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  A look at his resume, which appeared in various reference works, would have provided other clues. Yet Linebarger’s readers were not the same as the ones who read Cordwainer Smith. This was no surprise. He was not the first academic to cultivate a lesser artistic hobby, here “escapist” literature. Perhaps his is a classic case of the “violon d’Ingres”.

  Linebarger had also been a military officer and written a well-known war propaganda manual. He served in army intelligence as a lieutenant coronel and witnessed no less than six wars.

  His political career was equally noteworthy. The godchild of Chinese president Sun Yat-sen, he had served as a representative of Chiang Kai-shek and an advisor to Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

  This information was astonishing to those who had read his stories, many of which depicted the epic struggle of a community of slaves oppressed by a technocratic regime. Most disturbing of all was that this rigorously anti-communist official reserved a central role for a revolutionary organization upon which depended nothing less than the fate of humanity.

  These circumstances invite one to emphasize his personality. At first glance, it gave rise to all sorts of conjectures: a double life, hypocritical behavior, an unhinged mind, a conflict of conscience… But there was something else that complicated matters even more.

  Among the first books that promoted psychoanalysis in the United States, The Fifty Minute Hour, a review of the most remarkable cases in the career of Dr. Robert Lindner, was one of the most successful. One such case was a strange story that, with time, would become required reading for various generations of students.

  “The Jet-Propelled Couch: The Story of Kirk Allen” was a case of delusion inspired by science fiction. Lindner insisted it was the story of an actual patient whose identity he could not reveal for security reasons.

  There are grounds for believing that the text was taken from the therapy Paul Linebarger underwent early in his literary career.

  Cordwainer Smith was not Paul’s only pseudonym. A glance through the reference materials reveals three more names (Anthony Bearden, Felix C. Forrest and Carmichael Smith), to which would later be added a fourth: Karloman Jungahr.

  It was fairly common in the United States for professional writers to use various pseudonyms, and more than a few gained fame using different names in several fields simultaneously.9 Paul Linebarger, however, was not a professional writer but a professor with ties to politics. He never used two pseudonyms at the same time and reserved his real name for signing academic works.

  We will therefore attempt to approach Cordwainer Smith via the four pseudonyms of Professor Linebarger. This will provide us with a preliminary vision of his life as well as the mechanisms of his style.

  Karloman Jungahr

  As if announcing what would become his vocation, the first thing that the adolescent Paul published was a science fiction story.

  In the only interview he ever granted, he mentioned the title (“War # 81 Q”) and plot: “[A] war in which the machines fight it out sans human casualties.” Nikola Tesla, Edison’s rival, had once declared that wars of the future would be like this.

  At the time of the interview, Linebarger had written a new version of the story, which would come to be known posthumously. Still, he set a trap for collectors when stating that “anyone who can find a copy of that first story...will have a prize item. The author is listed not by any pseudonym but by his own, authentic, birth-certificate and baptism-record name.”

  The trap seems to have worked, for much time passed before the riddle was finally solved. More than a few people searched for this story in vain. It did not even appear in the Bleiler-Dikty Index, the best catalog of science fiction magazines at the time.

  A few years after Smith’s death, his widow Genevieve speculated that the story could have appeared under the name Anthony Bearden.10 J.J. Pierce echoes this version of events in the definitive edition of Norstrilia11, stating that in this text mention was already made of the Instrumentality, a key figure in the world of Cordwainer Smith.12

  None of it was true. In 1979, Frederick Pohl explained that the story could not be found because it had not appeared in a magazine but in a journal of a Washington school district under the odd pseudonym “Karloman Jungahr”.

  While it is true no mention is made of Paul Linebarger, the main character is named Jack Bearden, the same as one of his cousins.13 As Bearden was his mother’s family name, one undoubtedly would have been able to find it on his birth certificate, as “Smith” ironically suggested in the interview.

  The choice of a pseudonym as unlikely as “Karloman Jungahr” seemed to suggest a taste for concealment, enigmas and verbal riddles characteristic of his style. “Jungahr Man” was the name of a mountain pass on the Russian-Chinese border, while “Karloman” could be the origin of such names Carola, Carson, Carmichael and Cordwainer.14

  Anthony Bearden

  While Linebarger’s first story was signed otherwise, the name “Anthony Bearden” was nonetheless plausible, for Linebarger had already used it for his first juvenile poems. In fact, verse he recovered for the novel Norstrilia is attributed explicitly to “Anthony Bearden, Ancient American, A.D. 1913-1949.”

  Here he combined his third name (Anthony) with one of his mother’s family names, Lillian Bearden Kirk. His father (Paul Myron) had already used his first two names.

  Linebarger was born in 1913, and the year 1949 (the “death” of Anthony Bearden) seemed to mark the end of a chapter in his life. He often said that 1949 was “a hellish year” for him personally: it was the year of his divorce, when he suffered a severe personality crisis.15

  This is further evidence of his allusive and elusive style, one replete with codes that often satisfied only his own sense of his humor or made a small circle of friends smile.

