Cordwainer Smith was a Golden Age sci fi writer with a fascinating biography. Smith’s works are not warm and fuzzy, by any means. They sort of remind me of the modernist inspired futuristic landscapes and interiors of spaceships from fifties; I imagine metallic things, instrument panels, pure, sterile white interiors. The first story, “Scanners Live in Vain,” Smith’s first and perhaps one of his most famous, concerns a guild of scanners, men (I say men because they really are all men. These are uh, stories with the attitude towards women typical of the era, although women can also become rulers in the Instrumentality, and there are many important female characters and protagonists) who have voluntarily become “habermen,” who are threatened by a scientific discovery which may put an end to their monopoly. Smith’s short stories tend to start in media res worldbuilding-wise, in which we come across a scene in which we have no idea what the background of the setting is, the specialized vocabulary, or the political/social context. The reader must construct this later.

The author’s prose tends to be fairly transparent, his made-up words seemingly familiar, yet enigmatic. The stories mainly take place within one universe, over a vast scale in time, with characters rarely repeating, and the story being about an incident of significance in galactic history. In this, they remind me slightly of Iain Banks’s Culture series (which you really should read); vast time scale, about a culture and ethos in total, rather than the saga of an individual (although both Banks and Smith are fairly good at creating interesting characters). Smith’s Instrumentality of Mankind rules in an ultra-technocratic, secretive way over a populace largely living in a boring happiness (until the Rediscovery of Mankind, in which disease and danger are introduced because without them people are less human). The sinister side of the Instrumentality is far more pronounced than the Culture’s, however (the attitude towards the Culture is far more positive, I think, within the books), and not only does the Instrumentality act totally without mercy towards their enemies, but treats the underpeople (animals given the shape and minds of humans, a la Island of Dr. Moreau) like trash (forming the theme of one Smith’s best known stories, the Dead Lady of Clown Town, in which a dog-girl named D’Joan is martyred trying to give her message of universal love.) The theme of spiritual ennui within a utopia without scarcity and extended life (made possible by stroon, a substance produced by the planet of Nostralia) also reminds me of some of Michael Moorcock’s novels about a utopia (dystopia?) at the end of time. This makes me want to try some of Smith’s longer works, to see how he develops these themes on a larger and less fragmentary scale.

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