Smith wasn't an average SF writer- he was a writer in prose. His anthropomorphic animals like C'Mell and D'Joan gave me a better sense of what it would really be like being them than in any other texts I've encountered.
Smith is always a treat and a bit of horror thrown in for seasoning. "Scanners Live in Vain" was my first taste, and subsequent samplings were always good. I've wondered if Warhammer 40k didn't swipe the Dragons/Rats from Smith for their game.
I think at one point or another, everyone in the 60's and damn near everyone in the 70's read Cordwainer Smith. His impact on me and yes even my writing was huge. Right up there with Roger Zelazny and Robert Heinlein.
Part of what made him so big and interesting was how unique his approach was. You could see the very Chinese & Asian influences in it. You could see that he looked at our culture just a little bit differently than we did. Did you ever read the one where the kid buys the Earth? And he does it all because he wants a stamp. But there's a lot of culture bending going on, and also a lot of people just not understanding the wants of others - not even being capable of understanding.
He threw things in a grand scale (The ships were golden golden golden) and he put some extremely dark undersides to life with the instrumentality and the Haberman devices.
You can learn a lot about humanity and just how and why cultures are different. And that other people are often, if not always, different in ways that you just might never be able to understand.
Smith wasn't an average SF writer- he was a writer in prose. His anthropomorphic animals like C'Mell and D'Joan gave me a better sense of what it would really be like being them than in any other texts I've encountered.
Smith is always a treat and a bit of horror thrown in for seasoning. "Scanners Live in Vain" was my first taste, and subsequent samplings were always good. I've wondered if Warhammer 40k didn't swipe the Dragons/Rats from Smith for their game.
This is the first time I read this one. That's truly an interesting concept … a strong vein of elder gods in there for sure.
I think at one point or another, everyone in the 60's and damn near everyone in the 70's read Cordwainer Smith. His impact on me and yes even my writing was huge. Right up there with Roger Zelazny and Robert Heinlein.
Part of what made him so big and interesting was how unique his approach was. You could see the very Chinese & Asian influences in it. You could see that he looked at our culture just a little bit differently than we did. Did you ever read the one where the kid buys the Earth? And he does it all because he wants a stamp. But there's a lot of culture bending going on, and also a lot of people just not understanding the wants of others - not even being capable of understanding.
He threw things in a grand scale (The ships were golden golden golden) and he put some extremely dark undersides to life with the instrumentality and the Haberman devices.
You can learn a lot about humanity and just how and why cultures are different. And that other people are often, if not always, different in ways that you just might never be able to understand.