Rebecca's Reviews > The Best of Cordwainer Smith
The Best of Cordwainer Smith
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Whoa, I file this under giving-sci-fi-a-bad-name. At first I just found it not my cup of tea. I don't go in for short stories or mythical far future stuff to begin with. And Smith is so obsessed with moralizing about traditional gender roles it borders on misogyny. But I tried to persevere and finish this for the SF Masterworks group.
Then. Then I got to the story "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" which holds the dubious honor of being the most hateful piece of fiction I have ever read. It's literally about GAY MONSTERS FROM SPACE COMING TO GET US. Not even in a metaphorical way. It's... not subtle. So the premise is on some far away planet "femininity became carcinogenic" (!) and thanks to another sci-fi standby, a cold-hearted woman scientist, all the women transgendered into men. Cue B-movie as produced by the Family Research Council.
"Since they did not have the rewards of family life, they became
strutting cockerels, who mixed their love with murder, who blended
their songs with duels, who sharpened their weapons and who earned the
right to reproduce within a strange family system which no decent
Earth-man would find comprehensible... The family, as they recalled
it, was filth and abomination which they were resolved to wipe out if
they should ever meet it."
"Mankind could not meet the terrible people of Arachosia without the
people of Arachosia following them home and bringing to mankind a
grief greater than grief, a craziness worse than mere insanity, a
plague surpassing all imaginable plagues."
Hoooooly crap. I felt dirty just retyping that. This from a man who is widely considered a visionary and master of the genre. I don't want to censor his writing or lessen the inspiration readers have taken from him, but it makes me sad that amidst the rave reviews I couldn't find one single reference or discussion online regarding his gender issues, let alone this virulent homophobia. Scifi community, you're letting me down!
Then. Then I got to the story "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" which holds the dubious honor of being the most hateful piece of fiction I have ever read. It's literally about GAY MONSTERS FROM SPACE COMING TO GET US. Not even in a metaphorical way. It's... not subtle. So the premise is on some far away planet "femininity became carcinogenic" (!) and thanks to another sci-fi standby, a cold-hearted woman scientist, all the women transgendered into men. Cue B-movie as produced by the Family Research Council.
"Since they did not have the rewards of family life, they became
strutting cockerels, who mixed their love with murder, who blended
their songs with duels, who sharpened their weapons and who earned the
right to reproduce within a strange family system which no decent
Earth-man would find comprehensible... The family, as they recalled
it, was filth and abomination which they were resolved to wipe out if
they should ever meet it."
"Mankind could not meet the terrible people of Arachosia without the
people of Arachosia following them home and bringing to mankind a
grief greater than grief, a craziness worse than mere insanity, a
plague surpassing all imaginable plagues."
Hoooooly crap. I felt dirty just retyping that. This from a man who is widely considered a visionary and master of the genre. I don't want to censor his writing or lessen the inspiration readers have taken from him, but it makes me sad that amidst the rave reviews I couldn't find one single reference or discussion online regarding his gender issues, let alone this virulent homophobia. Scifi community, you're letting me down!
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Reading Progress
May 25, 2010
–
Started Reading
May 25, 2010
– Shelved
May 25, 2010
– Shelved as:
scifi
May 30, 2010
–
Finished Reading
January 17, 2016
– Shelved as:
abandoned-ship
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Oli
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rated it 4 stars
Jul 13, 2014 03:04AM

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Not to mention what a world would be like if it didn't have any feminine influence at all, just giant seas of testosterone.
The gayness of the people of that planet is also due to necessity rather than normal orientation, so it's not really comparable to actual gay people.
The biggest problem that I saw was that I don't think Smith really understood intersexuality, because the klopt are really more hermaphroditic than male.

I suppose if Smith/Linebarger had a track record of writing copious amounts of material focusing on gender and sexuality, and all of it with a similar slant, I would find "Suzdal" to be evidence of a disturbing ideologue. However, I don't, since he clearly is not if you read more than just this one story (and too bad the OP doesn't see the worth of Smith/Linebarger's work in general). In the story that was singled out, to a large extent I see a man of his times in his attitudes about homosexuality. Sure, I'm both sad about how people thought about this in his day and happy that things have changed, but the story is not about homosexuality--however glaring the stereotypical presentations of the Arachosian Klopts might be--it's about using time to defeat an enemy. The turtle crew members still stick with me as a brilliant idea in the context of a Smithian universe with its particular ideas about space travel and how humanity might adapt to the time scales required. Likewise, the solution of taking advantage time dilation to create a defending civilization of a species that will breed and evolve quickly enough to protect humanity is perfectly logical and, in the context of 1950s science fiction, brilliant. Not recognizing this--and Smith is very aware of the time factor when it comes to space travel, as evidenced by seemingly ALL of his other stories--is missing the forest for the trees.
That said . . . why Smith/Linebarger decided to make his antagonists in the "Suzdal" story a race of homosexuals I don't know. At the very least, you have to admit that in the context of the universe of this story he at least provided a rather rock-solid in-universe rationalization as to how this race came into being. From a 21st century perspective, I can easily single out cringeworthy descriptions (the unfortunate piece de resistance: "They, themselves, were bearded homosexuals, with rouged lips, ornate earrings, fine heads of hair, and very few old men among them."--Yikes . . .) and thinking about what such a society would be like (e.g., "The little boys somehow realizing that they would never grow up to have sweethearts, to have wives, to get married, to have daughters."). However, at the very least, I think if you went back and read what the standard take of homosexuality was among educated mainstream society ca. 1955ish, you wouldn't find anything unusual about how Smith talks about the Klopts--it is, for better or (granted, mostly) worse, a logical extrapolation of the thinking of his day. To dismiss someone as being a creature of their times is surely a mistake.
And ultimately, for the purposes of the "Suzdal" story overall it doesn't matter that the Arachosians are queer, despite how much space Smith devotes to describing the "tragedy" of how they came to being (that's not to deny that it's an interesting point to query, since he cleary spent considerable time working out how they came to being--though the answer to why he did so it might say as much about what he thought his audience expected as much as it does about his own thinking, and I rather expect they were in agreement). Frankly, on rereading that story I'm still not entirely sure what message he might have been trying to convey, if any, though if I were to hazard a guess based on Suzdal's life, the Klopts' entire existence, and the cat civilization's as presented, it's simply that actions proceed by their own internal logic and the outcome of that logic is not something that we can always predict. Quite a thoughtful story, in fact, even if there are some dated elements that are offensive by early 21st century standards.

