“Drunkboat” (1963) begins when Rambo appears on Earth. While alive, he is naked and burned, wounded by mysterious forces. He appears to be crazy, raving in an unintelligible language. The description of his “journey” is almost dream-like, a parody of the poem “Bateau Ivre” by Arthur Rimbaud.54
Playing with supernatural forces, Rambo has reached the limits of the human condition. His dreams encroach upon reality and he is able to knock down steel walls with his bare hands. When he dreams that his beloved is being threatened, he spreads confusion among the soldiers and causes them to fight each other. While the Instrumentality absolves Crudelta, it never understands what happened. There is a recurrence of the “Angerhelm” situation when an otherworldly voice confounded the powers of the 20th century. Perhaps the “beyond” from which Angerhelm spoke was Space-Three. “The Colonel Came Back from Nothing-at-all” (the first appearance of the theme) was written during the same period as “Angerhelm”.
When Casher O’Neill returns to Mizzer, he also travels through Space-Three.
At this time Space Three forms part, along with the Old Strong Religion, of the faith of the underpeople. It is associated with a new revelation: “what the robot, rat and Copt agreed on when they went exploring back in Space Three.”55 “The Robot, the Rat and Copt” was the title of a story Cordwainer Smith never ended up writing.
The mysterious formula is repeated in all the rituals and exhortations. It allows us to assume that Smith intended to further develop this episode, as significant as the one involving D’joan. Perhaps it would have marked the beginning of the era of the Lords of the Afternoon.
In the final years of his life, Cordwainer Smith planned a new series of stories set in a time far beyond the Era of the Instrumentality. Arthur Burns, to whom he confided the project, was very cautious when describing it: “Beyond the stage of Instrumentality there’s what he called the Lords of the Afternoon. [This Age] is not exactly the decadence of Pleasure Revolution —it’s got beyond that— but it’s a bit...odd. You know, it’s... There are certain limits to this sort of thing and despite the romanticism he did feel that there were some kind of limits; there were some things that you transgressed at your peril.”56
This period appears as a process in which the true men and underpeople become confused in a common spiritual fate.
The last text in the Casher O’Neill cycle also insists on psychic powers, which indicates a gradual abandonment of technology as the mysteries of Space Three are penetrated. In a way, it is another version of the situation that existed under the Jwindz before the arrival of the Vom Acht sisters.
Chronology in the Cordwainerian universe
The vast historical context in which these stories are set did not emerge from a kind of master plan designed once and for all. Rather it was constructed over time, taking shape as the stories gave rise to one another and assumed a sequential order.
In the drafts of “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” and Star-Craving Mad, the first version (unpublished) of Norstrilia, Pierce found diverging and incompatible chronologies that would later be discarded. Apparently it was when “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” was written that the definitive structure that the overarching story would eventually have found its focus.
In spite of the absence of an explicit chronology, all the stories can be organized in a coherent schema.
The Rediscovery of Man, for instance, occurs in the year 16,000: “I myself was the first man to put a postage stamp on a letter, after fourteen-thousand years.”57 It is said that C’mell lived one hundred and three years,58 which would seem to indicate that the emancipation of the underpeople took place around the year 16,100.
Norstrilia covers “the first century of the Rediscovery of Man. When C’mell lived. About the time they polished off Shayol”, which allows us situate it in the year 16,000. In another passage, however, the author states that this happened “fifteen thousand years after the bombs went up and the boom came down on Old Old Earth”59. This contradiction cannot be resolved in the absence of the other references.
Pierce (1975) begins with the same premises, and his chronology is quite similar to mine, albeit with certain discrepancies. For example, Pierce acknowledges only two space ages (including that of the 20th century) and does not distinguish among the technology of the Scanners, space sailing ships and planoform craft. He situates “War no. 81Q” around the year 3000, though the date that appears in the text is 2027. He points out that the martyrdom of D’joan marks the rebirth of religion, previously banned by the Instrumentality, but situates this prohibition two thousand years later, in the times of Casher O’Neill.
Some of these differences can be explained by the contradictory clues found in the texts themselves. As a curious side note, I will list a few:
In the story “Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons”, the thief Benjacomin Bozart reads in the Encyclopedia Galactica that Benjamin Hitton died in the 172nd century. This date cannot be accurate, since in Norstrilia (the action of which clearly takes place in the 170th century) Bozart is mentioned as a figure from the past.
