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THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH
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THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH
Edited, with Introduction and Notes , By J. J. Pierce
[22 Jul 2002—proofed for #bookz]
Split and converted to HTML by bint-e-Molasses
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
"Scanners Live in Vain," copyright 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Co. Inc. for Fantasy Book. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Lady Who Sailed The Soul," copyright 1960 by Galaxy Publishing Co. for Galaxy Magazine, Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Game of Rat and Dragon," copyright 1955 by Galaxy Publishing Co. for Galaxy Science Fiction. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Burning of the Brain," copyright 1958 by Quinn Publishing Co. for If. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!," copyright 1959 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Amazing Science Fiction. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," copyright 1964 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Amazing Stories. Copyright 1971 by Mrs. Genevieve Linebarger.
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town," copyright 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1964. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
"Under Old Earth," copyright 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction. Copyright 1971 by Mrs. Genevieve Linebarger.
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons," copyright 1961 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1961. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," copyright 1961 by Mercury Press, Inc. for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Ballad of Lost C'mell," copyright 1962 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. for Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1962. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
"A Planet Named Shayol," copyright 1961 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. for Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1961. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
All rights reserved under International Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Printed in the United States of America
In an obscure and short-lived magazine called Fantasy
Book, there appeared in 1950 a story called "Scanners Live in
Vain."
No one had ever heard of the author, Cordwainer Smith.
And it appeared for a time that he would never be heard from again in the world
of science fiction.
But "Scanners Live in Vain" was a story that
refused to die, and its republication in two anthologies encouraged the elusive
Smith to begin submitting to other SF markets.
Today, he is recognized as one of the most creative SF
writers of modern times. But, paradoxically, he is one of the least known or
understood. Until shortly before his death, his very identity was a closely
guarded secret.
Not that Dr. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-66)
was ashamed of science fiction. He was proud of the field, and had even boasted
once to the Baltimore Sun that SF had attracted more Ph.D.'s than any other
branch of fiction.
But he was a sensitive, emotional writer—and reluctant
to become involved with his readers—to be forced to "explain" himself
in a way that might destroy the spontaneity of his work.
Beyond that, he probably enjoyed being a man of
mystery, as elusive as some of the allusions in his stories. Smith was a
mythmaker in science fiction, and perhaps it takes a somewhat mythical figure
to create true myths.
A new acquaintance unsure of the number of syllables
in Dr. Linebarger's name would be answered by a significant gesture to the
three Chinese characters on his tie. Only later would he learn the characters
stood for Lin Bah Loh, or "Forest of Incandescent Bliss"—the name
given him as godson to Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese Republic.
Dr. Linebarger's life was certainly several cuts above
the ordinary.
At the age of seventeen, he negotiated a silver loan
for China on behalf of his father—Sun's legal advisor and one of the financiers
of the Revolution of 1911. He later became a colonel in U.S. Army Intelligence,
despite partial blindness and general ill health—he once shocked guests at a
dinner party by downing a "cocktail" of hydrochloric acid to aid his
digestion.
Although born in Milwaukee—his father wanted to be
sure that as a natural-born citizen his son would be eligible for the
presidency—Linebarger spent his formative years in Japan, China, France and
Germany. By the time he grew up, he knew six languages and had become intimate
with several cultures, both Oriental and Occidental.
He was only twenty-three when he earned his Ph.D. in
political science at Johns Hopkins University, where he was later Professor of
Asiatic politics for many years. Shortly thereafter, he graduated from editing
his father's books to publishing his own highly regarded works on Far Eastern
affairs.
When World War II broke out, he used his position on
the Operations Planning and Intelligence Board to draft a set of qualifications
for an intelligence operative in China that only he could meet-so off he went
to Chungking as an Army lieutenant. By war's end, he was a major.
Dr. Linebarger turned his wartime experiences into
Psychological Warfare, still regarded as the most authoritative text in the
field. As a colonel, he was advisor to the British forces in Malaya and to the
U. S. Eighth Army in Korea. But this self-styled "visitor to small
wars" passed up Vietnam, feeling American involvement there was a mistake.
