The speculative conclusions we draw from this evidence will serve in reconfiguring a life from a personalist perspective. I ask only for tolerance, the ironic tolerance with which Cordwainer Smith might have welcomed these speculations if this book had fallen into his hands.
1 Cf. my work from these years: El sentido de la ciencia ficción; Buenos Aires, Ed. Columba, 1967 and “Los herederos de Bradbury” in Criterio # 1621 (1971).
2 While Carol McGuirk (2001) claims that the influence was reciprocal, The Planet Buyer was published in 1964, a year before Dune.
3 James B. Jordan (1992) believes that the main difference lies in the fact that Smith´s imitators do not share his Christian vision.
4 The identity of the author of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, about whom the only thing known was a post office box, inspired for forty years the most outlandish conjectures, ones refuted at the time of his death.
5 Bready, James H., Column “Books and Authors”, The Baltimore Sun, September 26, 1965.
6 Colvin, James. Review of You Will Never Be The Same in New Worlds no. 143 (1964).
7 Pohl (1979)
8 Foyster-Burns, (1973).
9 One of the most renowned was William Fitzgerald Jenkins (1896-1975), who wrote science fiction under the name “Murray Leinster” and westerns, detective novels, cartoon strips, radio and TV shows, romance novels and popular articles as “Will F. Jenkins”.
10 Marcial Souto, personal communication
11 Pierce (1975-a)
12 Pierce (1975-b)
13 In the 1963 rewriting, the name of the character had changed to “Jack Reardon.”
14 Elms (1984)
15 Elms (1984)
16 Foyster (1975)
17 Cf. In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov: 1920-1954. Garden City, New York, Doubleday 1979, pg. 586.
18 Cordwainer Smith. Prologue to Space Lords.
19 Cf. Spock. B. Zimmerman, M. Dr. Spock on Vietnam,
20 Pierce (1975-a)
21 Cf. Who´s Who in America. Chicago, The A. N. Marquis Co. vol. 34, 1966-1967, p. 1272. Gale, Contemporary Authors, 1966, p.700-701.
THE CORDWAINERIAN UNIVERSE
THE CORDWAINERIAN UNIVERSE
There are only two ways to be a historian of the future:
scientific induction or the interpretation of dreams and omens
—Franz Werfel, Stern der Ungeborenen (1945)
The body of work of Cordwainer Smith consists of thirty-three stories and one novel. Reissued various times and translated into several different languages, it is practically unknown outside the circle of science fiction readers.
As we will be referring to these texts each step along the way, it is necessary to carry out a kind of “guided tour” through this fictional world, one that will provide us with an initial orientation.
An exposition of the Cordwainerian universe may appear superfluous to someone predisposed to an “innocent” reading. Without a doubt, this is the first and most necessary kind. Yet even someone solely interested in being entertained will be curious to know the overarching storyline. As a first step, we will thus attempt to define and organize the signs scattered throughout the texts.
All the stories of Cordwainer Smith form a vast plot that, while open-ended, is no less consistent. Each part refers to the whole, which supports the assumption that the schema would have been conducive to producing an unlimited amount of stories.
“Those who have read the bulk of his work will realize that it is filled with cross-references which help to give the whole a remarkable unity,” observed Foyster1. For Cheetham, “each story he wrote is, in fact, a fragment of a large (and inconclusive) chronicle of the future, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”2 Wollheim also noted, “all his work, in whatever form published, fits in as sections and chapters of what must be a many millions-of-words about the galactic future.”3
These circumstances, however, which would barely suffice to encapsulate the work of Cordwainer Smith in a sub-genre within science fiction, do not exhaust his originality.
The “futuristic story” is a format —which Michel Butor wanted to make into a rule— used by writers such as Asimov and Heinlein for planning their stories. Instead of imagining a different context for every story, they adhered to a kind of regulatory blueprint that made them episodes of a single tale. These types of stories did not last because of their inferior literary quality, although many were commercial successes. Cordwainer Smith was not so lucky.
Are we thus dealing with a purely poetic construction, a self-referential game governed by its own rules, such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth? The answer is no. The wealth of references offered by the writer inside and outside his work supports the view that his fiction is to a certain extent rooted in the present.
If we were looking for some kind of literary kinship, we would be obliged to turn to the great cosmogonies of Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men and Starmaker, both of which entail an entire philosophy of evolution and history. Indeed, it is not accidental that Stapledon was one of young “Cordwainer Smith’s” favorite writers.
Still, there is a formal difference between the two. Stapledon’s stories are not bound to a strict chronology. They cover a span of astronomical time but are narrated linearly, beginning in the present and extending to an increasingly remote future. The stories of Cordwainer Smith cover a period that runs from the 20th century to the 162nd, but their chronology is discontinuous. Not only are there are gaps, but certain periods merit more attention than others.
The key to their originality lies in the fact that they are narrated retrospectively, as if the narrator were writing from the remote future, conjuring up legends yet to be born. The majority of them revolve around events that take place around the year 16,000, in the so-called Era of the Rediscovery of Man.
