Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/14/this-sci-fi-author-had-a-secret-life-as-psychological-warfare-mastermind.html
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Sci-Fi Author: “In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.”
Tech Company: “At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus!”
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I don’t know about “secret life”. Linebarger’s day job is described in the introduction to his collected short stories.
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Who could imagine that an author who imagined “mind control sex” and “weapons made from angry psychic weasels” might be interested in how to manipulate human minds?
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As I understand it (or, as I have been told), at the time that Linebarger wrote his science fiction under the pseudonym “Cordwainer Smith”, it was illegal for him to be a published writer. In the nineteen-forties, the U.S. government, fearing spies, made it against the law for a U.S. Department of State employee to publish a work of any form. This law was in effect until around about 1980. This same law made it illegal for James Tiptree Jr. to be a writer back when she first started writing in the sixties.
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As an aside, there’s nobody else who wrote quite the same kind of stories as Cordwainer Smith. When, as a teenager, I first read a collection of them (even in Finnish translation), I had to stop after every couple of stories and go on a walk to calm down. I don’t think any author before or since has quite blown my mind the same way.
Related trivia bit: my nick, Lurks-no-More is based on the name of a character in the Smith story The Lady Who Sailed The Soul, Mr. Grey-no-more.
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As a kid, I loved Cordwainer Smith’s SF, taking Norstrilia as the gateway to a brilliantly visualized universe, which it is. And then learning his real identity as Dr. Paul Linebarger, I thought that made him especially cool. A Doctor! But I never looked deeper. Should have…
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Yeah, the introduction to the anthology The Best of Cordwainer Smith published by Ballantine Books in 1975 mentions Psychological Warfare by title and recounts many details of Paul Linebarger’s quite colorful life. His background as a psychological warfare expert is not at all secret.
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Right, not anymore. Was it back when he was publishing sci fi?
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I’m sure it was back then, but it’s been a long, long time since then. Note that the anthology I mentioned was published nearly fifty years ago; this isn’t information being hidden from modern readers.
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Right. Did someone say it is?
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Part of what this post is talking about is author Annalee Newitz being surprised about Paul Linebarger’s work for the U.S. military. Her biography shows she’s only about three years younger than I am, and in the early 1980s I was reading about this in the aforementioned introduction to The Best of Cordwainer Smith and read a copy of Psychological Warfare available from my university library in the mid-1980s (“now declassified!”). Sure, it can be a surprise to her, but she’s definitely not the first modern author to write about this.
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Did she say she is?*
I mean, you keep trying to land some sort of gotcha, but I can’t figure out why. 
*Oops, they. Thanks @Mindysan33
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He was especially cool, I’d think.
Quoting from the introduction of The Rediscovery of Man:
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 surrender by shouting the Chinese words for “love”, “duty”, “humanity” and “virtue” - words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like “I surrender” in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life.
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That was my favourite Cordwainer Smith anecdote. My second favourite anecdote was the drinking-hydrochloric-acid one.
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First, it’s they, not she.
Second, just because YOU knew something doesn’t mean everyone did, and it’s really not very cool to act like someone is dumb for not knowing something…
Did they say that? 
And it’s entirely possible that her audience skews younger, so maybe doesn’t know this about Cordwainer…
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One of my favorites is his own description of testing an aircraft equipped with a loudspeaker array for broadcasting propaganda. The test was assigned to “a Reserve sergeant who scarcely knew he was in the Reserves until he was on a boat bound for Pusan.” In Linebarger’s telling, the aircraft circled lower and lower, and everyone listening could hear the hum of the speakers over the roar of the engines, but no other sound came out. Finally, the sergeant spoke:
… the immense voice came through clearly, through brick, and plaster, and wood, through air and trees. It must have reached four miles. The gigantic voice of the sergeant seemed to roar over half of South Korea as he said, “Why—don’t—you—imperialist—sons o’ b*tches—go—back—to—Wall-Street—where—you—belong?”
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