Smith, ca. 1966.
'Cordwainer Smith' — pronounced ''CORDwainer''
[1] — was the
pseudonym used by
American author 'Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger' (
July 11,
1913–
August 6,
1966) for his
science fiction works. Linebarger was also a noted
East Asia scholar and expert in
psychological warfare.
Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller ''
Atomsk''), "Anthony Bearden" (for his
poetry) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels ''Ria'' and ''Carola'').
Biography
Linebarger was born in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was Paul M. W. Linebarger, a
lawyer and political
activist with close ties to the leaders of the
Chinese revolution of 1911. As a result of those connections, Linebarger's
godfather was
Sun Yat-sen, considered the father of Chinese nationalism. As a child, Linebarger was
blinded in his right eye; the vision in his remaining eye was impaired by infection. When he later pursued his father's interest in
China, Linebarger became a close confidant of
Chiang Kai-shek. His father moved his family to
France and then
Germany 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 University. From
1937 to
1946, Linebarger held a faculty appointment at
Duke University, where he began producing highly regarded works on Far Eastern affairs. While retaining his professorship at Duke after the beginning of
World War II, he began serving as a second lieutenant of the
U.S. Army, where he was involved in the creation of the
Office of War Information 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,
Maryland.
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 Emergency and the U.S. Eighth Army in the
Korean War. While he was known to call himself a "visitor to small wars", he refrained from becoming involved in
Vietnam, but is known to have done undocumented work for the
Central Intelligence Agency. He traveled extensively and became a member of the
Foreign Policy Association, and was called upon to advise then–U.S. President
John F. Kennedy.
Linebarger expressed a wish to retire to
Australia, which he had visited in his travels, but died at age 53 in the U.S. Colonel Linebarger is buried in
Arlington National Cemetery, 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.''
[2] According to Cordwainer Smith scholar Alan C. Elms,
[3] this fannish speculation first reached print in
Brian Aldiss's 1973 history of science fiction, ''Billion Year Spree''; Aldiss, in turn, claimed to have gotten the information from
Leon Stover.
[4] More recently, both Elms and librarian Lee Weinstein
[5] 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
composite of Linebarger and another patient, and that it is impossible to assign biographical details from "Allen" to Linebarger.
[6]
Science fiction writing
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 fiction, sometimes being written in narrative styles closer to traditional
Chinese stories 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 only one 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), later restored to its original form as ''
Norstrilia'' (
1975); and 32 short stories (all of them gathered in ''
The Rediscovery of Man'', including two versions of the short story ''War No. 81-Q''). All these writings suggest a rich universe developing over long periods 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-Sen suggested to Linebarger, his godson, that he adopt the Chinese name "Lin Bai-lo" (林白楽), which may be roughly translated as "Forest of Incandescent Bliss". In his later years, Linebarger proudly wore a tie with the
Chinese characters for this name embroidered on it.
As an expert in psychological warfare, Linebarger was very interested in the then newly-developing fields of
psychology and
psychiatry, 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 of 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.
[7] 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.
[8] 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. Lewis or
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 Mankind 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 to its bad old ways.
Smith's stories describe a long
future history of Earth, from a
postapocalyptic landscape with walled cities defended by agents of the Instrumentality to a state of utopia in which freedom can be found only deep below the surface, in long-forgotten and buried
anthropogenic strata. These features may place Smith's works within the
Dying Earth subgenre of
science fiction, but it can be argued that they are ultimately more optimistic and distinctive.
Smith's most celebrated short story is perhaps his first-published, ''
Scanners Live in Vain'', 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 SF short stories of the pre-
Nebula Award period by the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and appeared in ''
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964''.
Linebarger's stories feature strange and vivid creations, such as:
★ Planet
Norstrilia, a semi-arid planet where an immortality drug is harvested from gigantic virus-infected sheep, each weighing more than 100 tons
★ The punishment world of ''Shayol'' (cf.
Sheol), where criminals are punished by the regrowth and harvesting of their organs for transplanting
★ ''Planoforming''
spacecraft, which are crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats and which defend themselves against the attacks of unknown malevolent entities in space with the flash of small atomic weapons (these entities are perceived by the humans as dragons, and by the cats as gigantic rats)
★ 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 equal rights. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality.
★ ''Habermans'' and their supervisors, ''Scanners'', whose sensory
nerves have been cut to block the "pain of space", and who perceive only by vision and various life-support implants. Other modes of perception can be temporarily restored to scanners by "cranching".
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, 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
Published fiction
Selected short stories
Book format
★ 1947, ''Ria'' (writing as "Felix C. Forrest")
★ 1948, ''Carola'' (writing as "Felix C. Forrest")
★ 1949, ''Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense'' (writing as "Carmichael Smith")
★ 1963, ''You Will Never Be The Same'' (collection of short sf stories)
★ 1964, ''The Planet Buyer'' (first half of ''Norstrilia'')
★ 1965, ''Space Lords'' (short sf stories)
★ 1966, ''Quest of the Three Worlds'' (four related sf novellas)
★ 1968, ''The Underpeople'' (second half of ''Norstrilia'')
|
★ 1970, ''Under Old Earth and Other Explorations'' (short sf stories)
★ 1971, ''Stardreamer'' (short sf stories)
★ 1975, ''Norstrilia'' (first complete publication)
★ 1975, ''The Best of Cordwainer Smith'' (short sf stories)
★ 1979, ''The Instrumentality of Mankind'' (short sf stories)
★ 1993, ''The Rediscovery of Man'' (definitive & complete compilation of short science fiction writings)
★ 1994, ''Norstrilia'' (corrected edition with variant texts)
|
Notes and references
1. Elms, Alan C., Cordwainer Smith Pronunciation Guide, Ulmus.net, accessed 20 August 2006.
2. Lindner, Robert. ''The Fifty-Minute Hour.'' New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1954.
3. Elms, Alan C. "Behind the Jet-Propelled Couch: Cordwainer Smith & Kirk Allen," ''New York Review of Science Fiction,'' May 2002.
4. Aldiss, Brian W. ''Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction.'' New York: Doubleday, 1973.
5. Weinstein, Lee. "In Search of Kirk Allen," ''New York Review of Science Fiction'', April 2001.
6. See also 'Cordwainer Smith Scholarly Corner by Alan C. Elms
7. Jordan, James B., Christianity In the Science Fiction of "Cordwainer Smith", ''Contra Mundum'', No. 2 Winter 1992
8. "Biography and memories of Paul M. A. Linebarger, who was Cordwainer Smith", www.cordwainer-smith.com
External links
★
The Remarkable Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith Maintained by his daughter Rosana
★
★
Personal data on Paul Linebarger
★
Arlington National Cemetery: Linebarger
★
Unofficial Cordwainer Smith Biography Page
★
LibraryThing author profile
★
Cordwainer Smith's online fiction at ''Free Speculative Fiction Online''
العربية
ä¸å›½
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिनà¥à¤¦à¥€
Italiano
日本語
Português
РуÑÑкий
Español