Distancing himself from the evolutionary utopianism of traditional science fiction, Cordwainer Smith did not depict this era as utopian. On the contrary, the Rediscovery is the result of the failure of a utopia: a time of both decadence and hope, which perhaps makes it more believable.
This odd “future history” is more than a parable of our civilization. It is an almost cyclical view of history, where there are “retrogressions” that are “progressions” and “progressions” that are “retrogressions”. At times, they produce the paradoxical effect astutely observed by Michel Demuth: the Galaxy of the Lords of the Instrumentality resembles a stellar Europe that entered the Middle Ages subsequent to experiencing its Renaissance.4 It should be kept in mind that Linebarger had read the Chinese classics, for which indefinite progress was an alien concept and which conceived of history as a cyclical alternation between centralization and disintegration of empires.5
In the fifteen-thousand-year span of its meta-narrative there is a certain continuity of technological progress. But this not what its creator understands by “civilization”. “Is civilization a gun or a blaster or a laser or a rocket? [...] ‘Civilization is itself a lady’s word. There were writers in a country named France who made that word popular in the third century before space travel. To be ‘civilized’ meant for people to be tame, to be kind, to be polished.”6
In the larger Cordwainerian narrative, civilization is subject to cycles of unity and dispersion, order and anarchy, and construction, liquidation and rebirth. It is a vision of history more theological than philosophical, as it has no imminent end: its goal is outside of time in the realm of eternity. While some processes are analogous they are not strictly repeated, and a balance is never reached. When utopian perfection appears to have been attained, stagnation sets in and it is necessary to start again.
Each era has its own characteristic style, such as the Revolution of Pleasure, the consummation of which spans centuries; the era of the Instrumentality, with
its relentless Machiavellianism; and the romantic era of the Lords of the Afternoon.
The stories of Cordwainer Smith are cyclically interrelated, like medieval collections of ballads. Each cycle, in turn, might include subordinate stories. Sometimes a single story involves more than one cycle and contains signs that refer to the master narrative. This is structured in seven successive eras:
1- The Cold War Era
This era contained stories written in the late fifties which deal with international politics of the period in an ironic way.
2- The Age Of Nations
This age includes world wars of the immediate future and the collapse of our civilization. References to this period and the next one appear in nearly all the texts.
3- Dark Times
This is an era of barbarism in the wake of the world wars and the disintegration of nations. A sect of Chinese philosophers comes to control a significant part of humanity and halts the decadence, though later degeneration ensues and a fresh onset of stagnation cannot be avoided. The Instrumentality, the era that comes into being at the end of this area – is the institution that will dominate the next few millennia. References to this period appear mostly in texts published posthumously.
4- The Three Space Ages
Under the guidance of the Instrumentality, human expansion into the cosmos is revived. This “conquest of space” is an anti-epic, free of all the conventions of space operas. It stresses not adventure but human fragility in the face of mystery, which requires a forced symbiosis between men and machines. It appears in stories written between 1945 and 1963.
5- Cycle Of The Instrumentality And The Underpeople
This era is unfolded in stories set around the year 16,000. The Instrumentality has consolidated its utopia of discreet control but has begun to show signs of exhaustion. To regain the initiative, it launches a reform called the Rediscovery of Man. The decadence of the Instrumentality is weighed against the non-violent epic of the “underpeople”, a race of pariahs that will be the primary agent of human regeneration.
This cycle includes some ancillary stories: the sagas of C’mell, Rod MacBan, Casher O’Neill and the planet Norstrilia, which are developed mainly in Quest of the Three Worlds (1966) and Norstrilia (1975).
6- Space-Three Cycle
This era is alluded to in only one story (of which there are two versions), but references indicate it was to be developed further. Probably it was the introduction to a cycle as broad as that of the Instrumentality, which according to Burns7 would be the Era of the Lords of the Afternoon.
7- Era Of The Lords Of The Afternoon
Burns offers few clues that permit speculation about this period. He states that it is more than a mere inversion of the values of the previous era and suggests that the story “Under Old Earth” might possibly mark its beginning. This seems unlikely, for signs in the text situate it in the age prior to the Rediscovery.
In the chronology that J. J. Pierce compiled in 1975, the story “Down to a Sunless Sea” is set in the middle of the Era of the Lords of the Afternoon. My sense is that there is no reason to extend it beyond the period of Casher O’Neill. In his introduction to the Complete Stories of Cordwainer Smith (1993), Pierce chose to move the entire cycle of the Lords of the Afternoon to the Dark Times, which also seems inconsistent with the rest of the chronology.
Cold War Stories
Some of the first stories of Cordwainer Smith are political satires that bear reading given the climate of the Cold War. Linebarger already had a career as a political advisor, experience that he had put to use in the “Felix C. Forrest” novels.
