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Space Lords
The universe of Cordwainer Smith
Giant planoforming ships ply the spaceways...
Men "built" from animals do mankind's labor - and plot in secret...
Living weapons guard the most important secret in existence...
A thousand planets acknowledge one ruler - the instrumentality of Mankind...
Wierd, beautiful, terrifying - these stories of the far future paint a picture of the strangest universe ever imagined.
Contains five stories:
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
The Dead Lady of Clown Town
Drunkboat
The Ballad of Lost C'mell
A Planet Named Shayol
Giant planoforming ships ply the spaceways...
Men "built" from animals do mankind's labor - and plot in secret...
Living weapons guard the most important secret in existence...
A thousand planets acknowledge one ruler - the instrumentality of Mankind...
Wierd, beautiful, terrifying - these stories of the far future paint a picture of the strangest universe ever imagined.
Contains five stories:
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons
The Dead Lady of Clown Town
Drunkboat
The Ballad of Lost C'mell
A Planet Named Shayol
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 1965
2 people are currently reading
228 people want to read
About the author
Cordwainer Smith
225 books310 followersPseudonym of:
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller Atomsk), "Anthony Bearden" (for his poetry) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels Ria and Carola).
Linebarger was also a noted East Asia scholar and expert in psychological warfare.
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller Atomsk), "Anthony Bearden" (for his poetry) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels Ria and Carola).
Linebarger was also a noted East Asia scholar and expert in psychological warfare.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 5, 2014
I gave notgettingenough a copy of Space Lords...
... and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
Ah, sorry, I mean, thank you, it's lovely!
... and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
Ah, sorry, I mean, thank you, it's lovely!
May 7, 2020
3-4 Sterne
Sehr schöne, kompakt erzählte Kurzgeschichten. Eine Mischung aus Lem (wenngleich ohne Witz) und Dick (freilich auf Entzug).
Sehr schöne, kompakt erzählte Kurzgeschichten. Eine Mischung aus Lem (wenngleich ohne Witz) und Dick (freilich auf Entzug).
May 23, 2014
Out of all of these stories, I think I liked the Dead Lady of Clown Town best. I'm not normally a huge fan of Christ-like fiction, but... Holy F...! :) This one grabbed me right away with it's promise, it's sneaky-gentle prose and action and likable characters, and then it smashed my brains in with a huge club. Our fantastic author was even so good as to give us a little distance at the end so we wouldn't have to suffer so much.
Unfortunately, I actually found myself dreaming about the story last night. Damn.
Unfortunately, I actually found myself dreaming about the story last night. Damn.
April 1, 2011
Incredibly alienating. The bizarre badly written. I know he's a cult figure and I seem to be down on them, but.
Pohl tells a story on his blog about the reason Smith stopped writing about the world of the Space Lords. He had any number of ideas which he kept in a note book. One day he bent over the side of a boat on the Meditteranean. You can guess what happened.
Apparently he couldn't write unless nobody knew who he was. I'm sorry, but what I want to say is I don't blame him.
Surely nobody thinks he can write? Surely.
Taking a look around for more on him, I see that Christianity was very important to him and that his science fiction is riddled with his consequent beliefs. Maybe that is why I find his stuff so repelling. It does read like propaganda and that is his field in real life, psychological warfare. The article in question is here: http://www.sunpopblue.com/Music-Art-B...
I'm sorry, I was really looking forward to reading this and feel like I've failed some sort of sci fi test.
Darn.
Pohl tells a story on his blog about the reason Smith stopped writing about the world of the Space Lords. He had any number of ideas which he kept in a note book. One day he bent over the side of a boat on the Meditteranean. You can guess what happened.
Apparently he couldn't write unless nobody knew who he was. I'm sorry, but what I want to say is I don't blame him.
Surely nobody thinks he can write? Surely.
Taking a look around for more on him, I see that Christianity was very important to him and that his science fiction is riddled with his consequent beliefs. Maybe that is why I find his stuff so repelling. It does read like propaganda and that is his field in real life, psychological warfare. The article in question is here: http://www.sunpopblue.com/Music-Art-B...
I'm sorry, I was really looking forward to reading this and feel like I've failed some sort of sci fi test.
Darn.
January 13, 2019
Picked this up semi-randomly from my gigantic stack of SF books (I want to read Norstrilia by the same author because I've had it for a looong time but this collection was published first). I didn't expect it to be as WEIRD as it is, with a sort of heightened allegorical old fashioned meta-storytelling quality to it that reminds me very much of one of my favorite authors, R.A. Lafferty.
In fact, after reading "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," with its earnest but totally loopy and frightening Christian message and "under people" who are more recognizable people than the people in the story, I was almost convinced Cordwainer Smith was some Lafferty pseudonym. But the real "Cordwainer Smith" is a fascinating character with a biography frankly more much more interesting than Lafferty's (well, something that makes Lafferty so weird and interesting is how mundane his biography is) and after knowing who exactly he is, it's fun looking for secret Cold War codes in his stories.
