Los señores de la Instrumentalidad es una monumental, sorprendente e irrepetible historia del futuro que maravilla por su poesía, sus personajes y su riqueza temática. Está escrita como una serie de baladas, contadas con el distanciamiento y el estilo de un narrador que está explicando hechos antiguos, de los que se da por supuesto que existe, al mismo tiempo, un cierto conocimiento genérico y también la suficiente curiosidad por los detalles.

It's hard to tell what I liked most out of these stories. From Gustible's Planet was probably one of the most memorable for big ideas and big action, but DrunkBoat was seriously creepy and delicious. I'm always of a mind to pity all of his characters to one degree or another, and it looks like it is well deserved pity. Of course, I'm reminded of Bester's work, but this was sufficiently clever and taking a different path entirely that I cannot fault it in the slightest. (I'm only referring to DrunkBoat, here.)
The rest of the stories are either also in other editions or are less memorable, but all of them are quite good. I heartily recommend them all.
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This was the first Cordwainer Smith book that I ever read. Other than seeing his name show up on some book rating sites (he had two out of the top 10 science fiction titles at "Beyond Reality" a scifi & fantasy book rating site I used to followed regularly), I knew nothing about him. It turns out he was quite an interesting man, with a very limited output of scifi stories (3 collections and 1 novel). The website his daughter maintains is well worth a visit.

The stories in this volume are varied and very impressive. Smith had an amazing imagination, and a striking ability to weave the fantastic seemlessly into the everyday. There were five stories in this collections that I individually rated a 9 or a 10: "Mark Elf" which is perhaps the most original post-apocalyptic story I've ever read; "Think Blue, Count Two," a people-in-deep-space-with-control-over-sleeping-passengers-try-to-avoid-going-bonkers story; "Drunkboat," in which a technological breakthrough in space travel is tested on an unwilling first test-pilot; "The Good Friends." another psychological stress-of-deep-space-travel yarn; and "From Gustible's Planet," a very funny story that still makes me chuckle every time I think of it--It will remind you of one of the famous works of Jonathan Swift.

Since reading this collection I have gone on to read every bit of science fiction ever published by Smith, and he has indeed become one of my favorite authors. ( )

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