Cordwainer Smith Books In Order

Publication Order of Norstrilia Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories Books

Publication Order of Isaac Asimov's Wonderful Worlds Of Science Fiction Books

Publication Order of The Year of the Cat Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Cordwainer Smith
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger was born July 11, 1913 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was better known by his pseudonym of Cordwainer Smith and known for his science fiction works. He was a US Army officer, a noted East Asia scholar, and was an expert in psychological warfare. Even though his writing career was shortened by his death at a young age, he’s considered one of science fiction’s more influential and talented writers.

Cordwainer’s dad, Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger, was a lawyer and working as a judge in the Philippines. There he met Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese nationalist, to whom he became an advisor. His dad sent his wife to give birth in Milwaukee, so that their kid would be eligible to become the president of the United States.

Cordwainer’s young life was unsettled since his dad moved the family to a succession of places in America, Asia, and Europe. He sometimes got sent to boarding schools for safety. In total, Paul was enrolled in over 30 schools. In 1919, he got blinded in his right eye, which got replaced with a glass eye. The vision in his left eye was impaired due to infection.

He was familiar with German, English, and Chinese by adulthood. At just 23, he got a PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University.

He held a faculty appointment at Duke University from 1937 to 1946, where he started producing some highly regarded works on Far Eastern affairs. As he retained his professorship at Duke after World War II’s start, he began serving as a second lieutenant in the US Army, where he got involved in the creation of the Office of War Information and the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. Linebarger also helped organize the army’s first psychological warfare section.

In 1943, he got sent to China in order to coordinate military intelligence operations. He later pursued his interest in China, and he wound up becoming a close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of major.

In 1947, he moved to the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where he served as Professor of Asiatic Studies. He would use his experiences in the war to write “Psychological Warfare”, a book that’s regarded by many in the field as a classic text.

He would eventually rise to the rank of colonel in the reserves. He got recalled to advise the British forces in the Malayan Emergency and the US Eighth Army during the Korean War. Even though he was known to refer to himself as a visitor to little wars, he refrained from getting involved in the Vietnam War, however is known to have done work for the CIA.

In 1969, a CIA officer wrote that Linebarger was quite possibly the leading practitioner of ‘gray’ and ‘black’ propaganda in the Western World.

He married Margaret Snow in 1936. They had two daughters, one in 1942 and another in 1947, before divorcing in 1949. He married again to Genevieve Collins in 1950, and they had no kids together. They remained married to each other until his death.

He died at the age of 53 in Baltimore, Maryland of a heart attack on August 6, 1966. He’d been expressing a desire to retire in Australia, which he’d visited on his travels. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Section 35, Grave Number 4712. Genevieve Collins, his widow, was interred with him on November 16, 1981.

His identity as “Cordwainer Smith” remained a secret until he died. Cordwainer is an archaic word for somebody that worked in cordwain or cordovan leather; a shoemaker.

“Scanners Live in Vain” is a novella that was released in 1950. Man has conquered space however that’s come at a price. In order to maintain the space lanes, Scanners must undergo operations in which their brains get severed from their sensory inputs in order to block out the pain of space. Scanner Martel has already made this sacrifice. He has to monitor his vital functions via the implanted dials and instruments in his chest. The only respite that he gets from such an isolated existence is his ability to sometimes “cranch” and go back to a bit of normalcy with Luci, his wife.

However there is now a guy called Adam Stone that has claimed he’s found a way to travel in the deep of space without needing to use Scanners. Through the twisted logic of the Scanners community, it’s decided that Adam Stone will have to die. Martel, while he is cranched, realizes the madness of such a solution, and that all Scanners Live in Vain.

This was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America as being one of the greatest stories of all time and was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology.

“The Underpeople” is the second novel in the “Nostrilla” series and was released in 1968. In a far flung future, planoforming ships knit together this galaxy that’s ruled from Earth by the ruthless benevolence of the mysterious Lords of Instrumentality, who presided over this utopia without danger, death, or freedom. The Underpeople, these human-like beings that were created from animals to do the work of utopia, didn’t have any rights, and could be disposed of at a human’s whim.

However they had become more humanlike than their creators, and C’Mell (their leader and the cat woman) had this plan for gaining their freedom, which made her far too dangerous a person to be permitted to live.

The planet Norstrilla, elsewhere in the galaxy, had power of its own, for it was the sole source of stroon, a drug which halted aging and made humans immortal. Its inhabitants were wealthy beyond all comprehension, and one of them was Rod McBan, a boy, with help from his computer, was able to manipulate the galactic economy until he totally owned planet Earth, which made him far too dangerous a person to be allowed to live.

However once Rod arrived on Earth and joined up with C’Mell and the Underpeople, the petrified utopia of the Instrumentality started cracking and fall apart while freedom got reborn in the galaxy.