Search Worlds Without End

This volume collects three of Cordwainer Smith's finest tales: "Scanners Live in Vain," "The Game of Rat and Dragon," and "Mark Elf." Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonym used by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-1966) for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a noted East Asia scholar and expert in psychological warfare. Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller Atomsk), "Anthony Bearden" (for his poetry) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels Ria and Carola). "Scanners Live in Vain" was Linebarger's first published SF story as an adult (his short story "War No. 81-Q," which he wrote at age 15 was published in his high school magazine), and the first appearance of the Cordwainer Smith pen name. It was written in 1945, and had been rejected by a number of magazines before its acceptance and publication in Fantasy Book in 1950. It was in that obscure magazine that it was noticed by SF writer Frederik Pohl who, impressed with the story's powerful imagery and style, subsequently re-published it in 1952 in the more widely read anthology Beyond the End of Time.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Scanners Live in Vain - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1950) - noveletteh
• 44 - The Game of Rat and Dragon - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1955) - short story
• 60 - Mark Elf - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1957) - short story

The sinister Douglas-Ouyand planets... the strange destiny of the animal-derived Underpeople... the miraculous Sant-Clara drug that prolongs life for centuries... the Universe-wide Instrumentality of Mankind--these are the haunting, enique elements of the stories of Cordwainer Smith.

This collection includes the famous "Think Blue, Count Two," "When the People Fell," " The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," and other memorable tales of the worlds beyond tomorrow.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Think Blue, Count Two - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1963) - novelette
• 39 - Under Old Earth - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1966) - novelette
• 92 - The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1964) - short story
• 113 - The Good Friends - (1963) - short story
• 119 - The Fife of Bodidharma - (1959) - short story
• 129 - When the People Fell - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story
• 144 - Angerhelm - (1959) - short story
• 170 - Western Science Is So Wonderful - (1958) - short story

The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smithis the second book in the "NESFA's Choice" series. It brings back into print all of the short science fiction of Cordwainer Smith, and includes two never before published stories.

The Rediscovery of Man includes all of Smith's short science fiction, including:

• "Scanners Live in Vain"
• "The Ballad of Lost C'mell"
• "The Dead Lady of Clown Town"
• "The Game of Rat and Dragon"
• "On the Storm Planet"

It also includes an in-depth introduction to the works of Cordwainer Smith by John J. Pierce, a noted authority on Smith's work.

Contents:

• Introduction by John J. Pierce
• Editor's Introduction by Jim Mann

Stories of the Instrumentality of Mankind:

• No, No, Not Rogov! (1959)
• War No. 81-Q (rewritten version)
• Mark Elf (1957)
• The Queen of the Afternoon (1978)
• Letter to Editor, Fantasy Book (March 9, 1948)
• Scanners Live in Vain (1950)
• The Lady Who Sailed The Soul (1960)
• When the People Fell (1959)
• Think Blue, Count Two (1963)
• The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All (1979)
• The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955)
• The Burning of the Brain (1958)
• From Gustible's Planet (1962)
• Himself in Anachron (1993)
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964)
• Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! (1959)
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964)
• Under Old Earth (1966)
• Drunkboat (1963)
• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons (1961)
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961)
• The Ballad of Lost C'Mell (1962)
• A Planet Named Shayol (1961)
• On the Gem Planet (1963)
• On the Storm Planet (1965)
• On the Sand Planet (1965)
• Three to a Given Star (1965)
• Down to a Sunless Sea (1975)

Other Stories:

• War No. 81-Q (1928)
• Western Science Is So Wonderful (1958)
• Nancy (1959)
• The Fife of Bodidharma (1959)
• Angerhelm (1959)
• The Good Friends (1963)

In a far-flung future, planoforming ships knit together a galaxy ruled from Earth by the ruthless benevolence of the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, who presided over a utopia without death, danger--or freedom. The Underpeople, humanlike beings created from animals to do the work of utopia, had no rights, and could be disposed of at the whim of a human. But they had become more humanlike than their creators, and their leader, the cat woman C'Mell, had a plan for gaining their freedom--which made her much too dangerous a person to be permitted to live.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, the planet Norstrilia had power of its own, for it was the only source of stroon, the drug which arrested aging and made humans immortal. Its inhabitants were wealthy beyond comprehension, and one of them, a boy named Rod McBan, with the help of his computer, had manipulated the galactic economy until he completely owned the planet Earth--which made him much too dangerous a person to be permitted to live. But when Rod came to Earth and joined forces with C'Mell and the Underpeople, the petrified utopia of the Instrumentality began to crack and fall apart as freedom was reborn in the galaxy....

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introduction (We the Underpeople) - (2002) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• 1 - The Dead Lady of Clown Town - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1964) - novella
• 81 - Under Old Earth - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1966) - novelette
• 125 - Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1961) - novelette
• 149 - Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1961) - novelette
• 179 - The Ballad of Lost C'mell - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1962) - novelette
• 201 - Norstrilia - [Rod McBan] - (1975) - novel

A sweeping saga of the centuries to come, from the new dark age that followed a global war, to the new civilization that arose from the ashes to colonize the stars. At first, the colonists use ships with gigantic sails, cruising on the waves of starlight, their captains having to become something part human and part machine; then later moving by planoforming ships which travel faster than light, but must defend themselves against the malevolent, mind-devouring creatures lurking in the dark between the stars.

