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{{Short description|American science fiction writer (1913–1966)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2012}}
{{Infobox writer
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| birth_name = Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1913|7|11}}
| birth_place = [[Milwaukee]], [[Wisconsin]],
| death_date = {{death date and age|1966|8|6|1913|7|11}}
| death_place = [[Baltimore]], [[Maryland]],
| occupation = {{flatlist|
* Writer
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* military officer
}}
| education = PhD in [[political science]]
| alma_mater = [[Johns Hopkins University]]
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[[File:Galaxy 196210.jpg|thumb|right|Smith's novelette ''The Ballad of Lost C'Mell'' was the cover story on the October 1962 issue of ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]''. Artwork by [[Virgil Finlay]].]]
[[File:Amazing stories 196310.jpg|thumb|right|Smith's novelette "Drunkboat" took the cover of the October 1963 issue of ''[[Amazing Stories]]''. Art by [[Lloyd Birmingham]].]]
'''Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger''' (July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966), better known by his pen-name '''Cordwainer Smith''', was an American author known for his [[science fiction]] works. Linebarger was a US Army officer, a noted [[East Asia]] scholar, and an expert in [[psychological warfare]]. Although his career as a writer was shortened by his death at the age of 53, he is considered one of
==Early life and education==
Linebarger's father, Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger, was a lawyer, working as a judge in the Philippines. There he met Chinese nationalist [[Sun Yat-sen]] to whom he became an advisor. Linebarger's father sent his wife to give birth in Milwaukee, Wisconsin so that their child would be eligible to become president of the United States.
|last1=Stimpson|first1=Ashley His young life was unsettled as his father moved the family to a succession of places in Asia, Europe, and the United States. He was sometimes sent to boarding schools for safety. In all, Linebarger attended more than 30 schools. In 1919, while at a boarding school in Hawaii, he was blinded in his right eye,
Linebarger was familiar with English, German, and Chinese<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hornbeck |first1=Stanley K. |title=Paul M. A. Linebarger, 1913-1966: An Appreciation. |journal=World Affairs |date=1966 |volume=129 |issue=2 |pages=79–82 |jstor=20670775 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/20670775 |access-date=12 July 2021}}</ref> by adulthood. At the age of 23, he received a PhD in political science from [[Johns Hopkins University]].<ref name=JH/>
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==Career==
{{More citations needed section|date=November 2015}}
From 1937 to 1946, Linebarger held a faculty appointment at [[Duke University]],<ref>{{cite web |url=https://polisci.duke.edu/about/history |title=Our 85 Year History |
While retaining his professorship at Duke after the beginning of [[World War II]], Linebarger began serving as a [[second lieutenant]] of the [[United States Army]], where he was involved in the creation of the [[United States Office of War Information|Office of War Information]] and the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. He also helped organize the army's first [[psychological warfare]] section. In 1943, he was sent to [[China]] to coordinate military intelligence operations. When he later pursued his interest in China, Linebarger became a close confidant of [[Chiang Kai-shek]]. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of [[Major (rank)|major]].
[[File:Psychological Warfare Linebarger.jpg|frame|left]]▼
In 1947, Linebarger moved to the Johns Hopkins University's [[School of Advanced International Studies]] in Washington, DC, where he served as Professor of [[Asiatic Studies]]. He used his experiences in the war to write the book ''Psychological Warfare'' (1948), regarded by many in the field as a classic text.
He eventually rose to the rank of [[colonel]] in the reserves. He was recalled to advise the British forces in the [[Malayan Emergency]] and the [[U.S. Eighth Army]] in the [[Korean War]]. While he was known to call himself a "visitor to small wars", he refrained from becoming involved in the [[Vietnam War]], but is known to have done work for the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]. In 1969 CIA officer [[Miles Copeland Jr.]] wrote that Linebarger was "perhaps the leading practitioner of 'black' and 'gray' propaganda in the Western world".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Copeland |first1=Miles
==Marriage and family==
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In 1936, Linebarger married Margaret Snow. They had a daughter in 1942 and another in 1947. They divorced in 1949.
