Cordwainer Smith

Cordwainer’s dad, Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger, was a lawyer and working as a judge in the Philippines. There he met Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese nationalist, to whom he became an advisor. His dad sent his wife to give birth in Milwaukee, so that their kid would be eligible to become the president of the United States.

The best place to start is the Norstrilia series, the earliest of Cordwainer Smith's multi-book series: it opens with The Boy Who Bought Old Earth / The Planet Buyer (1964) and runs to 3 books across 1964–1975, ending with Norstrilia (1975). Cordwainer Smith's other series stand alone, so they can be read in any order.

Cordwainer Smith has 130 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1937 and 2022. 51 of them belong to 5 named series — the largest being the Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories series with 24 books — and 79 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Cordwainer Smith's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are Norstrilia (1964–1975, 3 books), Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories (1979–1992, 24 books) and Isaac Asimov's Wonderful Worlds Of Science Fiction (1983–1990, 10 books), plus 1 more.

This guide splits Cordwainer Smith's 130 books into 5 named series and 79 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories (24 books, 1979–1992); Isaac Asimov's Wonderful Worlds Of Science Fiction (10 books, 1983–1990); Norstrilia (3 books, 1964–1975); The Mammoth Book of... (2 books, 2003); The Year of the Cat (12 books, 2020–2021).