  Felix C. Forrest

  At the end of the World War Two, Linebarger published two “psychological novels” entitled Ria and Carola in a collection also featuring the work of Louis Aragon and Howard Fast. Both were attributed to “Felix C. Forrest”, who the publishers introduced as “a scientist that works for the Government” and a great traveler.

  Linebarger spent part of his childhood in China. His godfather Sun Yat-sen had taught him that his last name was pronounced “Lin Bai-lo” in Chinese. A somewhat poetic translation of this expression could be Felix Candent Forest or “Forest of Incandescent Happiness”. Linebarger had these ideograms embroidered on his ties and printed on his cards. In private he affirmed that “Lin Bai-lo” was the correct pronunciation of Linebarger.

  Carmichael Smith

  Linebarger used this pseudonym only once, for the spy novel Atomsk. It was the first work of fiction to claim that the Russians had the necessary technology for building their own atomic bomb, a subject about which Linebarger must have been well informed given his intelligence work. The novel appeared several months after the USSR carried out its first nuclear test and was the object of virulent commentary in the Soviet press.

  “Carmichael” could be a tribute to Hoagy Carmichael (1900-1982), the composer of Stardust, a very popular song at the time.

  Cordwainer Smith

  In the field of science fiction, “Cordwainer Smith” had no guarantor and, like any other beginning writer, had to win over the public. It did not occur to anybody to associate this name with Paul Linebarger or Felix C. Forrest.

  His stories were too original for contemporary magazines of the period.16 “Scanners Live in Vain”, the first, was rejected by almost every magazine in the genre; John W. Campbell turned it down, albeit apologetically, as being a bit “excessive” for Astounding.

  The story ultimately appeared in Fantasy Book, the magazine published by some sci-fi aficionados in California. Curiously, Linebarger had introduced himself to them using his real name, even offering Who’s Who as a reference.


  In the same issue appeared “Little Man in the Subway”, a story by Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov. Pohl recalled the occasion with pride, but Asimov seemed disturbed. In his autobiography he wrote: “The longest story in that issue was ‘Scanners Live in Vain’ by an unknown called Cordwainer Smith. I read it and thought it very unusual but very depressing. It turned out that in later years it was considered a classic, and Smith (a pseudonym) went on to become what was almost a cult object.”17

  Locating the origin of the “Cordwainer Smith” formula is no easy task.

  “Cordwainer” is the equivalent of the French cordonnier: a highly skilled artisan that makes fine kidskin shoes. “Smith” is an extremely common surname, one ideal for going unnoticed, though here it seems to contrast the roughness of the forger with the elegance of the craftsman. The name might also contain an allusion to “Northwest Smith”, the adventurer created by Catherine L. Moore, or Dr. E.E. Smith, a very popular writer at the time. Moore and Smith were among the authors Linebarger read as a child. Perhaps additional irony lay in the fact of presenting himself as an “artisan” rather than the famous “doctor”.

  One man, many names

  Why so much concealment? What compelled Professor Linebarger, a former military official and political consultant, to write stories about the remote future, one so far removed from his professional world?

  No one would accuse him of seeking popularity or prestige, given that he used a pseudonym. Smith’s fame did not benefit Linebarger, and Linebarger’s renown meant nothing in the literary world. At the most, it might have offered some private joy.

  Nor was he out to get rich, even if he did confess to enjoying a respectable social standing: “The bank manager knows me, and the Church of England clergyman knows me, and you can even look in on Mr. Greenish, my stockbroker, and ask him if my credit is good. He’ll probably say it’s all right, but that everyone around here knows I’m not rich. I do all right, though.”18 Still, he added: “I’d much rather be appreciated by a select few than enjoyed by the bawling millions.” There is nothing further from a writer of best sellers than an author with such aristocratic criteria.

  One might think that his literary activity was a hobby, a form of relief that allowed him to escape the pressures of professional life. Yet during his fifteen most creative years, Linebarger was undergoing psychoanalysis, which would seem to suggest he already had a place where he could set his unconscious free.

  Or does his fiction reflect a conflict of conscience, a political “American tragedy” that finds resolution in fantasy?

  From a very young age, Linebarger had been close to the center of power. Considered a conservative, he was even branded by some a “reactionary”. European critics never ceased to lament his political leanings, disposing readers toward a biased assessment of his work. Decades later, and despite the collapse of ideologies, such prejudice persisted unabated.

  This superficial reading results in the first label: i.e., the author is a hypocrite, someone aware of injustice but afraid of putting his privileges at risk.

  If we wish to be objective, however, we will have to take into account facts that do not conform to this hypothesis. Linebarger interrupted a brilliant military career, leaving active service when he was barely forty years old. Between 1962 and 1964, he presided over the American Peace Society, the oldest pacifist organization in the United States. If we allow these factors to enter into the equation, we will have to adjust the aforementioned judgment.