In 1950, Linebarger married
==Case history debate==
Linebarger is long rumored to have been "[[Kirk Allen]]", the fantasy-haunted subject of [[Kirk Allen|"The Jet-Propelled Couch,"]] a chapter in [[psychologist]] [[Robert M. Lindner]]'s best-selling 1954 collection ''The Fifty-Minute Hour.''<ref name=JH/><ref>Lindner, Robert. ''The Fifty-Minute Hour.'' New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1954.</ref> According to Cordwainer Smith scholar Alan C. Elms,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Elms |first1=Alan C. |title=Behind the Jet-Propelled Couch: Cordwainer Smith and Kirk Allen |url=https://elms.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/98/2014/07/20021-Behind-the-Jet1.pdf |
==Science fiction style==
According to [[Frederik Pohl]]:
{{blockquote|In his stories, which were a wonderful and inimitable blend of a strange, raucous poetry and a detailed technological scene, we begin to read of human beings in worlds so far from our own in space in time that they were no longer quite Earth (even when they were the third planet out from Sol), and the people were no longer quite human, but something perhaps better, certainly different.{{r|pohl196612}}}}
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Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller ''[[Atomsk (novel)|Atomsk]]''), "Anthony Bearden" (for his poetry) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels ''Ria'' and ''Carola'').
Some of Smith's stories are
Smith's works consist of one novel, originally published in two volumes in edited form as ''The Planet Buyer'', also known as ''The Boy Who Bought Old Earth'' (1964), and ''The Underpeople'' (1968), and later restored to its original form as ''[[Norstrilia]]'' (1975); and 32 short stories (collected in ''[[The Rediscovery of Man]]'' (1993), including two versions of the short story "War No. 81-Q").
Linebarger's cultural links to China are partially expressed in the pseudonym "Felix C. Forrest", which he used in addition to "Cordwainer Smith"
As an expert in psychological warfare, Linebarger was very interested in the newly developing fields of [[psychology]] and [[psychiatry]]. He used many of their concepts in his fiction. His fiction often has religious overtones or motifs, particularly evident in characters who have no control over their actions. James B. Jordan argued for the importance of [[Anglicanism]] to Smith's works back to 1949.<ref>
Most of Smith's stories are set in the far future, between 4,000 and 14,000 years from now.<ref>{{cite book| title=The Best of Cordwainer Smith| url=https://archive.org/details/bestofcordwainer0000smit| url-access=registration| last=Smith| first=Cordwainer| editor1-last=Pierce| editor1-first=J.J.| publisher=Nelson Doubleday, Inc.| date=1975}}</ref> After the Ancient Wars devastate Earth, humans, ruled by the [[Instrumentality of Mankind]], rebuild and expand to the stars in the Second Age of Space around 6000 AD. Over the next few thousand years, mankind spreads to thousands of worlds and human life becomes safe but sterile, as robots and the animal-derived Underpeople take over many human jobs and humans themselves are genetically programmed as embryos for specified duties. Towards the end of this period, the Instrumentality attempts to revive old cultures and languages in a process known as the Rediscovery of Man, where humans emerge from their mundane utopia and Underpeople are freed from slavery.
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For years, Linebarger had a pocket notebook which he had filled with ideas about The Instrumentality and additional stories in the series. But while in a small boat in a lake or bay in the mid 60s, he leaned over the side, and his notebook fell out of his breast pocket into the water, where it was lost forever. Another story claims that he accidentally left the notebook in a restaurant in [[Rhodes]] in 1965. With the book gone, he felt empty of ideas, and decided to start a new series which was an allegory of Mid-Eastern politics.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/12/cordwainer-smith-the-ballad-of-lost-linebarger-part-2/ |title=Cordwainer Smith: The Ballad of Lost Linebarger, Part 2 |access-date=June 13, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120617114317/http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/12/cordwainer-smith-the-ballad-of-lost-linebarger-part-2/ |archive-date=June 17, 2012 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://worldtracker.org/media/library/English%20Literature/S/Smith,%20Cordwainer/Smith,%20Cordwainer%20-%20The%20Rediscovery%20of%20Man.html |title=Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man |access-date=October 6, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006220227/http://worldtracker.org/media/library/English%20Literature/S/Smith,%20Cordwainer/Smith,%20Cordwainer%20-%20The%20Rediscovery%20of%20Man.html |archive-date=October 6, 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Smith's stories describe a long [[future history]] of Earth. The settings range from a [[postapocalyptic]] landscape with [[walled cities]], defended by agents of the Instrumentality, to a state of sterile utopia, in which freedom can be found only deep below the surface, in long-forgotten and buried [[human impact on the environment|anthropogenic]] strata. These features may place Smith's works within the [[Dying Earth subgenre]] of science fiction
Smith's most celebrated short story is his first-published, "[[Scanners Live in Vain]]", which led many of its earliest readers to assume that "Cordwainer Smith" was a new pen name for one of the established giants of the genre. It was selected as one of the best science fiction short stories of the pre-[[Nebula Award]] period by the [[Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America]], appearing in ''[[The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964]]''. "[[The Ballad of Lost C'Mell]]" was similarly honored, appearing in ''[[The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two]]''.