Then came the reign of the all-powerful Lords of the Instrumentality, who ruled Earth and its colony worlds with ruthless benevolence, suffocating the human spirit for millennia--until the time of the Rediscovery of Man, when the strange, lost concept of freedom was reborn....

An extraordinary vision of a future unique in science fiction, praised by readers, critics, and major writers in the field.

Table of Contents:

• A Planet Named Shayol - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1961) - novelette
• Angerhelm - (1959) - short story
• Down to a Sunless Sea - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1975) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith [as]
• Drunkboat - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1963) - novelette
• From Gustible's Planet - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1962) - short story
• Golden the Ship Was--Oh! Oh! Oh! - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith (variant of Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh!) [as]
• Himself in Anachron - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1993) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
• Mark Elf - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1957) - short story
• Nancy - (1959) - short story
• No, No, Not Rogov! - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story
• On the Gem Planet - [Casher O'Neill] - (1963) - novelette
• On the Sand Planet - [Casher O'Neill] - (1965) - novelette
• On the Storm Planet - [Casher O'Neill] - (1965) - novella
• Scanners Live in Vain - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1950) - novelette
• The Burning of the Brain - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1958) - short story
• The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1979) - short story
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1964) - short story
• The Fife of Bodidharma - (1959) - short story
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1955) - short story
• The Good Friends - (1963) - short story
• The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1960) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith [as]
• The Queen of the Afternoon - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1978) - novelette
• Think Blue, Count Two - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1963) - novelette
• Three to a Given Star - [Casher O'Neill] - (1965) - novelette
• Introduction (When the People Fell) - (2007) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• War No. 81-Q - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1928) - short story
• War No. 81-Q (rewritten version) - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1993) - short story
• Western Science Is So Wonderful - (1958) - short story
• When the People Fell - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - (1959) - short story

Cordwainer Smith was one of the original visionaries to think of humanity in terms of thousands of years in the future, spread out across the universe. This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe (and other beings) around us and ultimately what it means to be human.

In “Scanners Live in Vain” we meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine – a scanner – to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another.

In “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” we get to know the underpeople – animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners – and meet D’Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior.

In “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is – as first raised in “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” – is put into action when an underperson, C’mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!

And in “A Planet Named Shayol” it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all.

Table of Contents:

• Cordwainer Smith: The Shaper of Myths - essay by John J. Pierce
• The Instrumentality of Mankind (timeline) - essay by John J. Pierce
• Scanners Live in Vain - (1950) - novelette
• The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - (1960) - novelette with Genevieve Linebarger
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - (1955) - short story
• The Burning of the Brain - (1958) - short story
• Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! - (1959) - short story with Genevieve Linebarger
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - (1964) - short story
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town - (1964) - novella
• Under Old Earth - (1966) - novelette
• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - (1961) - novelette
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961) - novelette
• The Ballad of Lost C'mell - (1962) - novelette
• A Planet Named Shayol - (1961) - novelette

This is the same collection as Gollancz SF Masterworks' The Rediscovery of Man. It is a different collection from the NESFA press collection The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, which has different contents.

Contains:

• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town
• Drunkboat
• The Ballad of Lost C'Mell
• A Planet Named Shayol

Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story

This short story originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1955. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1956 (1956), edited by T. E. Dikty
• Best SF Three: Science Fiction Stories (1958), edited by Edmund Crispin
• The Third Galaxy Reader (1958), edited by H. L. Gold
• The Mirror of Infinity: A Critics' Anthology of Science Fiction (1970), edited by Robert Silverberg
• A Science Fiction Argosy (1972), edited by Damon Knight
• Supernatural Cats (1972), edited by Claire Necker
• As Tomorrow Becomes Today (1974), edited by Charles W. Sullivan
• Science Fiction: Contemporary Mythology: The SFWA-SFRA Anthology (1978), edited by Patricia Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph Olander
• The Road to Science Fiction 3: From Heinlein to Here (1979), edited by James Gunn
• Fantastic Creatures (1981), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh
• Magicats! (1984), edited by Jack Dann and Garder Dozois
• The Great SF Stories 17 (1955) (1988), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov
• Space-Fighters (1988), edited by Charles G. Waugh, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joe Haldeman
• A Century of Science Fiction 1950-1959 (1997), edited by Robert Silverberg
• The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century (2001), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Harry Turtledove
• The Ultimate Cyberpunk (2002), edited by Pat Cadigan
• The Space Opera Renaissance (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (2012), edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
• Infinite Stars (2017), edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

The story is included in the collections:

• You Will Never Be The Same (1963)
• Under Old Earth and Other Explorations (1970)
• The Best of Cordwainer Smith (1975), reissued as The Rediscovery of Man in the SF Masterworks series in 1999.
• The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (1993)
• When the People Fell (2007)

A collection of 14 short science fiction stories by the author of "Norstrilia" and "The Rediscovery of Man". Each tale is set in an extraordinary universe of scanners, planoforming ships and animal-derived Underpeople.

