1. So I have an idea for great book that someone (not me) should write: Cordwainer Smith's Science Fiction & the Bad Conscience of American Empire.
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3. Because much of his upbringing was in China (Sun Yat-sen was his godfather) Linebarger was fluent in Chinese (claimed he dreamt in it) & developed a larger expertise in Asian culture, which he used in the services of the CIA.
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4. Linebarger was a key theorist of psychological warfare & seems to be involved in some dirty work in Vietnam & Indonesia in 1950s & 1960s. (There's a hint of this in letters page of Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1996/12/29/letters/e6f65c41-a475-4ef8-b1b5-3e7a05d3e98f/?utm_term=.268c8df6388e …)
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5. While working for the CIA, Linebarger started writing science fiction under the pen name Cordwainer Smith. Strange, exotic stories (his Asian background helped) of a post-human far future involving The Underpeople (tortured animal/human hybrids) in revolt).
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6. Linebarger/Smith's science fiction was very important in genre in terms of creating plausible alien cultures, & moving from xenophobia to xenophilia. Very much influenced later work of Le Guin & Delany.
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7. I read Linebarger/Smith's science fiction as either an apologia or a confession or maybe an expiation for the dirty work he had to do for the CIA. It's about the ultimate salvation of the subjects of empire.
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8. That's exactly how I see Linebarger/Smith's work: as grappling in fiction with the horrors the author was implicated in in reality. https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/999507004077953024 …
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8. Anyways, Linebarger/Smith lived a fascinating life & there is a great story here about the tensions between that life & the fiction he wrote. Someone should write a doctoral thesis or a biography! I'm offering this as a free idea.
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9. Tangentially, there's a Jack Kirby (I know, I know) connection here. Linebarger/Smith's Underpeople parallel the many subterranean peoples (i.e. The Mole Men) that Kirby treated as monsters in 1950s & early 1960s but came to sympathize with (as say with Inhumans).
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10. More broadly: science fiction was the genre that allowed the wounded soldiers weapon makers, torturers, psywar experts, etc to work out their traumas & fears: Heinlein, Smith, Tiptree, Wolfe, many more.
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End of conversation
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you must have read his book Psychological Warfare!? a classic, still quite relevant.
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