At any rate, each story in this collection is worth reading for the marvelous weirdness of their shared, psychotic-to-us world. I don't know if any works COMPLETELY (the poetry for one thing is terrible), but taken together they're fantastic. I especially like "The Dead Lady" and "A Planet Named Shayol." Worth also reading is the introduction and conclusion, and the dedication to Eleanor Jackson, which is about the most memorable dedications I've ever read.
In fact, after reading "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," with its earnest but totally loopy and frightening Christian message and "under people" who are more recognizable people than the people in the story, I was almost convinced Cordwainer Smith was some Lafferty pseudonym. But the real "Cordwainer Smith" is a fascinating character with a biography frankly more much more interesting than Lafferty's (well, something that makes Lafferty so weird and interesting is how mundane his biography is) and after knowing who exactly he is, it's fun looking for secret Cold War codes in his stories.
At any rate, each story in this collection is worth reading for the marvelous weirdness of their shared, psychotic-to-us world. I don't know if any works COMPLETELY (the poetry for one thing is terrible), but taken together they're fantastic. I especially like "The Dead Lady" and "A Planet Named Shayol." Worth also reading is the introduction and conclusion, and the dedication to Eleanor Jackson, which is about the most memorable dedications I've ever read.
July 19, 2009
I've enjoyed Smith's writing in the past, but this time found it slightly pompous, possibly because with the exception of "Drunkboat" I have seen these stories collected elsewhere many times before. As a result I rather rushed through this anthology.
As a political/social entity, the Instrumentality of Mankind is different from many as featured in other stories of this kind. It doesn't exist just to rule, but as a means to achieve some sort of purpose, to humanize Humanity.
As a political/social entity, the Instrumentality of Mankind is different from many as featured in other stories of this kind. It doesn't exist just to rule, but as a means to achieve some sort of purpose, to humanize Humanity.
June 20, 2023
When drugs or alcohol have altered the state of your thoughts, sufficient(ly) that you no longer believe what most normal people believe, then you will make meaning of this book, my son.
Weirdly enjoyable.
Weirdly enjoyable.
September 6, 2018
No one before or since has written like Cordwainer Smith: the strange, soaring stories, with their hints of even further unglimpsed depths and wonders, were one of the delights of my youthful exploration of SF, and are a recurring source of pleasure even now.
Unfortunately Smith was ill-served by his early publishers: his one longish novel (Norstrilia) was hacked into two parts (The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople), and the short stories (which originally appeared in magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction) were splattered around different compilations at random.
Now Norstrilia has been restored and published intact, and the shorts have all been collected into one properly-edited volume: The Rediscovery of Man (N.B. not the abridged Gollancz paperback of the same title).
This slim volume might reasonably be described as a sampler, and contains the following:
• Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittens
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town
• Drunkboat
• The Ballad of Lost C’mell
The Ace edition apparently also contains A Planet Named Shayol; the 1970 Sphere edition does not.
In the Sphere edition at least, there is no Table of Contents. There is, however, a longish and rather touching letter of dedication in memoriam by the author.
Unfortunately Smith was ill-served by his early publishers: his one longish novel (Norstrilia) was hacked into two parts (The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople), and the short stories (which originally appeared in magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction) were splattered around different compilations at random.
Now Norstrilia has been restored and published intact, and the shorts have all been collected into one properly-edited volume: The Rediscovery of Man (N.B. not the abridged Gollancz paperback of the same title).
This slim volume might reasonably be described as a sampler, and contains the following:
• Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittens
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town
• Drunkboat
• The Ballad of Lost C’mell
The Ace edition apparently also contains A Planet Named Shayol; the 1970 Sphere edition does not.
In the Sphere edition at least, there is no Table of Contents. There is, however, a longish and rather touching letter of dedication in memoriam by the author.
August 16, 2024
Neon Genesis Evangelion brought me here for the Instrumentality. I wouldn't say this opened my eyes to anything in particular nor was it incredibly insightful to what other properties have established in Smith's wake, but there are decent moments in this collection of short stories that piqued my interest for other novels by this writer.
The several references to Notsrilia kicked my brain into gear, reminding me that is something I should check out. Getting a taste of the Lords of Instrumentality seemed like a good primer into the world of Notsrilia.
Ultimately, Space Lords suffers from being a collection of short stories from the mid to late 1960s. There's a clear lack of characterization. A simplicity of story. Vocabulary, like "girly-girl," that paints the writer as unimaginative and insensitive to the care I want taken in a piece of evocative literature.
But it was short and I got through it with great ease.
I'll leave the door open for more Cordwainer Smith but this doesn't provoke me to great thought.
The several references to Notsrilia kicked my brain into gear, reminding me that is something I should check out. Getting a taste of the Lords of Instrumentality seemed like a good primer into the world of Notsrilia.
Ultimately, Space Lords suffers from being a collection of short stories from the mid to late 1960s. There's a clear lack of characterization. A simplicity of story. Vocabulary, like "girly-girl," that paints the writer as unimaginative and insensitive to the care I want taken in a piece of evocative literature.
But it was short and I got through it with great ease.
I'll leave the door open for more Cordwainer Smith but this doesn't provoke me to great thought.
