[HN Gopher] Paul Linebarger wrote science fiction as Cordwainer ...
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Paul Linebarger wrote science fiction as Cordwainer Smith (2018)
Author : apollinaire
Score : 45 points
Date : 2023-05-15 17:28 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hub.jhu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hub.jhu.edu)
| karaterobot wrote:
| I really like Cordwainer Smith. Those books are quite strange
| though. I wouldn't even call them ahead of their time, I would
| call them sui generis. Completely idiosyncratic. One brilliant
| weirdo's brain. I keep spare copies of _The Instrumentality of
| Mankind_ and _The Best of Cordwainer Smith_ around, and a couple
| months ago somebody asked me about them. I hesitated before
| lending them to him, because it 's impossible to guess whether a
| given person will like them or not.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Like being dropped into a very _other_ world. I 'll have to dig
| some out and read again. The feel is like it's written by
| someone not sane. Gormenghast, a least the first 2 books, felt
| the same - not-quite-sane leaking through. Then again I may not
| have been at the time so maybe a bit of projection.
|
| Anyway thanks for the reminder!
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Book three of the Gormenghast trilogy of course being the one
| were the reader is figuratively wading in a deluge of not-
| quite-sane. Anyone interested in the weird world-building of
| Gormenghast: don't feel bad about skipping the third book.
|
| I enjoyed Cordwainer Smith's _Norstrilia_ (1975). Australians
| in space, and utterly weird things to do with sheep (sorry,
| that may sound a bit iffy, but the book is cool).
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| There was a French comic book series (whose name escapes
| me), which I think is heavily inspired by Gormenghast. It
| followed a girl/young lady who had been kidnapped/sold off
| to the (illusive) lord of the house, and her discovery of
| the unique rules of the house, which seems to have a life
| of its own, and the petty (to this new outsider) squabbles
| of its inhabitants, servants and "nobles" alike.
|
| I'm having a hard time finding that comic book series
| across the translation barrier.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I never finished "The Rediscovery of Man" anthology, yet "The
| Lady Who Sailed the Soul" remains one of the most memorable
| sci-fi stories I've read and one I think about relatively
| often. (I don't want to re-read it now years later and find
| that I don't like it anymore).
| navbaker wrote:
| That was a book that I read, thought was brilliant, and never
| want to read again. I can't put into words how it made me
| feel.
| schoen wrote:
| I read most of the related stories online after seeing the
| reference to "think blue, count two" when trying to remind
| myself what _Serial Experiments Lain_ was about.
|
| It is very idiosyncratic. A heavy role for psionics, uplifted
| animal species, and animal brains conditioned to perform tasks
| and then preserved in something like a circuit board. And
| space, economics, politics, and a civil rights movement for the
| uplifted animals.
|
| "Oh yeah, I'm here on another planet having a telepathic chat
| with an uplifted cat who is mad about the oppression of her
| species."
|
| But engaging writing and worldbuilding that makes that feel
| more plausible.
|
| I think you could say that it's space opera that puts
| organisms' bodies and minds at the heart of things, rather than
| machines. Electronic devices with any kind of important agency
| in the stories are rather few and far between, but stuff about
| bodies and minds, and what Cordwainer Smith could imagine them
| doing and wanting, kept coming back again and again and again.
| bouvin wrote:
| His style is something else - there are not many SF authors
| (and fewer still of his generation) that I would describe as
| lyrical, but he in one of them.
| fmajid wrote:
| Try Ted Sturgeon.
| swayvil wrote:
| I libgenned those within 20 seconds of reading your reply.
| Thank you very much.
|
| Either good scifi is getting harder to find or I'm turning into
| a right snob.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
|
| It's always easier to find good material after the fact,
| going back in time and letting others filter it, instead of
| trying to figure out which of the present day material is not
| crap.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Hope you like them! And if you are looking for more, consider
| giving R.A. Lafferty a shot as well. Another very unique,
| intelligent SF author without a lot of peers who wrote like
| him.
| tetris11 wrote:
| A.k.a The guy who is positively obsessed with cats, and may be
| the unknowing member (grandfather?) of a certain deviant
| demographic gaining mainstream appeal today (no judgement, it's
| just not for me).
|
| That being said, I loved Mother Hittons Little Kittons
| fmajid wrote:
| One of the greatest of the Golden Age writers with Ted
| Sturgeon, unlike the insipid and grossly overrated Heinlein.
|
| NESFA Press has excellent omnibus reissues of _The Rediscovery
| of Man_ and _Norstrilia_. I just wish they had eBook versions
| as well like they recently did for Fredric Brown.
|
| I myself first read his work in French translation when I was
| 12 or so (unlike the US, classics like Cordwainer Smith or
| Fredric Brown never went out of print in France, thanks to
| Denoel's excellent _Presence du Futur_ imprint).
| SeenNotHeard wrote:
| An interesting perspective on Cordwainer Smith can be found in
| Robert Silverberg's "Science Fiction: 101." He reprints Smith's
| "Scanners Live in Vain," offers his analysis, and reminisces on
| how the sci-fi community buzzed over this newcomer's strange
| approach to the field.
| eternalban wrote:
| _" [In SAIS,] Linebarger was known to end class with a maxim:
| 'The essence of psychological warfare is shock and surprise.' To
| illustrate his point, the professor then "took the glass eye out
| of its socket, flipped it up in the air, put it into his pocket
| and exited the classroom."_
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I highly recommend _Psychological Warfare_ (and its development
| from the 40 's to the 50's). Read it, and apply its lessons to
| itself. I think you'll find that Linebarger has more to say,
| between the lines, and you'll probably also get a more nuanced
| idea of his views than the writers of TFA had.
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm
| eternalban wrote:
| Thanks for the ref. A few passages in the beginning chapters
| make me wonder what he would make of US today, specially
| whether he would recognize the 'conversion' regiment that he
| deems "as sure as a steam-roller" as having been|being
| applied.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| A brief bio and blurb about his SF writing was made by the Extra
| Credit folk, link below. But don't just watch the video, read
| Cordwainer's stories too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21Uyx0eJgIo
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| For those interested in exploring further, his daughter has
| maintained a web site about his life and works since at least
| 2008.
|
| http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| It's been a lot of years since I first read Scanners Live in
| Vain, but I always remember the first two lines.
|
| ...
|
| Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from
| anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When
| he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression
| on Luci's face that the table must have made a loud crash, he
| looked down to see if his leg were broken. It was not. Scanner to
| the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and
| automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, Chestbox of
| instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the Mirror. Only
| then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice,
| even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred
| to have him write.
|
| "I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch. It's my worry,
| isn't it?"
| pmoriarty wrote:
| That story stunned me when I first read it, because it was so
| far ahead of its time. It reads like something out of Warhammer
| 40k, but it was written in 1950.
| [deleted]
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