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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
This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know. Submit Series Details
Book Type:	Collection
Genre:	Science-Fiction
Sub-Genre Tags:	Human Development Galactic Empire Dystopia
Awards:
Lists:	SF Masterworks The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1990s
Links:
Avg Member Rating:	(127 reads / 69 ratings)
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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

Excerpt

No excerpt currently exists for this novel.

Reviews

The Rediscovery of Man

- justifiedsinner
  (6/18/2014)

Cordwainer Smith - The Best Of (1975)

- thrak
  (12/18/2014)

The Rediscovery of Man

- CDR_Bill
  (4/30/2016)

The Rediscovery of Man

- spectru
  (8/24/2016)

The Rediscovery of Man

- b-rad
  (7/9/2021)

The Rediscovery of Man

- Sable Aradia
  (7/11/2016)

Images

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