Table of Contents:

• Timeline from The Instrumentality of Mankind - (1975) - essay by John J. Pierce
• Introduction - essay by Frederik Pohl
• No, No, Not Rogov! - (1959)
• War No. 81-Q - (1928)
• Mark Elf - (1957)
• The Queen of the Afternoon - (1978)
• When the People Fell - (1959)
• Think Blue, Count Two - (1963)
• The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All - (1979)
• From Gustible's Planet - (1962)
• Drunkboat - (1963)
• Western Science Is So Wonderful - (1958)
• Nancy - (1959)
• The Fife of Bodidharma - (1959)
• Angerhelm - (1959)
• The Good Friends - (1963)

Welcome to the strangest, most distinctive future ever imagined by a science fiction writer. An insterstellar empire ruled by the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, whose access to the drug stroon from the planet Norstrilia confers on them virtual immortality. A world in which wealthy and leisured humanity is served by the underpeople, genetically engineered animals turned into the semblance of people. A world in which the great ships which sail between the stars are eventually supplanted by the mysterious, instantaneous technique of planoforming. A world of wonder and myth, and extraordinary imagination.

(Note that this collection was originally published in 1975 as The Best of Cordwainer Smith, the 3rd book in Ballantine's Classic Library of Science Fiction. It was then republished as The Rediscovery of Man in 1988 as VGSF Classics #25, then again in 1999 as a Gollancz SF Masterworks edition. It is a different collection from the NESFA press collection The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, which has different contents).

Table of Contents:

• Cordwainer Smith: The Shaper of Myths - essay by John J. Pierce
• The Instrumentality of Mankind (timeline) - essay by John J. Pierce
• Scanners Live in Vain (1950) - novelette
• The Lady Who Sailed the Soul (1960) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
• The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955) - short story
• The Burning of the Brain (1958) - short story
• Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh! (1959) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964) - short story
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964) - novella
• Under Old Earth (1966) - novelette
• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons (1961) - novelette
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961) - novelette
• The Ballad of Lost C'mell (1962) - novelette
• A Planet Named Shayol (1961) - novelette

A cosmos of beauty and terror on the far side of time

The universe you will explore in these stories by a famous science fiction author is surely one of the most colourful and weird ever conceived.

Untold millennia in the future, a thousand planets throughout the galaxy acknowledge one ruler – the Instrumentality of Mankind. Giant planoforming ships travel the hazardous spaceways. Men and women genetically 'built' from animals do civilization's labour – and plot in secret, planning revolution. But the hell-planet Shayol with its bizarre torments awaits those who rebel against the dictatorial yoke of the Instrumentality...

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Anthony Cheetham
• The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955) - short story
• On the Sand Planet (1965) - novelette
• Under Old Earth (1966) - novelette
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961) - novelette
• The Ballard of Lost C'Mell (1962) - novelette
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964) - short story
• A Planet Named Shayol (1961) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• No, No, Not Rogov! - (1959)
• The Lady Who Sailed the Soul - (1960) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger
• Scanners Live in Vain - (1950)
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - (1955)
• The Burning of the Brain - (1958) -
• Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! - (1959) - shortstory by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961)
• Mark Elf - (1957)

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, February 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies A Day in the Life (1972) edited by Gardner Dozois, The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, and Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Quest of the Three Worlds (1966) and When the People Fell (2007).

Four novellas with the same main character Caher O'Neill.

Contains:

• On the Gem Planet
• On the Storm Planet
• On the Sand Planet
• Three to a Given Star

Norstrilia tells the story of a boy form the planet Old North Australia (where rich, simple farmers grow the immortality drug Stroon), how he bought Old Earth, and how his visit to Earth changed both him and Earth itself.

When his ultra-logical computer tells him that to survive he must become the richest man in the universe, Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-first thought he had a good plan. A telepathic cripple, rejected by many of his people, owner of the Station of Doom, the safety of wealth would keep him safe. In one crowded, unbelievable night he achieved the impossible, became the richest boy in the galaxy.

But Rod McBan will soon discover that money brings trouble. A galaxy of people and other beings – out to rob him, use him or kill him!

Rod McBan owned Earth.

One night of frenzied manipulation had made an obscure rancer on a far planet the richest man in history, and the sole owner of Man's home planet. It had also made him the target of every criminal in the Universe.

There was one way Rod McBan could reach the planet he owned - alive. But it meant he would have to die first...

The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople were combined into the novel Norstrilia.

The Underpeople were mutated from animal stock to serve mankind. They lived Deepdown in the forgotten corridors and caverns of Old Earth, servants to the men who bred them in their own image.

But even the Underpeople dream - and often have strange powers. And now they have a strange ally in the richest man who ever lived: the man who owned the whole planet.

The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople were combined into the novel Norstrilia.