Travels around the world took him to Australia, Greece,
Egypt and many other countries; and his expertise was sufficiently valued that
he became a leading member of the Foreign Policy Association and an advisor to
President Kennedy.
But even in childhood, his thoughts had turned to
fiction-including science fiction. Like many budding SF writers, he discovered
the genre at an early age. Since he was living in Germany at the time, he added
to the familiar classics of Verne, Wells, Doyle and others such works as Alfred
Doblin's Giganten to his list of favorites.
He was only fifteen when his first SF story, "War
No. 81-Q," was published. But unfortunately, no one seems to remember
where. According to his widow, Genevieve, the story was bylined Anthony
Bearden—a pseudonym later used for poetry published in little magazines. Two
examples of this poetry appear in Norstrilia, also published by
Ballantine.
During the 1930s, Dr. Linebarger began keeping a
secret notebook—part personal diary, part story ideas. Then in 1937, he began
writing serious stories, mostly set in ancient or modern China, or in
contemporary locales elsewhere. None were ever published, but their range—some
use the same Chinese narrative techniques that later turn up in SF works like
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town"—is remarkable.
While back in China, he took on the name Felix C.
Forrest—a pun on his Chinese name—for two psychological novels mailed home in
installments and published after the war. Ria and Carola were
remarkable novels for their feminine viewpoint and for the subtle interplay of
cultural influences behind the interplay of character. Under the name
Carmichael Smith, Dr. Linebarger wrote Atomsk, a spy thriller set in the
Soviet Union.
But his career in science fiction came about almost by
accident. He may have submitted some stories to Amazing while still in
China during the war; but if so, nothing ever came of them. It was during idle
hours at the Pentagon after his return that he turned an idea that had been
bothering him into "Scanners Live in Vain."
The story was almost written in vain, for it was
rejected by every major publication in the field. Fantasy Book, to which
it was submitted five years later as a last resort, did not even pay for it.
Although he had written another Cordwainer Smith story, "Himself in
Anachron" (recently adapted by his widow for Harlan Ellison's anthology Last
Dangerous Visions) in 1946, he may well have despaired of any recognition
in the genre.
But there were readers who took notice. Never mind
that Fantasy Book had never before published a worthwhile story, never
mind that the author was a total unknown. "Scanners Live in Vain" got
to them.
"Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his
blood away from anger ... "
It was more than just the bizarre situation that
attracted attention—it was the way it was treated. From the opening lines,
readers became part of Martel's universe—a universe as real as our own, for all
its strangeness. They were intrigued, and no doubt mystified.
What was this Instrumentality of Mankind, which even
the scanners held in awe? What were the Beasts and the manshonyaggers and the
Unforgiven? One could sense their importance to the hero, hut beyond that-only
wonder.
Smith clearly knew more about this universe than he
let on—more, in fact, than he ever would let on. His universe had been forming
in his mind at least since the time he wrote his first published story in 1928,
and it took further shape in his secret notebook during the 1930s and 1940s.
Already in "War No. 81-Q," his widow
recalls, he had made reference to the Instrumentality—that all-powerful elite
hierarchy that was to become central to the Cordwainer Smith stories twenty
years and more later. Even the word may have had far more significance than it
would appear at first.
Linebarger had been raised in a High Church
Episcopalian family—his grandfather was a minister—and was devoutly religious.
The word "instrumentality" has a distinct religious connotation, for
in Roman Catholic and Episcopalian theology the priest performing the
sacraments is the "instrumentality" of God Himself.
At the time he wrote "War No. 81-Q," young
Linebarger was also having a fling with Communism—a tendency his father
eventually cured by sending him on a trip to the Soviet Union for his
eighteenth birthday. But he remained struck by the sense of vocation and
conviction of historical destiny to which Communism appealed.
In Cordwainer Smith's epic of the future, the
Instrumentality of Mankind has the hallmarks of both a political elite and a
priesthood. Its hegemony is that, not of the galactic empire so typical of less
imaginative SF, but of something far more subtle and pervasive—at once
political and spiritual. Its lords see themselves not as mere governors or
bureaucrats or politicians, but as instruments of human destiny itself.
