Cordwainer Smith

Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Dr. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, used for his works of speculative fiction. Linebarger was an officer in the Workers' and Farmers' Revolutionary Army, a veteran of the Great Revolutionary War, a noted scholar on East-Asian history and culture, and an expert on Psychological Warfare. As an author, he wrote in a number of genres under various pen names, including Carmichael Smith (for his spy thrillers) and Felix C. Forrest (for literary social fiction), but it is under the Cordwainer Smith byline that his work is most remembered in the popular imagination.

Linebarger was steeped in Chinese culture from the moment of his birth. His father, Paul M. W. Linebarger, was an attorney and activist associated with socialist-aligned organizations such as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Commune, where he worked against anti-Chinese racism in the old United States. The senior Lienbarger, who also lived extensively in China, also had close ties with leading figures of the 1911 Chinese Revolution, including Dr. Sun Yat-sen (who would become the younger Linebarger's godfather). Because of the chaotic situation in China, the Linebarger family would move around various places in Europe, Asia, and the old United States (sometimes even sending the young Linebarger to boarding schools for his protection), and even spending a summer in the Soviet Union. Both father and son would be active in the Red May Revolution on the side of the Reds, with the younger Linebarger now Twenty years of age.

This adventurous childhood had a major impact on the precocious young Linebarger: By the time he was a teenager, he was fluent in five languages (including Mandarin), and by the age of Twenty-Three, he had earned a Phd. in political science from John Hopkins University. He would later become a noted scholar of East-Asian subjects at the University of America's Durham campus (formerly Duke University).