  Yet the vocabulary of ideology offers other alternatives, eager to be used and as superficial as the first.

  During the Vietnam War, people began talking about “hawks” and “doves” as way of classifying attitudes according to the degree to which one was deemed a warmonger or not. If Linebarger had been only a military official, politician or professor, and literature something secondary in his life, one would be able to recognize his pacifist attitudes, changing the label “reactionary” for “dove”.

  As such, we would be dealing with a military “dove” or, in Chomsky’s words, a “rational imperialist”: a person whose innate authoritarianism is tempered by religious or humanitarian sentiments. Instead of a cynic, we would have before us an enemy that posed only the slightest danger, even a potential ally for some progressive cause. But we would still not grasp the metamorphosis from “hawk” to “dove”.

  Paul Linebarger was part of a generation that experienced the Vietnam War as a national drama. Triumphant in World War Two, Americans believed that the world admired and envied their technology, power and institutions. They had built an empire without having to shoulder the crimes of European colonialism. In the vanguard of “Americanism” there were more engineers and managers than generals and colonels.

  The Vietnam War represented for the United States not only its first defeat: it was bloody, prolonged and manifestly unjust. For the first time, Americans were the aggressors, guilty of the very war crimes their parents had condemned.

  The bulk of the ruling class was still able to skirt ethical issues, taking refuge in the most sanitized kind of activism. Some of these technocrats, however, suddenly awoke to the reality and underwent spectacular conversions.

  The most famous dissidents produced by the Vietnam War were Doctor Spock, Daniel Ellsberg, Anthony Russo and Victor Marchetti.

  In a cultural context less respectful of free speech, cases such as that of Spock or Ellsberg would have been inconceivable.

  Daniel Ellsberg was a technocrat at the Rand Corporation, a proponent of Game Theory, who began to unravel after two years in Vietnam. When Lieutenant Calley was tried for the notorious “My Lai Massacre” (the destruction of an entire village), Ellsberg’s faith had already been shaken. Soon he found himself giving testimony as a witness for the prosecution before a Senate committee investigating war crimes. His career culminated with a bombshell, the day he handed the infamous “Pentagon Papers” over to the press.

  Benjamin Spock is another case incomprehensible outside of this cultural context. A world-renowned pediatrician, he began to be active in pacifist movements during the Vietnam War, was arrested, and from jail penned a plea against the intervention of the United States in Southeast Asia. Most notably, he continued to claim that he had never been a pacifist, had supported NATO and the United States government in Korea, and had worked for the Lyndon Johnson campaign.19

  Vietnam and the Kennedy assassinations were traumas difficult to overcome. They triggered a process of ethical purification (Watergate) and an attempt was made to recover moral leadership with Carter’s human rights policy. Reagan’s “conservative revolution” sparked a reaction in the opposite direction that would find its climax in the two Bushes and the occupation of Iraq.

  Paul Linebarger did not live to experience the national drama and bitterness of defeat. He died in 1966, just when the “escalation” began. It would be two years before Ellsberg began to have doubts, Spock launched his pacifist campaign and protests set university campuses aflame.

  Linebarger possessed the qualities necessary to be a Henry Kissinger: intelligence, diplomatic experience and political imagination. He had studied political science, psychiatry, history and literature. He had a deep knowledge of the Far East and had experienced its recent history firsthand.

  He often said that “intervention in Vietnam was a mistake”20 and might have intuited the outcome of the war. Before the events that shook the beliefs of men like Spock and Ellsbeg had taken place, “Cordwainer Smith” had already sensed the conflict looming on the horizon. By then, he had created a vast allegory of his times, hiding keys where nobody would dream of looking for them: in the innocuous packaging of science fiction stories.

  Taking these circumstances into account, it is easy to understand why this essay aspires to be something more than a biography or work of literary criticism. While we are force
d to work within a bio-bibliographical framework, “Cordwainer Smith” emerges nonetheless as a sui generis figure, one that arouses interest beyond a determined circle of readers.

  Psychological conditions, literary influences and political framework will thus be viewed merely as clues to follow in an attempt to apprehend something as slippery as a historically situated personality.

  A philosopher is not a “specialist”, not even in philosophy. A “generalist” by definition, he only seeks to open new pathways. Without encroaching on the fields of the experts, I will appeal to any and all categories that permit formulating reasonably founded conjectures. I do not aspire to reach definitive conclusions but simply to share my interest with the reader.

  Indulging in the description of differences that make a personality unique tends to be a sterile endeavor. No two lives are alike, though there is a kind of existential analogy that makes it possible to understand them. Without denying the irreducible uniqueness of an individual, the task is to see what a person is capable of with the cards he has been dealt.

  If we are able to piece together the components of a complex patchwork we shall do so only to make conjectures, ones inevitably precarious and incomplete. The narrative oeuvre of Cordwainer Smith, personal testimonies, the scant biographical information found in reference works21 and the reconstruction of the historical framework of his life bring certain ambiguities to light, ones that cannot always be resolved.