Linebarger's sense of religion infused his work in
other ways, and not merely in references to the Old Strong Religion and the
Holy Insurgency of Norstrilia and other late works.
There is, for example, the emphasis on quasi-religious
ritual—compare, for instance, the Code of the Scanners to the Saying of the Law
in H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. Furthermore, there is the strong
sense of vocation expressed by the scanners, sailors, pinlighters, Go-captains
and the lords themselves—something very spiritual, even if not expressed in
religious terms.
But Linebarger was no mere Christian apologist who
used SF as a vehicle for orthodox religious messages like those of, say, C. S.
Lewis.
He was also a social and psychological thinker, whose
experience with diverse cultures gave him peculiar and seemingly contradictory
ideas about human nature and morality.
He could, for example, admire the samurai values of
fantasy, courage and honor, and he showed his appreciation of Oriental art and
literature in the furnishing of his home and his fiction. Yet he was so
horrified by the tradition-bound fatalism and indifference to human life he
found in the Orient that he became obsessed with the sanctity of life on any
terms, as something too precious to sacrifice to any concept of honor or
morality—Oriental or Occidental.
While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender
of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their
arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could come forward waving
their guns and shouting Chinese words like "love," "virtue"
and "humanity"—words that just happened, when pronounced in the right
order, to sound like "I surrender" in English. He considered this
seemingly cynical act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his
life.
Linebarger's attitude is reflected in the apparently
casual manner in which matters such as brainwashing are treated in his SF. For
the Hunter and Elaine at the end of "The Dead Lady of Clown Town,"
that is a more humane, if less "honorable" fate than death.
Throughout the Smith canon, life is usually placed before honor, no matter how
much the Oriental codes of honor and formality may permeate the hybrid culture
of the future.
Yet Linebarger felt there was a meaning to life beyond
mere living. "The God he had faith in had to do with the soul of man and
with the unfolding of history and of the destiny of all living creatures,"
his Australian friend Arthur Burns once remarked, and it is this exploration of
human—and more than human—destiny that gives Smith's work its unity.
Behind the invented cultures, behind the intricacies
of plot and the joy or suffering of characters, there is Smith the philosopher,
striving in a manner akin to that of Teilhard de Chardin (although there is no
evidence of any direct influence) to reconcile science and religion, to create
a synthesis of Christianity and evolution that will shed light on the nature of
man and the meaning of history.
The stories in this volume, collected in their proper
order for the first time, form part of a vast historical cycle taking place
over some fifteen thousand years. They are based on material from Linebarger's
original notebook and a second notebook—unfortunately lost—that he began
keeping in the 1950s as new problems began to concern him.
Mankind is still haunted by the Ancient Wars and the
Dark Age that followed as this volume opens with "Scanners Live in
Vain." Other stories, one unpublished, hint at millennia of historical
stasis, during which the true men sought inhuman perfection behind the
electronic pales of their cities, while leaving the Wild to survivors of the
Ancient World—the Beasts, manshonyaggers and Unforgiven.
Into this future came the Vomacht sisters, daughters
of a German scientist who placed them in satellites in suspended animation at
the close of World War II. Returning to Earth in the latter days of the Dark
Age, they bring the "gift of vitality"—a concept that seems to have
meant to Smith what the "life force" meant to Bergson and Shaw—back
to mankind. Founders of the Vomact family, they represent a force in human
nature that can be either good or evil, but is perhaps ultimately beyond
either, and a necessary means for the working out of human destiny through
evolution.
The dual nature of the Vomacts and the force they
represent is symbolized in the origin of their name: "Acht" is a
German word with a double meaning: "proscribed" or
"forbidden" and "care" or "attention." And the
Vomacts alternate as outlaws and benefactors throughout the Smith epic.
