Cordwainer Smith's stories in one fat, comprehension-boggling collection, (Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
Date:	19/03/01 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Characterisation; very sound, but rootless; A-

Disadvantages: Science; highly dubious- Applied Clarke's Law; C-

Cordwainer Smith's stories in one fat, comprehension-boggling collection, the tenth Science Fiction Masterwork. Have you ever had the feeling - while thinking about local government, for instance- that while you understand something perfectly in itself, you have a perfect grasp of the nature of the beast, you cannot fathom why it is that way or what the hell it is doing there?

Cordwainer Smith's stories strike like that. They are very good - they ought to be, if writing from experience has anything to do with it; the man himself has a very interesting biography. Godson to Sun Yat-Sen, expert on psychological warfare in several post-colonial campaigns, the man certainly has a great deal to draw from.

One thing I do use as a distinction; I think there is a real, and massive, gulf between 'speculative fiction'- what science fiction nearly ended up being called anyway, before Guernsback saved us - and Science Fiction proper. It's a quality rather than a genre issue. Social Science fiction, you could conceivably say. Wondering what is actually going on in the human head while confronted by all these trappings of the future or the credibly other. Or you could call it as simple as science fiction with a genuine talent for and deployment of actual characterisation. By no means the case in the vast majority of science fiction novels.

Let us be honest here; I mistrust psychology. Partly sour grapes (and why not?), partly that I feel that any mind drawn to the possibility of learning how the inside of other people's heads work should on no account be allowed to do so, but mainly historical grounds. You look at the crises successfully surmounted by the citizens of the past and at what we consider compensation-worthy degrees of trauma today, and you tell me whether the general level of mental health has risen or fallen. The very worst thing you can do for someone's mental health is to take the responsibility for it away f
rom them, because to be helped is to become a dependent, losing all of your own integrity. All psychology is psychological warfare, in the Hobbesian sense in which no two individuals can even be said to be on the same side.

All of the above is less of a digression than it sounds when you try to understand the psychonomy (an exceptionally useful term invented by David Gerrold, much less clumsy and more true to the discursive-combative nature of a community than 'Psychic Ecology') of the future government, the Instrumentality of Man. It does feel right but I do not know why. There are really no Everymen here, so that avenue is closed. What the hell do the ordinary citizens do all day? Don't know. Not lives of quiet desperation- the instrumentality has outlawed desperation- or work- most things are automated- or, well, not much of anything really. It's not even the Culture; they don't apparently indulge in total mindless hedonism. I think we have a major failure of storytelling here. There are 'underpeople'- animals given enough sentience to carry out all the dirty, scummy jobs people prefer not to touch- but they are 'bioroboots' in the strictest sense of the term, living machinery with no rights, replaced when broken, terminated when unruly. The biggest jarring point is a story which is essentially a reprise of the tale of Joan of Arc; I mean, why? Waste of trees? Unless you can do so with more skill, retelling an archetypal story is pointless, if not memetic vandalism - an act against civilisation. Then again, everyone pulls boners like that from time to time. Does the rest make up for it? Yes. I think it does.

Of course, the stories are very strong on psionics, and I wish I knew whether it was just an idea he played with or that he actually believes it. They are rather powerful- not planet destroying, but reasonably powerful, certainly. One beautifully elegant story concerns mutant mink bred for self- and ever
ything else- hatred, and used as a psychic weapon in defence of the richest world of the Instrumentality, in a story that is one carefully executed con after another.

The Lords of the Instrumentality that we meet do not make sense. These are more of the ultra-virtuous impossibilities Heinlein was so fond of, and ultimately descended from the platonic Guardians I spent several enjoyable tutorials ridiculing. I think Salman Rushdie actually hit the nail on the head in Midnight's Children; Only fanaticism can save us from corruption.

Unfortunately, we rely on corruption to save us from fanaticism. How exactly does one live up to an ideal? Will, self- discipline are necessary, but far from sufficient. The idea has to have touched something in you- some streak in your character that may be inherited or a matter of upbringing, and you or the people around you have to have enough of a stake in it for there to be social penalties against turning back. Necessarily more profound in terms of psychological effect than the benefits of indiscipline. When it's too tempting to steal a march on the other fellow - well, there you are. Of course, I believe, ultimately, that one's fellow sentient being and their good outweigh any likely personal gain, and I even have a couple of characters who can make a convincing pretence at that themselves, but they are all quite badly bent in other ways. Why a master of all he surveys should feel so, in the absence of a benevolent paternalistic culture to shape such tendencies, which the Instrumentality does not seem to be if their personal actions are anything to go by, beats me. In fact, the Instrumentality is reasonably self-indulgent; and it accepts that among its Lords as the price for living the way they do - a decision we see too little of the roots to judge. Other stories in the collection include events before and during the formation of the Instrumentality, and Smith is one of the few writers who worries ab
out how his characters are feeling.

Scanners Live in Vain, for instance, is a story abut the early days of space exploration, in which it is found that people go mad when confronted with the void, and have to be braincut and fitted with metabolism overrides to cope, causing a guild of volunteer controllers to spring up; cut themselves, they control the convict crews - until someone comes up with a solution. The Dragon And The Rat is an extremely touching story, if crossing well over into bestiality in spirit, of psychic creatures in the void, and the defences against them; humans cannot react quickly enough, so the basic defence team consists of a man and his telekinetic cat - who are very close.

Other stories include Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - a result for the movement in the Instrumentality towards less bland identicality; restoring all those ugly, complicated divisions like nationality and language. I don't know whether to be more worried by the fact that they were eradicated or that he thinks governments can just turn ideas in the body politic on and off like that. I doubt extremely the truth of this. In the end, there were a few haunting images that stick in the mind, much sound psychology- but the problem is that the closer to reality a piece of science fiction is, the more profoundly it is possible to disagree with it.


Imagination; of the extrapolative kind; B+
Science; highly dubious- Applied Clarke's Law; C-
Scene- setting; Technique of hinting at externals is laid on with a trowel; realistic sense of people within their own society; B+
Characterisation; very sound, but rootless; A-

Overall; Not a masterwork- he had too much else on his mind- but very good; B+

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