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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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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The only work of his I've read is ATOMSK but it DEFINITELY plays into this narrative.
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