Fantasy

Lavie: No science fiction writer was ever as weird, as brilliant and as unjustly neglected, perhaps, as Cordwainer Smith. It was the pen name of Paul Linebarger, a godson of Sun Yat-sen, an expert on psychological warfare and a self-described “visitor to small wars” — come to think of it, his life would make a good show! When Smith turned to science fiction, he created the most vivid, strange and fascinating far-future world — a world where the planet Norstrilia grows the immortality drug stroon from giant, diseased sheep. Where the underpeople — animals given human shape and intelligence and living as servants — are fomenting revolution against the Lords of the Instrumentality. It’s a world where cats pilot spaceships, ancient computers tell fortunes and a dog called D’joan can become the messiah. There was nothing like it in the 1960s. There is nothing like it now. You can