A truly subversive author, the writing had an other worldly feeling, with “Underpeople” as expendable worker slaves, fighting for freedom. It wasn’t much of a stretch to see the reference to the civil rights movement at the time. Could it be made for network T.V. without bastardizing the text and intent?
I have my doubts~
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Whatever profession he was engaged in, his love of and awareness of the visceral power of words clearly came through. All these years later, I still remember how appropriate his neologism “cranch” was in the story “Scanners Live in Vain”.
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I remembered reading “A planet named Shayol” when I was about 10 (probably in Analog, I think), and being haunted by it for decades. Not a story for a 10 year old. I couldn’t remember the title or the author, but stumbled across it again in middle age, and it was as trippy as I remembered it. I asked my boss (a bona fide sf expert; there might have been 5 people on the planet who knew as much as she did about sf, but I doubt anyone knew more), if he had been on LSD when he wrote it, and she said that no, he was fluent in a number of written languages, and would write first in Chinese, translate it into Russian, and then into English, which made it seem strange and otherworldly. Although the theme of this particular story was indeed very trippy.
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Beat me to it. Loved that story!
I remember a story of his where Chinese were the first to land on a new planet. They relied on sheer numbers, knowing there would be shocking attrition in the landing process, to get enough surviving people on the ground. The first thing those who landed did was set up kitchens. The second thing they did was set up gambling games.
He was amazing.
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Then I apologize for using the wrong pronouns for them.
Cordwainer Smith is probably obscure to a lot of modern readers, but even if we account for the Paul Linebarger keeping secret the connection between his official work and his writing career during his lifetime, since he died in 1966 (sadly at the rather young age of 53) it’s been a long time since the secret was out.
I do welcome anyone writing about Linebarger since his life outside his work as Cordwaner Smith was even more fascinating than his fiction.
Again, did anyone say it hasn’t been a long time since his secret was out?
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He was probably obscure to many readers then and even into the 90s, since sci-fi was a much more niche genre than it is today. I don’t find it surprising that Newitz was not familiar with their stuff or with his story. Even then, sci-fi, though more obscure, was a big diverse genre and most people probably could discover lots of writers they missed out on earlier.
So, yeah, maybe they’re not the first person to write about the guy, but I’m guessing that they’ll give it a unique and interesting spin.
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This is tangential, but it has been many years since I came across mention of Cordwainer Smith, and my first reaction was… Well who was Cordwainer Bird then?
A quick peek at Wikipedia cleared this up. Bird was the pen name used by Harlan Ellison, as a nod to Dr. Linebarger. Ellison used this monicker when he wanted to blast offensive editing, and changed the surname name to Bird for specific connotations.
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Now I’ll have “E-tele-keli” in my head all day.
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Now I have Tekeli-li! in my head all day.
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