Monday, July 27, 2009

Cordwainer Smith

Book Cover

Howard Hendrix's book The Labyrinth Key has a character named Felix Forrest. The book hinted that the character might be an homage on a real person. As it turns out, the real person is more interesting than the fictional one. Major Paul M.A. Linebarger, 1913 - 1966, wrote under his own name, Essays on military psychological operations, and under several pseudonyms, including Felix Forrest and the most interesting one to science fiction fans, Cordwainer Smith.

Linebarger's godfather was Sun Yat-sen, he picked up six languages as a kid, graduated Johns Hopkins as a PhD, helped create the Office of War Information and was on the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board, was on the faculty at Duke and Johns Hopkins and served as an advisor to President Kennedy while doing some work for the CIA. Since he had some free time on his hands, he decided to write a bit of fiction under the name Smith.

  • Some stories on the web
  • Bibliography of psy-ops papers

(Edit) On September 17, '09, Boing Boing ran this related post

No comments:

Post a Comment