Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (photo ©Rosana Hart, Hartworks, Inc.), this was his real name, was born on July 11, 1913, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was a lawyer and activist with strong ties to China and, in particular, its nationalists, so much so that the father of the Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-sen was young Paul’s godfather.

When he was a child, Paul Linebarger already had great problems with his sight: he became completely blind in his right eye, and an infection limited his left eye’s vision. Despite these problems, since his family moved to various countries, he ended up speaking six languages, ​​and at 23, he received a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University.

The ties with China deeply influenced Paul Linebarger’s life. For several years, he taught at Duke University and published several political essays on the Far East. In 1936, he married Margaret Snow, by whom he had two daughters. The marriage lasted until 1949.

During World War II, Paul Linebarger served in the U.S. Army working as a consultant in the creation of the United States Office of War Information and the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board, and also in the organization of a section devoted to psychological warfare.

During the war years, Paul Linebarger also worked on the coordination of the military intelligence in China, operating as a contact with the Chinese nationalists. Thanks to his old contacts, he also became confident of their leader, Chiang Kai-shek. His work continued after the end of World War II by providing advice to the British armed forces during the Malaysian Emergency and to the American armed forces during the Korean War. In those years, he also managed to publish his first novels of different genres under the pen names Felix C. Forrest and Carmichael Smith.

In 1950, Paul Linebarger married Genevieve Collins. In the same year, he published his first science fiction story, signed with the pen name Cordwainer Smith with which he’s known in the world of science fiction, titled “Scanners Live in Vain”. His stories make up the fictional universe of the Instrumentality of Man, in which civilization is rebuilt after a nuclear disaster.

Over thousands of years, the Underpeople are created, animals genetically modified to reach an intellectual level equivalent to that of humans. They’re discriminated against, but eventually, they get equal rights. To this cycle belongs the only science fiction novel by Cordwainer Smith, “Norstrilia”, obtained in 1975 by joining two shorter novels: “The Planet Buyer” (1964) and “The Underpeople” (1968).

Unfortunately, Linebarger / Smith died on August 6, 1966, due to a heart attack. He wasn’t a career soldier, but having served for a long time in the U.S. armed forces, he had reached the rank of colonel and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Paul Linebarger was a person who had out-of-ordinary experiences, and you can see that in the science fiction stories signed as Cordwainer Smith. In the stories of the Instrumentality of Man, he used a style influenced by the Chinese stories, as if they were telling the legends of the distant future instead of the past, with the Underpeople instead of ghosts and other supernatural creatures. This made him a truly unique and unrepeatable author, even though he has influenced writers of later generations.