What if I told you that one of the greatest sci-fi authors of the Golden Age wrote the book on psychological warfare like
Literally, he wrote the book
psychological warfare
What if I told you that the same guy was called upon to advise JFK and his Godfather was Sun Yat-sen
what if I told you he was also a professor who was rumored to sometimes bring his cats to class and
Simply address his lecture to his cats you'd probably agree with me that this is a guy we should talk about
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We couldn't leave the golden age without touching on some of the writers active at the time
Who were bucking all of the trends
we associate with Golden Age science fiction and
none could be weirder or more trend Bucky than Paul Myron Anthony Line Parker better known as
cordwainer Smith
Paul line Parker grew up the son of an American judge who had been active in helping the Chinese
Overthrow their Emperor and usher in the Republic of China
he was seeped in Chinese culture and when at age six an
Accident left him blind in one eye
He received a letter from his godfather Sun Yat-sen telling him to stay strong
but soon the fortunes of the Chinese
Revolutionaries began to decline and as China became a fractured and dangerous place his family packed up and left
Spending a few years in countries all over the globe
Fluent in six languages before he entered college and getting his PhD by the time he was 23
Paul looked destined for a successful and comfortable academic life and
He would have one serving as a professor for most of his days
He just also be a spy who once warned his daughter about dodging the KGB
Because you see world war II broke out and like almost all of america. He got swept into it
So what's a half-blind academic to do in world war two you ask well apparently helped found the US Office of War Information
and set up the United States first psychological warfare units and
When it came time for the office to find an operative to serve in China, he found himself writing the Job Description
Which he proceeded to immediately write in such a way that the job requirements were so completely ludicrous
That only one person the very godson of Sun yat-sen could possibly fill them soon
He was piling around with Zhang Kai shek and kicking around China doing things that are still redacted
But when the war ended he returned to civilian life and penned his first
Truly major work and perhaps the most important work to bear his own name the book psychological
warfare, it's one of the foundational texts in the now all too active field of messing with other people's minds but
It's his other work we care about the work. He did under other names in a burst of energy following the war
He published a few spy novels under the name Felix C. Forrest, but they didn't really go anywhere
It was almost by accident that he found his calling
He had an incredible story called
Scanners live in vain about this disturbed vision of space travel what he called the great up and out
In his future space is an incredibly oppressive place traveling through it is physically painful
It destroys people both mentally and physically so humans of the future have found a solution
most people travel between planets in a sort of cryogenic sleep
Shuttled around on ships crewed by humans who have had all of their nerve endings severed so they can't feel the pain of space
Most of the crews are convicts sentenced to this life but a small portion of them are scanners
People who have voluntarily chosen to have all of their nerve endings burnt out
Except those connected to their eyes which have metal shields surgically
Implanted behind them these people function as captains and more importantly watch the dials on boxes
implanted into their crews chests that monitor and adjust all of the body's functions since the crew can't feel pain or even
Things like their heart beating too fast
but once per month these scanners can come home and
Cranch or basically become a normal human being the story follows a character who is cranched when an emergency
Occurs and all of the scanners are called together
someone has found a way to travel through space without the pain the scanners know this will make them obsolete and
Feeling nothing. They vote to murder the person who discovered this rather than let humanity have this gift
But the protagonist currently having normal sensation
Realizes this would be monstrous
Which is super weird for a Golden Age sci-fi story, so it was rejected everywhere
Finally after basically giving up on it under the name cordwainer Smith
He sent it on a whim to a little-known magazine who offered to publish it if they didn't have to pay him for it
But it's stuck in the mind of one reader Frederik Pohl a man were going to be talking about some twenty years down the line
Frederik Pohl did work editing and publishing sci-fi
one of the things he loved to do was put out anthologies because they were basically no work for
Relatively decent pay so he wanted to stick this odd story in his collection
Unfortunately, he couldn't find who the heck cordwainer Smith was
finally after many convoluted steps
He tracked down Paul Lineberger who was delighted to have his work published shortly
Thereafter Frederik Pohl became the editor of galaxy magazine and it was off to the races for one
Cordwainer Smith after this cordwainer Smith creates one of the most expansive and intriguing sci-fi
mythos of all time it spans
15,000 years and the extremities of space but the reader only gets to see small parts at a time
It's about the human instrumentality. It's where that term enters sci-fi and it's filled with things
No one else was talking about in the Golden Age
Smith envisions a society of humans and under people where human beings live in absolute comfort
While under people take on the tasks that humanity has long since abandoned all managed by a group of powerful
psionics known as the
instrumentality which guide and shape humanity's destiny
But what makes it interesting is the strange twist
He gives all these concepts the under people are basically
animals that have been genetically engineered to look just like people but retain some of their animal traits
So a dog person might be incredibly loyal while a bull person would have some of the slow plotting strength of a bull
To humanity, they serve as second-class citizens
While true humans often loathe to even be touched by them
but in the end
it's they who retain the capacity for empathy and emotion while
humanity itself is trapped in a stifling bubble of perfect safety and comfort and
Unlike many of the Golden Age works about humanity being too comfortable
Smith stuff isn't about how humanity needs to toughen up or how everyone is getting too weak and soft these days
His work is about the joy we experience in
Overcoming and the hope that can only exist alongside
Uncertainty it's about how struggle makes us more human better able to relate and understand each other and lets us
experience empathy in ways that total comfort may cut us off from and what's really surprising in a golden age work the
Instrumentality eventually realizes they were wrong all along
they return to humanity all of the culture and the struggles they'd long protected it from in the
Rediscovery of mankind which makes it this bizarre, but beautiful reflection from an old cold warrior on the world
He lived through and the things his bosses espouse
We'll see you next week
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