If Benjamin Hitton (10,719-17,213) was one of the first colonizers of Norstrilia, the production of stroon could have begun before the 101st century. It is impossible for a survivor of the Chinese colonization of Venus to still be alive at this time, which we can approximately situate in the 157th century.
In Norstrilia the “heavy men” of the planet Wereld Schemering are described as beings that live in a world of crushing gravity. Yet, in “Think Blue, Count Two”, movement across the surface of the planet is accomplished without difficulty.
“Mark Elf” cannot be set in the year 18,000 but only in the 40th century, as the Instrumentality did not yet exist.
Angus McIntyre points to an anachronism in the story “The Colonel Came Back from Nothing-at-all.”60 Although the doctors treating Desmond Harkening cannot be wearing pinlightning helmets, they are nonetheless wearing something described as telepathic amplifiers. These devices are the product of technology that will be created specifically for spacecraft whose main booster Harkening has just discovered.
Pierce gives an account of the draft of a story that never came to be written (“How the Dream Lords Died”). It mentions the Lords of Sleep who used the brains of twelve thousand slaves to set off on an exploration of the past, similar to Stapledon’s Tenth Eighth Men. The story could be set in the times of Aojou-Nanbien (around the year 4000), although it is clearly dated 6111, which is inconsistent with the general chronology that has just been established.
1 Foyster (1973).
2 Cheetham (1971).
3 Donald A. Wollheim, Preface to Quest of the Three Worlds.
4 Demuth (1967)
5 For an understanding of the Chinese mandarinate, a possible model for the Cordwainerian “Instrumentality”, cf. Etienne Balasz, La bureaucratie céleste (Gallimard, 1968).
6 “On the Gem Planet”
7 Foyster-Burns (1973)
8 As a result of his intelligence activities, Linebarger had access to classified documents. The subject of Russian “Psychotronics” became public knowledge with the appearance of the book by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder entitled Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1970).
9 Paul Linebarger, Psychological Warfare. Washington, Infantry Journal Press, pg. 242.
10 Carola, pg. 3.
11 Norstrilia, chapter. “Birds, far Underground”.
12 The Underpeople, chapter.1 (text not included in Norstrilia).
13 The Underpeople (text not included in Norstrilia).
14 “When the People Fell”
15 “Scanners Live in Vain”
16 “The Lady Who Sailed The Soul”
17 “Mark Elf”
18 “Drunkboat”
19 Norstril
ia, chapter. “Birds, Far Underground”.
20 The Underpeople, chapter 1 (text not included in Norstrilia).
21 “Under Old Earth”
22 “Mark Elf”
23 Norstrilia, chapter. “Everybody’s Fond of Money”.
24 Norstrilia, chapter. “The Old Broken Treasures in the Gap”.
25 Norstrilia, chapter. “The Road to the Catmaster”.
26 “Queen of the Afternoon”
27 “Mark Elf”
28 “Scanners Live in Vain”
29 “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul”
30 “When the People Fell”
31 Zelazny (1968)
32 Carol McGuirk points out that in the Chinese horoscope, Rat and Dragon form a perfect match.
33 “Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons”
34 Norstrilia, chapter. “Counsels, Councils, Consoles and Consuls”.
35 “Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons”; “On the Gem Planet”
36 “On the Storm Planet”
37 Norstrilia, chap. “The Department Store of Heart’s Desires”.
38 Norstrilia, chap. “Tostig Amaral”.
39 “A Planet Named Shayol”; Norstrilia, chapter. “The Department Store of Heart’s Desires”.
40 Norstrilia, chap. “The Palace of the Governor of the Night”
41 Norstrilia, chap. “The Department Store of Heart’s Desires”.
42 Norstrilia, chap. “FOE Money, SAD Money”.
43 Frabetti, (1971)
44 “Think Blue, Count Two”
45 “On the Sand Planet”
46 “On the Sand Planet”
47 Norstrilia, chap. “The Nearby Exile”
48 Norstrilia, chap. “Everybody’s Fond of Money”
49 Norstrilia, chap. “The Nearby Exile”
50 Norstrilia, chap. “Hospitality and Entrapment”
51 “Under Old Earth”
52 Norstrilia, chap. “The Road to the Catmaster”
53 “Drunkboat”
54 Cf. Paula Salmoiraghi, “Barcos ebrios. Arthur Rimbaud, el poeta y Cordwainer Smith, el escritor de CF”, in Velero 25, Ciencia ficción peruana, March 2007.
