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4.0 

The Best of Cordwainer Smith

By Cordwainer Smith
The Best of Cordwainer Smith by Cordwainer Smith digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

"No one ever wrote like Smith, with his special blend of intense myth-making and rich invention!"—Publishers Weekly

Cordwainer Smith was one of the original visionaries to think of humanity in terms of thousands of years in the future, spread out across the universe. This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe (and other beings) around us and ultimately what it means to be human.

In “Scanners Live in Vain” we meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine—a scanner—to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another.

In “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” we get to know the underpeople—animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners—and meet D’Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior.

In “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is—as first raised in “The Dead Lady of Clown Town”—is put into action when an underperson, C’mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!

And in “A Planet Named Shayol” it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all.

2 Reviews

4.0
“A good collection from a very interesting and worthwhile author. Smith's (a pen name) life is famously among the short list of authors whose personal lived experience is more amazing than their speculative fiction. A few of these stories are very, very good - - one or two are GREAT (timeless and important) - - and most of them read as afternoon and spare time experiments in a sort of meditation on psychology, the human condition, and the curses and blessings of technology and the enormous clean slate of the cosmos. After a few of them read as riffs on Alice in Wonderland - - an author's imagination wandering along a path and developing the story as you watch. A little too "and then this happened, and then this happened" as a sort of punchline is developed. I found myself tiring of it and finding fewer ideas with substance as I passed the 65% mark, which was disappointing because of the wonder of the start and my introduction to the author (whom Ursula K Le Guin had sung the praises of). Rounding up to 4 stars - he's an important figure in the new age of science fiction that followed the golden age.”

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