![]() The Rediscovery of Man collects all of Cordwainer Smith's short science fiction. His is not usually a world of Blake’s “dark Satanic mills” but his layered, Edenic cities are equally dystopian. He invented future technologies that seem almost magical, but he ultimately rejects them as evolutionary dead ends. He is more interested in recasting myths like Heloise and Abelard and Joan of Arc than he is in engineering. Smith throws years around in the thousands without a care. Just listen to some of his titles: “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul,” “Think Blue, Count Two,” “Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!” “The Dead Lady of Clown Town,” “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard,” and “The Ballad of Lost C’mel.” I am always amused when someone tries to make a coherent future history from his Rediscovery of Man stories. Consider this opening to “When the People Fell” that inspired the cove of one of Smith’s collections: “Can you imagine a rain of people through an acid fog?” His underpeople and robots seem made to order for cosplay. Like Blake, he created an elaborate grand myth epic that may have been transferring his fantasies and eidetic visions to print. It is not far off to call him science fiction’s William Blake. ![]() ![]() ![]() In a 2013 centennial assessment Cordwainer Smith, The Atlantic called him the “loosest cannon of all” in science fiction. ![]()
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