Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger 58 min read

Martel must scan himself, checking his own body by instrument, for he is a Scanner, his senses cut off so he can endure the Great Pain of Space. And now something threatens all his kind.

Cordwainer Smith's 1950 story is a landmark of the field, a strange and haunting social-SF space opera and the first tale of his Instrumentality. Visionary, unforgettable, utterly original. Read it for one of the great SF stories ever written, a mutilated brotherhood of space-pilots facing obsolescence in Smith's incomparable mythic voice.

In its time

Published in 1950, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

58 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).