arachosia and reenters hibernation.
When he arrives he learns the horrible truth. The original settlers nearly went extinct, succumbing to a plague that (in Smith's words) rendered "femininity carcinogenic." They were only able to save their women by chemically (and later genetically) making them male. However, the resulting society is deeply unbalanced by the lack of females and ordinary family structure. The Arachosians, not truly male or female and calling themselves "klopts", realize on an instinctive level what they are missing and as a result, hate normal human beings with unbridled fervor and regard them as abominations to be destroyed (even though they have not seen one in many generations). To carry out this plan, they have dispatched traps in the form of messages, such as the one Suzdal encountered, throughout the galaxy.
When Suzdal wakes up, the Arachosians are already crawling over the outside of his ship. On the advice of an artificial security officer, he uses an emergency device intended to send his large spacecraft back a few seconds in time to instead hurl feline genetic material (coded to evolve for intelligence and to obey Suzdal) millions of years back on the far side of the local moon. A race of advanced, space-faring cat-descendants appears instantaneously and hail Suzdal as their god and creator. They engage the Arachosians at his order, allowing him to escape.
Despite saving the ship and successfully concealing Earth's location from the Arachosians, Suzdal is stripped of rank, name, life and finally death, finding himself sentenced to the prison planet Shayol for his misuse of the time device. He is later seen in the story "A Planet Named Shayol
".
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith – pronounced CORDwainer – was the pseudonym used by American author Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a noted East Asia scholar and expert in psychological warfare...
, set in Smith's "Instrumentality
Instrumentality of Mankind
In 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...
" universe. It was first published in Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
in May 1964, and is collected in The Rediscovery of Man
The Rediscovery of Man
The 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...
compendium.
Plot
Commander Suzdal is a captain of "The Navy and the Instrumentality" sent on a "one man" mission of exploration (in actuality he is accompanied by several generations of "Turtle-People"). He hibernates in cryogenic sleepCryonics
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
while long-lived turtle underpeople run the ship, until the need for a "true human" arises.
A deep space probe is found. It tells a brilliantly conceived but utterly false story about the plight of a group of settlers calling themselves the Arachosians. Suzdal is deceived and turns his ship towards the planet Arachosia and reenters hibernation.
When he arrives he learns the horrible truth. The original settlers nearly went extinct, succumbing to a plague that (in Smith's words) rendered "femininity carcinogenic." They were only able to save their women by chemically (and later genetically) making them male. However, the resulting society is deeply unbalanced by the lack of females and ordinary family structure. The Arachosians, not truly male or female and calling themselves "klopts", realize on an instinctive level what they are missing and as a result, hate normal human beings with unbridled fervor and regard them as abominations to be destroyed (even though they have not seen one in many generations). To carry out this plan, they have dispatched traps in the form of messages, such as the one Suzdal encountered, throughout the galaxy.
When Suzdal wakes up, the Arachosians are already crawling over the outside of his ship. On the advice of an artificial security officer, he uses an emergency device intended to send his large spacecraft back a few seconds in time to instead hurl feline genetic material (coded to evolve for intelligence and to obey Suzdal) millions of years back on the far side of the local moon. A race of advanced, space-faring cat-descendants appears instantaneously and hail Suzdal as their god and creator. They engage the Arachosians at his order, allowing him to escape.
Despite saving the ship and successfully concealing Earth's location from the Arachosians, Suzdal is stripped of rank, name, life and finally death, finding himself sentenced to the prison planet Shayol for his misuse of the time device. He is later seen in the story "A Planet Named Shayol
A Planet Named Shayol
"A Planet Named Shayol" is a story by Cordwainer Smith set in his Instrumentality universe. It was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1961....
".