Review Page: The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith
| Title: |
Rediscovery of Man, The |
| Author: |
Cordwainer Smith |
| Genre: |
Science Fiction |
| Publisher: |
Millennium Books |
| Date of Publication: |
20 May, 1999 |
| ISBN: |
1857988191 |
No. of Reviews: 1
Av. Rating: 9/10
Buy this book from the Amazon website.
15.09.2000 - Indigo - 9/10
List of Reviews | Bio
Cordwainer who?
Possibly the most underrated SF author ever, Cordwainer Smith wrote only a few stories in his SF career. His only novel, Norstrilia, concerns the exploits of Rod McBan and his quest to acrue sufficient funds via a stock-exchange accumulator to purchase Old Earth, where he eventually finds his heart's desire in an ancient rare postage stamp (one of the ones with the aeroplane printed upside down) and the cat girl C'Mell. His other works, short stories and a couple of novellas are also set within the same universe, dominated by the Instrumentality of Mankind, a benign dictatorship that directs the lives of humanity throughout the galaxies.
This collection of short stories is the best possible introduction to the universe of Smith, and the commentry throughout the book does a great deal to explain the chronological events within the setting, which does evolve over time. The worlds are extremely strange but are presented with such a matter-of-fact innocence that they are completely believable. Mother Hutton's Littel Kittons is set on the same world as Norstrilia, where the Old North Australians breed the giant sick sheep for the santaclara longevity drug, Stroon, and the planetary defenses consist of the amplified brainwaves of psychotic mink. In the Lady Who Sailed The Soul a woman takes on bodily modification and the onerous task of piloting a spaceship at the cost of her youth, to cross the gulf of age between her young self and an old astronaut who made the same journey. Other stories feature dragons in space and golden spacecraft hundreds of miles long, and a planet where merely breathing the air is agony for the inhabitants.
Smith spent much of his life in the Far East in the 1940s and 50s, and was apparently influenced by Eastern fables. His writing has a fairytale quality, and his use of themes such as love (The Lady Who Sailed The Soul), emancipation and martyrdom (The Dead Lady of Clown Town) and technological redundancy (Scanners Live In Vain) makes his stories at once socially relevent and timeless.
It's possible that hard SF fans might be put off by the sense of whimsy in the books, and non Speculative Fiction types might not go for the offbeat weirdness - which is why I'm only going to give this book 9 out of 10. In my opinion, though, you'd be missing out if you don't buy a copy of this book immediately. Smith didn't just write great SF, he wrote great stories, period.
Norstrilia is also available.