The best of Cordwainer Smith
The Best of Cordwainer Smith is a collection of science fiction short stories by American author Cordwainer Smith, edited by J. J. Pierce. It was first published in hardback by Nelson Doubleday in July 1975 and in paperback by Ballantine Books in September of the same year as a volume in its Classic Library of Science Fiction. The Ballantine edition was reprinted in October 1977 and July 1985. Phoenix Pick issued a new edition in trade paperback and ebook in April, 2017. A British paperback edition under the alternative title The Rediscovery of Man was published by Gollancz in June 1988, and reissued in 1999, 2003, and 2010; Gollancz also brought out hardcover and ebook versions in September 1988 and November 2012, respectively. The book has also been translated into German.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2023–2024years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I really like Cordwainer Smith. Those books are quite strange though. I wouldn't even call them ahead of their time, I would call them sui generis. Completely idiosyncratic. One brilliant weirdo's brain. I keep spare copies of The Instrumentality of Mankind and The Best of Cordwainer Smith around, and a couple months ago somebody asked me about them. I hesitated before lending them to him, because it's impossible to guess whether a given person will like them or not.
- In his introduction to the book, The Best of Cordwainer Smith, J J Pierce recounts a story about Linebarger:
"While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for ‘love’, ‘duty’, ‘humanity’ and ‘virtue’ – words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like “I surrender” in English. He considered this act the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life."
Further analysis here: https://languagehat.com/chinese-endangered/
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