December 4, 2022
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons (1961)
The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964)
Drunkboat (1963)
The Ballad of Lost C'mell (1962)
A Planet Named Shayol (1961)
The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964)
Drunkboat (1963)
The Ballad of Lost C'mell (1962)
A Planet Named Shayol (1961)
August 30, 2023
Compelling. Quirky, weirdly written, in many ways kind of not good, but un-put-downable.
June 25, 2015
This is a collection of 5 stories all taking place in Smith's 'Instrumentality of Man' universe, where human kind is alone in the universe, but goes out and colonizes. There are 'underpeople', animals give human traits and intelligence, that are used as semi-slave labor. At some points the government seems authoritarian, others more socialist. The stories take place over several millenia.
Smith in his prologue makes direct corrolations to other literature, which are.. sorta clear. The main story 'Dead Lady of Clown Town' is clearly 'Joan of Arc' in space...it definitely has some fun stuff in it, even if you know how it's going to end.
There's a short story about how Australians control a planet where they make a drug that lets people live for 400 years, and thief that tries to steal from them and feels (the author is Austrailian)
There's one that's basically an acid trip.. not my favorite. Another claims to be loosely based on a Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I'm prettyy knowledgable about those stories, and this wasn't similar to any of them. It was pretty good, though, so no problem.
The last one was also pretty trippy... invoving a prison planet where the native organisms make anyone exposed to the air grow extra parts... so they drug them up to make the suffering less and use it for medical stuff. Yeah.
Overall, so very interesting bits, and some very..shall we say 'grown in the 60s' bits.
Smith in his prologue makes direct corrolations to other literature, which are.. sorta clear. The main story 'Dead Lady of Clown Town' is clearly 'Joan of Arc' in space...it definitely has some fun stuff in it, even if you know how it's going to end.
There's a short story about how Australians control a planet where they make a drug that lets people live for 400 years, and thief that tries to steal from them and feels (the author is Austrailian)
There's one that's basically an acid trip.. not my favorite. Another claims to be loosely based on a Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I'm prettyy knowledgable about those stories, and this wasn't similar to any of them. It was pretty good, though, so no problem.
The last one was also pretty trippy... invoving a prison planet where the native organisms make anyone exposed to the air grow extra parts... so they drug them up to make the suffering less and use it for medical stuff. Yeah.
Overall, so very interesting bits, and some very..shall we say 'grown in the 60s' bits.
October 28, 2016
Space Lords was published in 1965 and is a collection of 5 stories that first appeared in science fiction magazines between June 1961 and August 1964. Four of these appeared in "Galaxy" while Fred Pohl was editor. Cordwainer Smith was a unique voice in science fiction. His stories aren't like other stories and as the author states in his Prologue "There are five stories here. They all concern the future, more or less around A.D. 15,000." The author gives away his inspiration for each of the stories in the prologue, and adds some pointers in the Epilogue. The author writes what may be the most unusual and long dedication to this collection that I have ever read. He was apparently quite ill at the time, as was his wife, and he would pass away and be buried in Arlington cemetery the following year.
These are somewhat scary stories of a dark future for mankind, and there is a bit too much weirdness mixed in here for me to say I really like this stuff. The standout story for me is "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", pronounced as k-mel, a story I read 6 or 7 years ago and the story that woke me up belatedly to this man's talent. Each of the other stories is also OK to good. The first story, "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" serves as an excellent introduction to the future universe that most of the author's stories are set in, but the ending took a very intriguing story and veered way off into weird.
I thought I would enjoy these stories more than I did.
These are somewhat scary stories of a dark future for mankind, and there is a bit too much weirdness mixed in here for me to say I really like this stuff. The standout story for me is "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", pronounced as k-mel, a story I read 6 or 7 years ago and the story that woke me up belatedly to this man's talent. Each of the other stories is also OK to good. The first story, "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" serves as an excellent introduction to the future universe that most of the author's stories are set in, but the ending took a very intriguing story and veered way off into weird.
I thought I would enjoy these stories more than I did.
January 27, 2012
Space Lords consists of 5 short stories by the author. Each is set in the same universe. The Underpeople fascinated me - they are animal and human DNA mixed to create a servant race. So there are snake woman, bull men, dog girls, cat ladies, etc.
Each story was well written and held on it's own. I especially enjoyed the last - A Planet Named Shayol. It was eerie and beautiful at the same time. Starts off pretty simple with a prison planet. But as you dig into the story you realize that the population of the planet is being used as a renewable organ-donating bank. Creepy.
Each story was well written and held on it's own. I especially enjoyed the last - A Planet Named Shayol. It was eerie and beautiful at the same time. Starts off pretty simple with a prison planet. But as you dig into the story you realize that the population of the planet is being used as a renewable organ-donating bank. Creepy.
July 19, 2021
This is the one! Cordwainer Smith's piece de resistance. From Mother Hitton's Littul Kittens through Drunkboat to The Ballad of Lost C'Mell these stories underpin the universe of the Instrumentality.
It's fantastic.
It's fantastic.
April 16, 2013
Maybe it's my broader exposure to better sci fi, but this didn't strike as particularly impressive. It's not bad, just not all that good. There are better works elsewhere.
December 19, 2016
An excellent set of short stories with a strong social justice theme.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews