{"id":1248,"date":"2016-07-11T16:39:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T21:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1248"},"modified":"2016-07-11T16:39:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T21:39:50","slug":"cordwainer-smith-at-113","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/cordwainer-smith-at-113\/","title":{"rendered":"Cordwainer Smith at 113"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/cordwainer-smith.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1249\" src=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/cordwainer-smith.jpg\" alt=\"cordwainer smith\" width=\"160\" height=\"140\" \/><\/a>This is going to be a quick post, because the second summer term starts in the morning, and I&#8217;m teaching an 8:00 AM class I&#8217;m still doing last minute preparations for.\u00a0 However, I would be remiss if I didn&#8217;t point out that Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, who wrote science fiction under the pen name of Cordwainer Smith.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t read him, you&#8217;ve missed one of the most unique voices the field has ever seen.\u00a0 Much like Avram Davidson and R. A. Lafferty, no one has ever really written like him.\u00a0 (Although the first part of Robert Silverberg&#8217;s <em>Nightwings<\/em> comes close.)\u00a0 And he is nothing like Lafferty or Davidson.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/best-of-cordwainer-smith.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1250\" src=\"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/best-of-cordwainer-smith.gif\" alt=\"best of cordwainer smith\" width=\"156\" height=\"258\" \/><\/a>Born in 1913, he was an expert on East Asia and psychological warfare and spoke at least six languages.\u00a0 His future history, The Instrumentality of Mankind, contains a number of unique terms Linebarger created just for his fiction.\u00a0 His works contain a greater depth than most fiction of the 1950s and early 1960s.\u00a0 Many of his stories have religious overtones, and he&#8217;s been compared to Tolkien and Lewis.<\/p>\n<p>Linebarger\/Smith suffered a fatal heart attack in 1966.\u00a0 His daughter maintains a detailed webpage about him <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cordwainer-smith.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is going to be a quick post, because the second summer term starts in the morning, and I&#8217;m teaching an 8:00 AM class I&#8217;m still doing last minute preparations for.\u00a0 However, I would be remiss if I didn&#8217;t point out that Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, who wrote science fiction under the pen name of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[296],"tags":[822],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthday","tag-cordwainer-smith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-k8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}