Norstrilia is one of those books more heard of than seen. I was pleased to receive it for
review because I'd never seen it in any of its forms, yet everywhere Cordwainer Smith is hailed
as an important author. This edition comes with a quotation from David Pringle's Science
Fiction: The 100 Best Novels on the front, which tends to agree with the three other sources
I've consulted- "Vividly drawn and wonderfully suggestive ... confirms that Cordwainer Smith
was one of science fiction's most original writers". Re-reading the entry on Norstrilia in David
Pringle's book I notice that one of the details he gives about the story (the legality of the hero's
computer) is wrong, and I tend to think that that his belief in Smith's originality is also wrong.
Apparantly most of Smith's fiction is set in a common future. This book was his only novel,
though Gollancz say they are going to publish his other three collections of short stories, so
the Future History and its worlds will become clear, although the main events and some of the
main characters are all in this novel: a vast expanded universe of linked worlds, joined by trade
but split by trade wars, over for instance the longevity drug Stroon the main poduct of the
planet Norstrilia, ruled by a hereditary nobility, and all tending to decadence - this is the
general background. In the particular instance of Norstrilia, a young man on an off-world
comes to manhood by becoming a millionaire and a prosthetic ESPer at the same time. He also
comes into contact with the Underpeople, animals reshaped into humans to act as
disenfranchised servants, whose struggle for enfranchisement is said to be one of the themes of
Smith's work. The use of animals, David Pringle points out, is reminiscent of Wells' Dr
Moreau but he does not point out that the whole style of Norstrilia is very close to Alfred
Bester's The Stars My Destination, but neither do any of the other critics I've consulted, yet
re-reading Bester immediately after finishing Smith to double check I'm sure that the two
works are similar. A bizarre satire is something they have in common - Stroon comes from
1000 ton mutated sheep.
I welcome the publication of this book, while offering my (perhaps idiosyncratic) opinion that it is not as original as it is sometimes claimed to be, but for those who would like to discover another Future History, or for those who like a slightly megalomaniac style, the appearance of Smith's work could be a potentially wonderful mine of reading.