After "Scanners Live in Vain", Smith's next story did not appear for several years, but from 1955 until his death in 1966 his stories appeared regularly, for the most part in ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]''.{{r|pohl196612}} His universe featured
* The planet Norstrilia (Old North Australia), a semi-arid planet where an immortality drug called ''{{Not a typo|stroon}}'' is harvested from gigantic, virus-infected sheep each weighing more than 100 tons. Norstrilians are nominally the richest people in the galaxy and defend their immensely valuable {{Not a typo|stroon}} with sophisticated weapons (as shown in the story "[[Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons]]"). However, extremely high taxes ensure that everyone on the planet lives a frugal, rural life, like the farmers of old Australia, to keep the Norstrilians tough.
* The punishment world Shayol (cf. [[Sheol]]), where criminals are punished by the regrowth and harvesting of their organs for transplanting
* ''Planoforming'' [[spacecraft]], which are crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats to defend against the attacks of malevolent entities in space, which are perceived by the humans as dragons, and by the cats as gigantic rats, in "[[The Game of Rat and Dragon]]".
* The ''Underpeople'', animals modified into human form and intelligence to fulfill servile roles, and treated as property. Several stories feature clandestine efforts to liberate the Underpeople and grant them [[civil rights]]. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality. Names of Underpeople have a single-letter prefix based on their animal species. Thus C'Mell ("The Ballad of Lost C'Mell") is cat-derived; D'Joan ("[[The Dead Lady of Clown Town]]"), a [[Joan of Arc]] figure, is descended from dogs; and B'dikkat ("[[A Planet Named Shayol]]") has bovine ancestors.
* ''Habermans'' and their supervisors, ''Scanners'', who are essential for space travel, but at the cost of having their sensory [[nerve]]s cut to block the "pain of space", and who perceive only by vision and various life-support implants. A technological breakthrough removes the need for the treatment, but resistance among the Scanners to their perceived loss of status ensues, forming the basis of the story "Scanners Live in Vain".
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==Published non-fiction==
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*''Foreign milieux (HBM 200/1)'' (1951)
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==Unpublished novels==
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*"[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74098 War No. 81-Q]" (original version, June 1928) *
*"[[Scanners Live in Vain]]" (June 1950)
*"[[The Game of Rat and Dragon]]" (October 1955)
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==External links==
{{Commons category}}
;Texts
*{{isfdb name}}▼
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/cordwainer-smith}}
*{{IMDb name|3669810}}▼
* {{Gutenberg author |id=34034 | name=Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony|name=Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Cordwainer Smith |sopt=t}}
* {{Librivox author |id=556}}
* [http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9s200760/ Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger Papers] at the [http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives Hoover Institution Archives]▼
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20020213040116/http://www.arlingtoncemetery.com/linebarg.htm Arlington National Cemetery: Linebarger]▼
▲*[http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9s200760/ Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger Papers] at the [http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives Hoover Institution Archives]
;Other references
* [https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/03/remembering-cordwainer-smith-full-time-sci-fi-author-part-time-earthling/274344/ "Remembering Cordwainer Smith,"] Ted Gioia (''The Atlantic Monthly'')▼
▲* {{IMDb name|3669810}}
*[http://www.philsp.com/articles/pastmasters_06.html Past Masters: Forest of Incandescent Bliss] by Bud Webster at Galactic Central▼
* {{LCAuth|n50050891|Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger|18|}} (including 2 "from old catalog")▼
* [http://lccn.loc.gov/n90610659 Felix C. Forrest] (3 records) and [http://lccn.loc.gov/n90610665 Carmichael Smith] (no records) at LC Authorities
* {{LCAuth|n81083063|Cordwainer Smith|7|}}
;Other links
* {{Official website|http://www.cordwainer-smith.com}}
▲* [https://web.archive.org/web/20020213040116/http://www.arlingtoncemetery.com/linebarg.htm Linebarger]. Arlington National Cemetery
▲* Ted Gioia. [https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/03/remembering-cordwainer-smith-full-time-sci-fi-author-part-time-earthling/274344/ "Remembering Cordwainer Smith
▲* Bud Webster. [http://www.philsp.com/articles/pastmasters_06.html Past Masters: Forest of Incandescent Bliss].
{{Authority control}} <!-- Cordwainer Smith, 1913-1966 records -->
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[[Category:American military writers]]
[[Category:American science fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American short story writers]]
[[Category:American sinologists]]
[[Category:Burials at Arlington National Cemetery]]
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