Archive for the ‘Cordwainer Smith’ Category
The Planet Buyer, by Cordwainer Smith
published in 1964
where I got it: purchased used
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Rod McBan the hundred and fifty first is the last of his illustrious line, so the law of Norstrilia allows him to have children. But he can’t control or properly develop his telepathy and is therefore considered flawed and handicapped, and no amount of therapy seems to help. Rod will either pass the tests and be allowed to breed, or be given euthanasia drugs. On pastoral Norstrilia, only the strongest are allowed to survive. They may be the farmers of the immortality drug Stroon, but the Norstrilians are a strict, traditional, and pragmatic people.
It’s fascinating how the richest planet in the universe ended up being sparsely populated by a bunch of farmers and their disease ridden mutant sheep. The narrative offers quite a bit of helpful background on how Norstrilia came to be. It borders on infodumping, but Smith’s easy going and conversational style prose makes it easy to dive right in and feel like you are right there.
At the last minute, Rod is saved from the grueling tests by Lord Redlady, a representative of The Instrumentality (the governing body of the galaxy), and given the opportunity to visit Manhome (Earth). Not sure what decision to make, Rod consults with the family computer, which has been hidden away under ground. The computer’s response is basically “leave it to me”, and the computer begins playing the stock market with Rod’s family fortune. Before dawn, Rod is the richest man in the galaxy, richer than the Stroon markets, possibly richer than The Instrumentality. If there was a time to escape to Manhome, now is that time!
Space Lords, by Cordwainer Smith
Posted on: January 6, 2012
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Space Lords, by Cordwainer Smith
Published in 1965
where I got it: purchased used
In a far future imagined by Cordwainer Smith, an all powerful government, the Instrumentality, rules from the planet Norstrilia, and stays in power by being the sole producer of the anti-aging drug known as “stroon”. With the help of faster than light travel, known as “planoforming”, humanity has colonized hundreds of thousands of planets. Thanks to advances in genetic engineering, scientists can create animals in the shape of men. A cat, or a cow, or a bear or an elephant can have all the attributes of that animal such as strength or speed or appetite, all crammed into a human shaped being. Known as the underpeople, these animal people are not human and therefore have no rights. Used as servants and slaves, the underpeople are typically as ignored as the human lower castes they replaced. It takes care of the prickly problems of human rights, or not, as the case may be.
Most of these stories have poems or songs in them. And not the usual scifi fantasy badly put together stanzas with awkwardly forced rhymes and meter, these are little ditties that you actually want to sign. I get the impression that Smith was, at heart, a hopeless romantic. In a short yet wonderfully intimate prologue, Smith welcomes us to his world and offers some parallels to his short stories that we might be familiar with: Joan d’Arc, Dante’s Inferno, the story of Ali Baba, to name a few. But don’t worry, you don’t need to be familiar or have ever even heard of any of those things to enjoy the magnificent fiction in Space Lords:
the Little Red Reviewer 
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