55 “On the Storm Planet”
56 Foyster-Burns (1973)
57 “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”
58 “The Ballad of Lost C’mell”
59 Norstrilia, chap. “Theme and Prologue”
60 MacIntyre (2001)
Chronology
Chronology
ERAS
La Vieja Tierra
La Galaxia
Instrumentalidad
subgente
Textos
THE AGE OF NATIONS
c. 1950
c. 2000
2945
Cold War. Murkins vs. Paroskii
“Pleasure Revolution”
World Wars
Destruction of New York (First Doom)
Sixth German Reich
Space Race USA-USSR
(chemical rockets)
“The fife of Bodidharma”
“No, not, Rogov!”
“Western Science is So Wonderful!”
“Angerhelm”
“War nº 81-Q”
DARK AGES
c. 3000
Collapse of the Nations
The Jwindz
Aojou-Nanbien
Culture
The Wild
Unforgiven, Idiots, Beasts, Menschenjäger, Kaskaskia Effect
c. 4000
Carlotta Vom Acht.
Juli Vom Acht
Karla Vom Acht
Vomact Dynasty.
Juli and Laird:
Foundation of the Instrumentality.
“unauthorized persons”
“Mark Elf”
“Queen of the Afternoon”
SPACE AGE I
c. 4500
Year 83: Henry Haberman wins the First Effect.
Brotherhood of Scanners.
Goonhogo (China)
Year 782. Adam Stone makes Scanners obsolete.
Scanners and habermans
Nuclear and ionic spaceships.
Chinesians invade Venus.
Wenzel Wallenstein goes out of the Solar System.
“Scanners live in vain”
“When the people fell”
“The good friends”
“Nancy”
SPACE AGE II
c. 5000
Earth Authority.
Reconstruction of Nations.
Cosmopolite language
Photonic sailships
Grey-no-more comes back from the stars.
Full authority
“The lady who sailed The Soul”
6000 a 9000
(LOST NOTES)
c.11000
Colonization of Norstrilia.
Benjamín Hitton (10719-17213)
SPACE AGE III
c.12000
“Post-riesmanian” society.
Stroon.
Standard life-span: 400 years.
In vitro birth / programmed euthanasia.
Planoform.
Col. Desmond Harkening travels by Space 2
Pinlightners.
Great Captains: Tasco Magnon, Magno Taliano.
Thousand of colonized worlds.
Apogee of Norstrilia
Decadence of Viola Siderea
Instrumentality’s Utopia
“Partners” of pinlightners.
“The Colonel Came Back From Nothing-at-All”
“The Game of Rat and Dragon”
“The burning of the brain”
“The Crime and The Glory of Commander Suzdal”
“Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons”
13582
The Bright Empire.
Shayol. Raumsog.
Inter-World Dance Festival.
Fundamental Agreement between Instrumentality and Empire.
John Joy Tree goes out the Galaxy.
Lady Goroke, Jestocost I’ mother.
Martyrdom of
D´joan at
Fomalhaut III
“The Dead Lady of Clown Town”
“Golden the Ship Was, Oh! Oh! Oh!”
“Himself in Anachron”
“From Gustible’s Planet”
c.15000
Artyr Rambo travels by S
pace 3.
Robot, Rat and Copt come back from Space 3.
The Hechizera of Gonfalon
Fall of the Empire
“Drunkboat”
c.15500
Sun-Boy
Sto Odin
“Under Old Earth”
REDISCOVERY
OF MAN
16000
16100
16200
G’mell
Rod MacBan
Civil rights for underpeople
End of Shayol
Rediscovery of Man
Jestocost VII
E’telekeli
The Holy Insurrection
“A planet named Shayol”
“Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”
“The Ballad of Lost C’mell”
Norstrilia
“On the Gem planet”
“On the Storm planet”
“On the Sand planet”
“Three to a Given Star”
THE LORDS OF THE AFTERNOON
17000
Union of human and underpeople.
Mystical climate
“Psychical” powers development.
Travels by Space 3
Lords of the Underpeople
“Down to a sunless sea”
SOME CLUES
SOME CLUES
Miss Michels, if an hypothetical Mrs. Brown opens her purse and takes out a handkerchief,
Lord of the Afternoon Page 6
