Incredibly alienating. The bizarre badly written. I know he's a cult figure and I seem to be down on them, but.

Pohl tells a story on his blog about the reason Smith stopped writing about the world of the Space Lords. He had any number of ideas which he kept in a note book. One day he bent over the side of a boat on the Meditteranean. You can guess what happened.

Apparently he couldn't write unless nobody knew who he was. I'm sorry, but what I want to say is I don't blame him.

Surely nobody thinks he can write? Surely.

Taking a look around for more on him, I see that Christianity was very important to him and that his science fiction is riddled with his consequent beliefs. Maybe that is why I find his stuff so repelling. It does read like propaganda and that is his field in real life, psychological warfare. The article in question is here: http://www.sunpopblue.com/Music-Art-Books/Cordwainer-Smith.html

I'm sorry, I was really looking forward to reading this and feel like I've failed some sort of sci fi test.

Darn.

( )

Out of all of these stories, I think I liked the Dead Lady of Clown Town best. I'm not normally a huge fan of Christ-like fiction, but... Holy F...! :) This one grabbed me right away with it's promise, it's sneaky-gentle prose and action and likable characters, and then it smashed my brains in with a huge club. Our fantastic author was even so good as to give us a little distance at the end so we wouldn't have to suffer so much.
Unfortunately, I actually found myself dreaming about the story last night. Damn. ( )

Space Lords was published in 1965 and is a collection of 5 stories that first appeared in science fiction magazines between June 1961 and August 1964. Four of these appeared in "Galaxy" while Fred Pohl was editor. Cordwainer Smith was a unique voice in science fiction. His stories aren't like other stories and as the author states in his Prologue "There are five stories here. They all concern the future, more or less around A.D. 15,000." The author gives away his inspiration for each of the stories in the prologue, and adds some pointers in the Epilogue. The author writes what may be the most unusual and long dedication to this collection that I have ever read. He was apparently quite ill at the time, as was his wife, and he would pass away and be buried in Arlington cemetery the following year.

These are somewhat scary stories of a dark future for mankind, and there is a bit too much weirdness mixed in here for me to say I really like this stuff. The standout story for me is "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", pronounced as k-mel, a story I read 6 or 7 years ago and the story that woke me up belatedly to this man's talent. Each of the other stories is also OK to good. The first story, "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" serves as an excellent introduction to the future universe that most of the author's stories are set in, but the ending took a very intriguing story and veered way off into weird.

I thought I would enjoy these stories more than I did. ( )