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As the num­bers in brack­ets indi­cates, I’ve read all the sto­ries in this book sev­eral times. I read Cord­wainer Smith when­ever I want to be remind­ed of what Sci­ence Fic­tion once was: a field in which intel­lect, imag­i­na­tion, and artis­tic integri­ty com­bined to tran­scend the lim­i­ta­tions of con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. Nobody was bet­ter equipped to think uncon­ven­tion­ally than was “Cord­wainer Smith”, who was real­ly Paul Myron Antho­ny Linebarg­er. Amer­i­can born, but raised in Chi­na (where he was known as 林白楽 [Lin Bai-lo] ), France and Ger­many, Linebarg­er was at var­i­ous times a spy, expert in psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare, aca­d­e­mic, and advis­er to the White House on Asian affairs (though refus­ing to be involved in the Viet­nam War). He was, odd as it seems, Sun Yat-sen’s god­son, and nego­ti­ated inter­na­tional treaties when he was teenag­er. Yet his iden­tity remained a secret to the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­nity when his sto­ries appeared in the magazines.

The sto­ries he wrote were far in advance of their time. In 1945, these words appeared at the begin­ning of “Scan­ners Live In Vain”: Mar­tel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. 

It was the begin­ning of a series of sto­ries, linked into a com­pre­hen­sive “future his­tory” which explored genet­ic engi­neer­ing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, organ har­vest­ing, human-machine syn­the­sis, and many oth­er out­ré con­cepts, long before they were “nor­mal­ized” into the sci­ence fic­tion tool-kit. His prose style was pre­cise, con­trolled, and sophis­ti­cated. The sto­ries, alto­gether, con­sti­tute a pro­longed med­i­ta­tion on the nature of human­ity and of consciousness.

(Cord­wain­er Smith) You Will Nev­er Be the Same:
 15133. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [4] No, No, Not Rogov! [sto­ry]
 15134. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [4] The Lady Who Sailed the Soul [sto­ry]
 15135. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [5] Scan­ners Live In Vain [sto­ry]
 15136. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [4] The Game of Rat and Drag­on [sto­ry]
 15137. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [3] The Burn­ing of the Brain [sto­ry]
 15138. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [3] Gold­en the Ship Was ― Oh! Oh! Oh! [sto­ry]
 15139. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [4] Alpha Ral­pha Boule­vard [sto­ry]
 15140. (Cord­wain­er Smith) [2] Mark Elf [= Mark XI] [sto­ry]