But the gift of vitality sets a new cycle of history
in motion—the heroic age of the scanners, pinlighters and Go-captains. What
stands out in these early stories is the starkness of the emotional impact—the
impact of strange new experiences and relationships, whether of the telepathic
symbiosis of men and partners in "The Game of Rat and Dragon" or the
woman become a functioning part of her spacecraft in "The Lady Who Sailed
The Soul."
Some of Linebarger's own experiences went into his
work. Captain Wow was the name of one of his cats at his Washington home when
he wrote "The Game of Rat and Dragon" at a single sitting one day in
1954. Cat Melanie was later to inspire C'mell, heroine of the under-people, who
were created by men from mere animals. Then, too, Linebarger's frequent stays
in hospitals, dependent on medical technology, gave him a feel for the linkage
of man and machine.
But in "The Burning of the Brain," we
already begin to see signs of the Pleasure Revolution, a trend which Linebarger
detested in his own time and which he saw putting an end to the heroic age in
his imagined future. Near immortality—thanks to the santaclara drug, or stroon,
grown in Norstrilia—makes life less desperate, but also less meaningful.
Real experience gives way to synthetic experience; in
"Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!" (as in "The Lady Who Sailed
The Soul," which was also co-authored by Genevieve Linebarger), the hero
seeks pleasure directly from an electric current—and only an epoch-making crisis
affords him a chance to see that there is a better way.
Under the ruthless benevolence of the Instrumentality,
a bland Utopia takes shape. Men are freed of the fear of death, the burden or
labor, the risks of the unknown—but deprived of hope and freedom. The
underpeople, created to do the labor of mankind, are more human than their
creators. The gift of vitality, seemingly, has been lost, and history come to a
stop.
In these stories, it is the underpeople—and the more
enlightened lords of the Instrumentality who heed them—who hold the salvation
of humanity in their hands. In "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," the
despised, animal-derived workers and robots must teach humans the meaning of
humanity, in order to free mankind from its seeming euphoria.
Lord Jestocost is inspired by the martyrdom of the
dog-woman D'joan, and Santuna is transformed by the experiences in "Under
Old Earth" into the Lady Alice More. Together, they become the architects
of the Rediscovery of Man—bringing back freedom, risk, uncertainty and even
evil.
Paralleling these events are glimpses of other parts
of the universe of the Instrumentality. In "Mother Hitton's Littul
Kittons," we learn why Old North Australia is the most heavily defended
planet in the galaxy; but Viola Siderea is just as strange. And where else in
science fiction is there a world like "A Planet Named Shayol," where
a daring conception in biological engineering is wedded to a classic vision of
Hell?
Oriental narrative techniques, especially in "The
Dead Lady of Clown Town" and "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" are
prominent in the later stories. So is the sense of myth, whereby the
just-mentioned stories are supposedly explanations of popular legends. But just
how much of what is told "Under Old Earth" ever really took place?
Smith creates a sense of immense time having passed.
To Paul and Virginia, newly freed by the Rediscovery of Man in "Alpha
Ralpha Boulevard," our own age is lost in the dim past and is seen only
through layer upon layer of half-forgotten history. Smith's effect has rarely been
duplicated—the first half of Robert Silverberg's Nightwings is (perhaps) the
most successful approximation.
Smith's universe remains infinitely greater than our
knowledge of it—we shall never know what empire once conquered Earth and
brought tribute up that fabulous boulevard; nor the identity of the Robot, the
Rat and the Copt, whose visions are referred to in Norstrilia and elsewhere;
nor what ultimately becomes of the cat-people created in "The Crime and
Glory of Commander Suzdal."
Then there is that unfulfilled sense of
anticipation—where was Smith leading us? What comes after the Rediscovery of
Man and the liberation of the underpeople by C'mell? Linebarger gives hints of
a common destiny for men and underpeople—some religious fulfillment of history,
perhaps. But they remain hints.
The work of Cordwainer Smith will always retain its
enigmas. But that is part of its appeal. In reading his stories, we are caught
up in experiences as real as life itself-and just as mysterious.
