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Cordwainer Smith

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Author

The Resume

    (July 11, 1913-August 6, 1966)
    Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
    Birth name was Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
    Sci-fi writer
    Wrote the novel 'Norstrilia' and 32 short stories collected in 'The Rediscovery of Man'
    Works form an unified chronology known as 'the Instrumentality of Mankind'

Why he might be annoying:

    In addition to writing sci-fi as Cordwainer Smith and non-fiction under his own name, he also used the pseudonyms Carmichael Smith (for a political thriller), Anthony Bearden (for poetry) and Felix C. Forrest (for two novellas).
    He worked for the CIA in Mexico alongside future Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt.
    His first adult sci-fi story, 'Scanners Live in Vain,' was rejected for 'Astounding Science Fiction' by editor John W. Campbell for being 'too extreme.'
    A few years before his death, he accidentally dropped a notebook of ideas for new stories into a lake, and never got around to recreating the stories.
    He is widely believed to be the patient 'Kirk Allen' described by psychiatrist Robert Linder in his collection of case histories, 'The Fifty Minute Hour.'
    'Kirk Allen' was described by the psychiatrist who referred him to Linder as 'perfectly normal in every way except for a lot of crazy ideas about living part of the time in another world -- another planet.'
    'The Atlantic' wrote, 'In a genre that rarely shows restraint, Cordwainer Smith may have been the loosest cannon of them all. Think of his mental universe as a kind of Twilight Zone where even Rod Serling gets freaked out.'

Why he might not be annoying:

    His father was an advisor to the Chinese government and his godfather was President Sun Yat-Sen.
    He was blinded in his right eye in an accident when he was six, and an infection impaired the vision in his remaining eye.
    During World War II, he helped organize the US Army's first psychological warfare section.
    He was an advisor to John F. Kennedy and member of the Foreign Policy Association.
    He was fluent in six languages, which he often drew on to create character names with a secondary meaning.
    When it was finally printed, 'Scanners Live in Vain' prompted speculation that the writer was an established sci-fi author using a pen name, since Frederick Pohl noted, 'Even excellent writers are not usually that excellent the first time around.'
    'The Atlantic' described his writing as '[a] mixture of the delightful and disturbing, a heady hybrid that no other author of his era can match.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 15 Votes: 53.33% Annoying