Introducing Cordwainer Smith at Bushi SF/F

Over at Bushi SF/F, PC Bushi reintroduces a quiet but audacious SF writer from the past, Cordwainer Smith.

In “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal,” the titular commander is suckered by a false distress signal broadcast by a twisted, deviant branch of humanity. The miserable people, colonists to the stars of ages past, encountered a world fatal to females. Determined to survive, the world’s women were scientifically transformed into men. A sick and demented civilization developed, fostering an insane hate for women and for normal humans. Ensnared by these monsters, Suzdal deploys a “life bomb” to a nearby moon along with a number of genetically modified cats, which he has programmed to serve mankind. The kicker – he uses a time travel device to send them back millions of years, to give them time to evolve. Up come their ships from the moon, and the cat people engage Suzdal’s attackers, allowing him to escape. 

Wow.

PC Bushi summaries Smith's life and three more stories, each wildly strange in ways unimagined by the codification of tropes and convention. Learn more about Cordwainer Smith at Bushi SF/F and then read a mindboggling story or two.