—John J. Pierce
Berkeley Heights, New Jersey January, 1975
THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH
Choose font preferences:
THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH
Edited, with Introduction and Notes , By J. J. Pierce
[22 Jul 2002—proofed for #bookz]
Split and converted to HTML by bint-e-Molasses
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
"Scanners Live in Vain," copyright 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Co. Inc. for Fantasy Book. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Lady Who Sailed The Soul," copyright 1960 by Galaxy Publishing Co. for Galaxy Magazine, Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Game of Rat and Dragon," copyright 1955 by Galaxy Publishing Co. for Galaxy Science Fiction. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Burning of the Brain," copyright 1958 by Quinn Publishing Co. for If. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!," copyright 1959 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Amazing Science Fiction. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," copyright 1964 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Amazing Stories. Copyright 1971 by Mrs. Genevieve Linebarger.
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town," copyright 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1964. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
"Under Old Earth," copyright 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction. Copyright 1971 by Mrs. Genevieve Linebarger.
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons," copyright 1961 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1961. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," copyright 1961 by Mercury Press, Inc. for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Copyright 1963 by Cordwainer Smith.
"The Ballad of Lost C'mell," copyright 1962 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. for Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1962. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
"A Planet Named Shayol," copyright 1961 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. for Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1961. Copyright 1965 by Cordwainer Smith.
All rights reserved under International Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Printed in the United States of America
In an obscure and short-lived magazine called Fantasy
Book, there appeared in 1950 a story called "Scanners Live in
Vain."
No one had ever heard of the author, Cordwainer Smith.
And it appeared for a time that he would never be heard from again in the world
of science fiction.
But "Scanners Live in Vain" was a story that
refused to die, and its republication in two anthologies encouraged the elusive
Smith to begin submitting to other SF markets.
Today, he is recognized as one of the most creative SF
writers of modern times. But, paradoxically, he is one of the least known or
understood. Until shortly before his death, his very identity was a closely
guarded secret.
Not that Dr. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-66)
was ashamed of science fiction. He was proud of the field, and had even boasted
once to the Baltimore Sun that SF had attracted more Ph.D.'s than any other
branch of fiction.
But he was a sensitive, emotional writer—and reluctant
to become involved with his readers—to be forced to "explain" himself
in a way that might destroy the spontaneity of his work.
Beyond that, he probably enjoyed being a man of
mystery, as elusive as some of the allusions in his stories. Smith was a
mythmaker in science fiction, and perhaps it takes a somewhat mythical figure
to create true myths.
A new acquaintance unsure of the number of syllables
in Dr. Linebarger's name would be answered by a significant gesture to the
three Chinese characters on his tie. Only later would he learn the characters
stood for Lin Bah Loh, or "Forest of Incandescent Bliss"—the name
given him as godson to Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese Republic.
Dr. Linebarger's life was certainly several cuts above
the ordinary.
At the age of seventeen, he negotiated a silver loan
for China on behalf of his father—Sun's legal advisor and one of the financiers
of the Revolution of 1911. He later became a colonel in U.S. Army Intelligence,
despite partial blindness and general ill health—he once shocked guests at a
dinner party by downing a "cocktail" of hydrochloric acid to aid his
digestion.
Although born in Milwaukee—his father wanted to be
sure that as a natural-born citizen his son would be eligible for the
presidency—Linebarger spent his formative years in Japan, China, France and
Germany. By the time he grew up, he knew six languages and had become intimate
with several cultures, both Oriental and Occidental.
He was only twenty-three when he earned his Ph.D. in
political science at Johns Hopkins University, where he was later Professor of
Asiatic politics for many years. Shortly thereafter, he graduated from editing
his father's books to publishing his own highly regarded works on Far Eastern
affairs.
When World War II broke out, he used his position on
the Operations Planning and Intelligence Board to draft a set of qualifications
for an intelligence operative in China that only he could meet-so off he went
to Chungking as an Army lieutenant. By war's end, he was a major.
Dr. Linebarger turned his wartime experiences into
Psychological Warfare, still regarded as the most authoritative text in the
field. As a colonel, he was advisor to the British forces in Malaya and to the
U. S. Eighth Army in Korea. But this self-styled "visitor to small
wars" passed up Vietnam, feeling American involvement there was a mistake.
