Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, an influential figure in science fiction born on July 11, 1913, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His diverse upbringing included significant time spent in China and Japan, with a rich educational background that culminated in a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Linebarger served in World War II, achieving the rank of colonel, and later published works that reflect his military and political experiences, including his notable nonfiction treatise, *Psychological Warfare*.
Smith's literary career began in earnest after the war, with his first science fiction story "Scanners Live in Vain" published in 1950. He is known for creating a complex future history called the Instrumentality of Mankind, exploring themes of civilization, culture, and Eastern philosophy through interconnected narratives over a span of fifteen thousand years. He published thirty-two stories and two collections during his lifetime, and his work is characterized by a blend of sociological insights and imaginative storytelling.
Smith's later writings incorporated Christian themes, influenced by his conversion to Episcopalianism. He passed away on August 6, 1966, but remains a respected figure in the genre, with ongoing interest in his contributions, including a dedicated website maintained by his daughter.
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Cordwainer Smith
- Born: July 11, 1913
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Died: August 6, 1966
- Place of death: Baltimore, Maryland
Biography
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger who was better known in science- fiction circles under his pseudonym, Cordwainer Smith was born in July 11, 1913, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father, Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger, an American judge who had given financial support to the Chinese revolution of 1911, was a legal advisor to Sun Yat-Sen. Sun purportedly gave Paul the nickname Lin Bah Loh (which translates as “Forest of Incandescent Bliss”) and Paul later became an advisor and confidante to Sun’s successor, Chiang Kai-Shek.
Linebarger spent much of his early life in China and Japan and also traveled to Russia and France. He was schooled in Germany, but received his higher education in the United States, graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1936 with a Ph.D. in political science. That same year he married for the first time; he had two daughters before the marriage ended in 1949. He received an army commission in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of colonel, and worked as an operative in China.
In the years after the war, while involved in the Department of Asiatic Politics at Johns Hopkins, Linebarger began publishing fiction. His first two novels, Ria (1947) and Carola (1948), published under the pseudonym Felix C. Forrest, drew from his experiences in Asia. His nonfiction treatise, Psychological Warfare (1948), developed from his wartime work, appeared under his own name and became a standard text on its subject. In 1949, he published the spy thriller, Atomsk, under yet another pseudonym, Carmichael Smith.
Linebarger had begun writing short fiction while a teenager, and had unsuccessfully tried to place stories with the fantasy pulp Unknown and several science-fiction magazines in the 1940’s. Astounding, the leading science-fiction magazine of the time, rejected his story “Scanners Live in Vain” in 1945. It was published by Fantasy Book in 1950 and became the first science-fiction story to appear under the Cordwainer Smith pseudonym.
Over the next sixteen years, Linebarger (as Smith) published a total of thirty-two science-fiction stories, four of which were assembled into the collection Quest of the Three Worlds (1966). All were interconnected episodes in the Instrumentality of Mankind, a future history of humanity that recapitulates the Dark Ages, the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration through a chronicle of fifteen thousand years of human civilization. It culminates in the species’s colonization of the galaxy. Linebarger had first conceived the historical scheme for his work in the story “War No. 81-Q,” written when he was fourteen, and the stories, which blend sociological and hard science fiction, are memorable for their frequent incorporation of Eastern philosophy and variations on Asian mythology, religion, and cultural customs.
The same year as his first science-fiction sale, Linebarger married Genevieve Collins. He juggled teaching duties as a professor at Johns Hopkins with his writing until the early 1950’s, when he was recalled to military duty during the Korean War. Two short novels, The Planet Buyer (1964) and The Underpeople (1968), were carved out a larger work that Linebarger had begun writing in 1958 under the title Star- Craving Mad, and that was published posthumously as Nostrilia (1975).
Linebarger had been raised as a Methodist but became a devout Episcopalian around 1960, after which his work began to incorporate a variety of Christian images and themes. He died of a heart attack in Baltimore on August 6, 1966. Only two collections of his stories, You Will Never Be the Same (1963) and Space Lords (1965), appeared in his lifetime. His daughter maintains a website devoted to his legacy, www.cordwainer-smith.com.