In 1963, Cordwainer Smith published the novelette “On the Gem Planet”, in which Casher O’Neill’s character made his debut and started searching for the means to overthrow the usurper who took the power on his planet. The name refers to the civilization emerged with the reconstruction that took place after an atomic war and the expansion of humanity into space. It’s a history that extends for many millennia in the future with various stories sometimes autonomous and sometimes linked to each other. The fictional universe of the Instrumentality of Mankind is what made Cordwainer Smith famous. In particular, his meetings with various underpeople and even with some unmodified animals make him find far more than he was looking for. To achieve his goal, Caswell O’Neill needs resources and looks for them on various planets, but his travels lead him to situations that are different from what he imagined. In fact, Instrumentality of Mankind didn’t act against the usurper Colonel Wedder but granted Casher O’Neill an all-world travel pass. It’s the made up of four stories published in previous years.Ĭashel O’Neill is looking for ways to overthrow the dictatorship on his planet, but the road to freedom is so long that it takes him to other planets. The novel “Quest of the Three Worlds” by Cordwainer Smith was published for the first time in 1966.
81-Q”.Quest of the Three Worlds by Cordwainer Smith (Italian edition) If you add on “Quest of the Three Worlds” which contains a further 4 stories, this means that with these three paperbacks you have 30 of the 33 short stories written by Cordwainer Smith, the exceptions being “Down to a Sunless Sea”, “Himself in Anachron”, both of which I believe are posthumous with significant input from the author’s wife, Genevieve Linebarger, (one of which is available in a Terry Carr Best of Year anthology) and a second version of “War No. "The Instrumentality of Mankind"together with “The Best of Cordwainer Smith” (1975 Ballentine paperback) contain 26 of the 33 stories listed in the NESFA edition of “The Rediscovery of Man: the complete short fiction of Cordwainer Smith” (NB the NESFA edition, not the Gollancz Masterworks which has the same title).
Of these fourteen stories, the first nine concern the Instrumentality, and the second five are assorted other science fiction short stories.
"The Instrumentality of Mankind" contains fourteen stories together with an informative seven page introduction by Frederik Pohl, and a timeline chart of The Instrumentality of Mankind compiled by J.J.
the quotes below are edited out from my Amazon review of "The Instrumentality of Mankind" The NESFA edition of “The Rediscovery of Man: the complete short fiction of Cordwainer Smith” (NB the NESFA edition, not the Gollancz Masterworks which has the same title) lists 33 stories
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