Travels around the world took him to Australia, Greece,
Egypt and many other countries; and his expertise was sufficiently valued that
he became a leading member of the Foreign Policy Association and an advisor to
President Kennedy.
But even in childhood, his thoughts had turned to
fiction-including science fiction. Like many budding SF writers, he discovered
the genre at an early age. Since he was living in Germany at the time, he added
to the familiar classics of Verne, Wells, Doyle and others such works as Alfred
Doblin's Giganten to his list of favorites.
He was only fifteen when his first SF story, "War
No. 81-Q," was published. But unfortunately, no one seems to remember
where. According to his widow, Genevieve, the story was bylined Anthony
Bearden—a pseudonym later used for poetry published in little magazines. Two
examples of this poetry appear in Norstrilia, also published by
Ballantine.
During the 1930s, Dr. Linebarger began keeping a
secret notebook—part personal diary, part story ideas. Then in 1937, he began
writing serious stories, mostly set in ancient or modern China, or in
contemporary locales elsewhere. None were ever published, but their range—some
use the same Chinese narrative techniques that later turn up in SF works like
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town"—is remarkable.
While back in China, he took on the name Felix C.
Forrest—a pun on his Chinese name—for two psychological novels mailed home in
installments and published after the war. Ria and Carola were
remarkable novels for their feminine viewpoint and for the subtle interplay of
cultural influences behind the interplay of character. Under the name
Carmichael Smith, Dr. Linebarger wrote Atomsk, a spy thriller set in the
Soviet Union.
But his career in science fiction came about almost by
accident. He may have submitted some stories to Amazing while still in
China during the war; but if so, nothing ever came of them. It was during idle
hours at the Pentagon after his return that he turned an idea that had been
bothering him into "Scanners Live in Vain."
The story was almost written in vain, for it was
rejected by every major publication in the field. Fantasy Book, to which
it was submitted five years later as a last resort, did not even pay for it.
Although he had written another Cordwainer Smith story, "Himself in
Anachron" (recently adapted by his widow for Harlan Ellison's anthology Last
Dangerous Visions) in 1946, he may well have despaired of any recognition
in the genre.
But there were readers who took notice. Never mind
that Fantasy Book had never before published a worthwhile story, never
mind that the author was a total unknown. "Scanners Live in Vain" got
to them.
"Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his
blood away from anger ... "
It was more than just the bizarre situation that
attracted attention—it was the way it was treated. From the opening lines,
readers became part of Martel's universe—a universe as real as our own, for all
its strangeness. They were intrigued, and no doubt mystified.
What was this Instrumentality of Mankind, which even
the scanners held in awe? What were the Beasts and the manshonyaggers and the
Unforgiven? One could sense their importance to the hero, hut beyond that-only
wonder.
Smith clearly knew more about this universe than he
let on—more, in fact, than he ever would let on. His universe had been forming
in his mind at least since the time he wrote his first published story in 1928,
and it took further shape in his secret notebook during the 1930s and 1940s.
Already in "War No. 81-Q," his widow
recalls, he had made reference to the Instrumentality—that all-powerful elite
hierarchy that was to become central to the Cordwainer Smith stories twenty
years and more later. Even the word may have had far more significance than it
would appear at first.
Linebarger had been raised in a High Church
Episcopalian family—his grandfather was a minister—and was devoutly religious.
The word "instrumentality" has a distinct religious connotation, for
in Roman Catholic and Episcopalian theology the priest performing the
sacraments is the "instrumentality" of God Himself.
At the time he wrote "War No. 81-Q," young
Linebarger was also having a fling with Communism—a tendency his father
eventually cured by sending him on a trip to the Soviet Union for his
eighteenth birthday. But he remained struck by the sense of vocation and
conviction of historical destiny to which Communism appealed.