These stories opened an escape valve of humor. He even dared to tangle with McCarthyism, a fearsome force at the time: the story “Angerhelm” (1959) ironically depicted an FBI inquisitor “who could smell a conspirator two miles off in a clear day.”
“The Fife of Bodidharma” (1959), the first version of which he wrote when he was sixteen, is the story of an archaic musical instrument with magical properties: if the right person plays it the right way, it fills the soul with harmony. Citing Confucius, however, he warns that its power is ambivalent and can become sinister if the instrument falls into the wrong hands.
Lost in prehistoric times, the flute is found by Bodiharma, the Indian apostle who went off to preach Buddhism to the Chinese. With the magic of its melody, the wise man is able to pacify the beasts that attack him on his journey through the Himalayas.
Centuries later, the flute drives the German explorer who discovers it mad and ends up in a display case in a museum. When Allied bombing razes Germany, a young Nazi rescues it from the ruins but dies just as he coaxes the first notes out of the instrument.
A soldier then takes it to the United States, where it ends up in the hands of a German engineer named Hagen von Grün. By accident, workers mount the flute on an experimental satellite to be launched from Cape Canaveral. What will happen when the flute begins to transmit its disturbing music to the entire planet?
In the story “No, No, Not Rogov!” (1959), a Russian scientist trying to develop a system of telepathic espionage makes contact with the year 13,582 —an age of peace and harmony among the races of the Galaxy— and goes mad admiring the beauty of a dance festival.8
“Angerhelm” (1959) relates yet another irruption of the inexplicable. A Soviet satellite picks up a message from outer space. It is the voice of a man that died two years ago and apparently is trying to contact his brother. No expert is able to explain what is happening to Nikita Khrushchev and Foster Dulles.
“Western Science Is So Wonderful” (1958) is Smith’s most fully realized satire. It tells the story of a demon (in fact, an exiled student from Mars) who has lived for centuries unbothered in a Chinese valley. One day, he discovers “Western science” in the form of a Zippo lighter. Ever since, he has been obsessed with mastering this marvelous “technology”, approaching anyone he encounters and inquiring how to achieve it. He comes across a troop of Maoist guerrillas guided by a Russian agitator and tries to please the latter by any means possible. As he is able to take any form he wishes, he transforms into a stripper, a tiger, a team of Soviet nurses and even into Mao Zedong himself but is still unable to win the Russian over.
The demon is intent on studying engineering in Peking and applies for admission into the Communist Party. This puts the Chinese and the Russian in an awkward spot, for as militant atheists they cannot acknowledge the genie’s existence. If they did, they would be forced to create a new branch of the party apparatus that included “folkloric creatures”.
Instead, they decide to get rid of it, convincing the demon to go to the United States. They assure him that there he will be in technology up to his ears, though undoubtedly the Americans will force him to drink Coca-Cola, a beverage they don’t seem to have a clear idea of. The genie leaves, and in order not to attract attention, ends his days by transforming into a milk truck in the town of Waterbury, Connecticut. Due to his ignorance of Western science, however, the truck, beneath the paint, is made of solid gold.
The Age of Nations
In the Cordwainerian meta-story, the near future is a period of convulsion. Successive world wars have pushed humanity to the brink of catastrophe, even if they have not destroyed civilization completely. Yet the confrontation between “nations in arms” concludes, paradoxically, with the liquidation of nation-states.
In his manual on psychological warfare, Linebarger also predicted that nationalism was a thing of the past: “The entire world is governed in accordance with political customs, ideas, and structures that were developed long ago to meet the needs of European Christendom. The sovereign state itself is not an immutable factor in human affairs but an organization of a particular kind. World Wars I and II demonstrate what happens when the capacity to make wars rests with political agencies responsible to just a nation at a
time.”9
Felix C. Forrest also wrote:
“Some day [sic] America too will burn; wounded people, hungry, will crawl through the ruins looking for food. But that will be beyond our time. There’s one more life’s worth of goodness before the Third World War.”10
News from this period possesses a certain mythical quality. For the narrator, situated in the remote future, our time has become the stuff of legend, and it is necessary to call upon archaeology to reconstruct it. In the 150th century, when an attempt is made to revive the old nationalities, the only source of French culture available is a museum in a former African colony, the Republic of Mali.11
Memories of this age are so disagreeable that the Instrumentality conceals them behind a strict censure: “[O]ld music from the First Space Age has a real tendency to corrupt people of our own time. [It] is licentious.”12
The destruction of New York and the Sixth Reich of 2495 are among the events mentioned “in that period of the First Doom”13, “the lost world back in the age of nations, when people could still put numbers on the years”14, “the ancient nations, in the times of wars, before the Beasts”15, “the period of darkness and troubles”16 and the Sixth Reich of 2495.17
The superpowers of this period are the murkins (Americans) and the paroskii (Russians). Their space race18 is still remembered and there are people who continue to drink “a sweet Earth beverage called chai [tea, in Russian] by the ancient the Paroskii ones.”19
Lord of the Afternoon Page 3
