The Rediscovery of Man

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The Rediscovery of Man

Alternate Title:	The Best of Cordwainer Smith
Author:	Cordwainer Smith
Publisher:	Gollancz, 1999 Gollancz, 1988 Nelson Doubleday, 1975
Series:	The Instrumentality of Mankind
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Book Type:	Collection
Genre:	Science-Fiction
Sub-Genre Tags:	Human Development Galactic Empire Dystopia
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Lists:	SF Masterworks The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1990s
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Synopsis

Welcome to the strangest, most distinctive future ever imagined by a science fiction writer. An insterstellar empire ruled by the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, whose access to the drug stroon from the planet Norstrilia confers on them virtual immortality. A world in which wealthy and leisured humanity is served by the underpeople, genetically engineered animals turned into the semblance of people. A world in which the great ships which sail between the stars are eventually supplanted by the mysterious, instantaneous technique of planoforming. A world of wonder and myth, and extraordinary imagination.

(Note that this collection was originally published in 1975 as The Best of Cordwainer Smith, the 3rd book in Ballantine's Classic Library of Science Fiction. It was then republished as The Rediscovery of Man in 1988 as VGSF Classics #25, then again in 1999 as a Gollancz SF Masterworks edition. It is a different collection from the NESFA press collection The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, which has different contents).

Table of Contents:

Cordwainer Smith: The Shaper of Myths - essay by John J. Pierce
The Instrumentality of Mankind (timeline) - essay by John J. Pierce
Scanners Live in Vain (1950) - novelette
The Lady Who Sailed the Soul (1960) - novelette by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955) - short story
The Burning of the Brain (1958) - short story
Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh! (1959) - short story by Genevieve Linebarger and Cordwainer Smith
The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964) - short story
The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964) - novella
Under Old Earth (1966) - novelette
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons (1961) - novelette
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961) - novelette
The Ballad of Lost C'mell (1962) - novelette
A Planet Named Shayol (1961) - novelette