In Cordwainer Smith's epic of the future, the
Instrumentality of Mankind has the hallmarks of both a political elite and a
priesthood. Its hegemony is that, not of the galactic empire so typical of less
imaginative SF, but of something far more subtle and pervasive—at once
political and spiritual. Its lords see themselves not as mere governors or
bureaucrats or politicians, but as instruments of human destiny itself.
Linebarger's sense of religion infused his work in
other ways, and not merely in references to the Old Strong Religion and the
Holy Insurgency of Norstrilia and other late works.
There is, for example, the emphasis on quasi-religious
ritual—compare, for instance, the Code of the Scanners to the Saying of the Law
in H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. Furthermore, there is the strong
sense of vocation expressed by the scanners, sailors, pinlighters, Go-captains
and the lords themselves—something very spiritual, even if not expressed in
religious terms.
But Linebarger was no mere Christian apologist who
used SF as a vehicle for orthodox religious messages like those of, say, C. S.
Lewis.
He was also a social and psychological thinker, whose
experience with diverse cultures gave him peculiar and seemingly contradictory
ideas about human nature and morality.
He could, for example, admire the samurai values of
fantasy, courage and honor, and he showed his appreciation of Oriental art and
literature in the furnishing of his home and his fiction. Yet he was so
horrified by the tradition-bound fatalism and indifference to human life he
found in the Orient that he became obsessed with the sanctity of life on any
terms, as something too precious to sacrifice to any concept of honor or
morality—Oriental or Occidental.
While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender
of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their
arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could come forward waving
their guns and shouting Chinese words like "love," "virtue"
and "humanity"—words that just happened, when pronounced in the right
order, to sound like "I surrender" in English. He considered this
seemingly cynical act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his
life.
Linebarger's attitude is reflected in the apparently
casual manner in which matters such as brainwashing are treated in his SF. For
the Hunter and Elaine at the end of "The Dead Lady of Clown Town,"
that is a more humane, if less "honorable" fate than death.
Throughout the Smith canon, life is usually placed before honor, no matter how
much the Oriental codes of honor and formality may permeate the hybrid culture
of the future.
Yet Linebarger felt there was a meaning to life beyond
mere living. "The God he had faith in had to do with the soul of man and
with the unfolding of history and of the destiny of all living creatures,"
his Australian friend Arthur Burns once remarked, and it is this exploration of
human—and more than human—destiny that gives Smith's work its unity.
Behind the invented cultures, behind the intricacies
of plot and the joy or suffering of characters, there is Smith the philosopher,
striving in a manner akin to that of Teilhard de Chardin (although there is no
evidence of any direct influence) to reconcile science and religion, to create
a synthesis of Christianity and evolution that will shed light on the nature of
man and the meaning of history.
The stories in this volume, collected in their proper
order for the first time, form part of a vast historical cycle taking place
over some fifteen thousand years. They are based on material from Linebarger's
original notebook and a second notebook—unfortunately lost—that he began
keeping in the 1950s as new problems began to concern him.
Mankind is still haunted by the Ancient Wars and the
Dark Age that followed as this volume opens with "Scanners Live in
Vain." Other stories, one unpublished, hint at millennia of historical
stasis, during which the true men sought inhuman perfection behind the
electronic pales of their cities, while leaving the Wild to survivors of the
Ancient World—the Beasts, manshonyaggers and Unforgiven.
Into this future came the Vomacht sisters, daughters
of a German scientist who placed them in satellites in suspended animation at
the close of World War II. Returning to Earth in the latter days of the Dark
Age, they bring the "gift of vitality"—a concept that seems to have
meant to Smith what the "life force" meant to Bergson and Shaw—back
to mankind. Founders of the Vomact family, they represent a force in human
nature that can be either good or evil, but is perhaps ultimately beyond
either, and a necessary means for the working out of human destiny through
evolution.
The dual nature of the Vomacts and the force they
represent is symbolized in the origin of their name: "Acht" is a
German word with a double meaning: "proscribed" or
"forbidden" and "care" or "attention." And the
Vomacts alternate as outlaws and benefactors throughout the Smith epic.
