Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

Paul M. A. Linebarger (1913–1966) led an extraordinary double life: by day a professor of Asiatic politics and a pioneering expert in psychological warfare, godson of Sun Yat-sen and adviser to governments; by night, as ‘Cordwainer Smith’, the author of the haunting far-future ‘Instrumentality of Mankind’ stories. Tales like ‘Scanners Live in Vain’ and ‘The Ballad of Lost C’Mell’ read like myth and legend from ten thousand years hence, utterly unlike anything else in the field.