Cordwainer Smith

Biography

Cordwainer Smith (1913–1966), born Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, was an American science fiction writer, East Asia scholar, and psychological warfare expert. His day job as a professor of Asian politics at Johns Hopkins and an advisor to the U.S. government on psychological operations informed his uniquely visionary science fiction. Writing under his pen name, he created the Instrumentality of Mankind—a vast future history spanning thousands of years in which humanity is governed by a shadowy organization and served by "underpeople" created from animals. His stories combine exotic beauty, political allegory, and deep humanistic concern in a style unlike any other writer in the genre.