But the gift of vitality sets a new cycle of history
in motion—the heroic age of the scanners, pinlighters and Go-captains. What
stands out in these early stories is the starkness of the emotional impact—the
impact of strange new experiences and relationships, whether of the telepathic
symbiosis of men and partners in "The Game of Rat and Dragon" or the
woman become a functioning part of her spacecraft in "The Lady Who Sailed
The Soul."
Some of Linebarger's own experiences went into his
work. Captain Wow was the name of one of his cats at his Washington home when
he wrote "The Game of Rat and Dragon" at a single sitting one day in
1954. Cat Melanie was later to inspire C'mell, heroine of the under-people, who
were created by men from mere animals. Then, too, Linebarger's frequent stays
in hospitals, dependent on medical technology, gave him a feel for the linkage
of man and machine.
But in "The Burning of the Brain," we
already begin to see signs of the Pleasure Revolution, a trend which Linebarger
detested in his own time and which he saw putting an end to the heroic age in
his imagined future. Near immortality—thanks to the santaclara drug, or stroon,
grown in Norstrilia—makes life less desperate, but also less meaningful.
Real experience gives way to synthetic experience; in
"Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!" (as in "The Lady Who Sailed
The Soul," which was also co-authored by Genevieve Linebarger), the hero
seeks pleasure directly from an electric current—and only an epoch-making crisis
affords him a chance to see that there is a better way.
Under the ruthless benevolence of the Instrumentality,
a bland Utopia takes shape. Men are freed of the fear of death, the burden or
labor, the risks of the unknown—but deprived of hope and freedom. The
underpeople, created to do the labor of mankind, are more human than their
creators. The gift of vitality, seemingly, has been lost, and history come to a
stop.
In these stories, it is the underpeople—and the more
enlightened lords of the Instrumentality who heed them—who hold the salvation
of humanity in their hands. In "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," the
despised, animal-derived workers and robots must teach humans the meaning of
humanity, in order to free mankind from its seeming euphoria.
Lord Jestocost is inspired by the martyrdom of the
dog-woman D'joan, and Santuna is transformed by the experiences in "Under
Old Earth" into the Lady Alice More. Together, they become the architects
of the Rediscovery of Man—bringing back freedom, risk, uncertainty and even
evil.
Paralleling these events are glimpses of other parts
of the universe of the Instrumentality. In "Mother Hitton's Littul
Kittons," we learn why Old North Australia is the most heavily defended
planet in the galaxy; but Viola Siderea is just as strange. And where else in
science fiction is there a world like "A Planet Named Shayol," where
a daring conception in biological engineering is wedded to a classic vision of
Hell?
Oriental narrative techniques, especially in "The
Dead Lady of Clown Town" and "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" are
prominent in the later stories. So is the sense of myth, whereby the
just-mentioned stories are supposedly explanations of popular legends. But just
how much of what is told "Under Old Earth" ever really took place?
Smith creates a sense of immense time having passed.
To Paul and Virginia, newly freed by the Rediscovery of Man in "Alpha
Ralpha Boulevard," our own age is lost in the dim past and is seen only
through layer upon layer of half-forgotten history. Smith's effect has rarely been
duplicated—the first half of Robert Silverberg's Nightwings is (perhaps) the
most successful approximation.
Smith's universe remains infinitely greater than our
knowledge of it—we shall never know what empire once conquered Earth and
brought tribute up that fabulous boulevard; nor the identity of the Robot, the
Rat and the Copt, whose visions are referred to in Norstrilia and elsewhere;
nor what ultimately becomes of the cat-people created in "The Crime and
Glory of Commander Suzdal."
Then there is that unfulfilled sense of
anticipation—where was Smith leading us? What comes after the Rediscovery of
Man and the liberation of the underpeople by C'mell? Linebarger gives hints of
a common destiny for men and underpeople—some religious fulfillment of history,
perhaps. But they remain hints.
The work of Cordwainer Smith will always retain its
enigmas. But that is part of its appeal. In reading his stories, we are caught
up in experiences as real as life itself-and just as mysterious.