The Best of Cordwainer Smith (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Stories
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—future history
- Time of Work: Various times between 6,000 and 16,000
- Setting: Earth, other planets, and aboard spacecraft
- Genres: Short fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: Future, Other worlds, Space ships, stations, or vehicles, Cats, Senses or sensation
- Locales: Space, Earth, Fictional planets
The Plot
The twelve stories in this collection, written separately and published between 1950 and 1964, fit into a consistent future history that covers human development from the Second Age of Space to the era of rights for underpeople and the Rediscovery of Man. Many of the stories involve the Instrumentality, a ruling bureau- cracy that is not always admirable but ultimately manages “to keep man man.”
Set in the Second Age of Space, “Scanners Live in Vain” concerns the scanners, men surgically cut off from their senses in order to endure the pain of space...
[The entire page is 1079 words long]
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