Cordwainer Smith - Rediscovery of Man (Sf Masterworks 10)

Cordwainer Smith

Science Fiction Masterworks Volume 10

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In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britains oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English languages finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were and remain landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of todays leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

The story ran how did the story run? Everyone knew the reference to Helen America and Mr. Grey-no-more, but no one knew exactly how it happened. Their names were welded to the glittering timeless jewelry of romance. Sometimes they were compared to Heloise and Abelard, whose story had been found among books in a long-buried library. Other ages were to compare their life with the weird, ugly-lovely story of the Go-Captain Taliano and the Lady Dolores Oh.

Out of it all, two things stood forth their love and the image of the great sails, tissue-metal wings with which the bodies of people finally fluttered out among the stars.

Mention him, and others knew her. Mention her, and they knew him. He was the first of the inbound sailors, and she was the lady who sailed The Soul.

It was lucky that people lost their pictures. The romantic hero was a very young-looking man, prematurely old and still quite sick when the romance came. And Helen America, she was a freak, but a nice one: a grim, solemn, sad, little brunette who had been born amid the laughter of humanity. She was not the tall, confident heroine of the actresses who later played her.

She was, however, a wonderful sailor. That much was true.

And with her body and mind she loved Mr. Grey-no-more, showing a devotion which the ages can neither surpass nor forget.

History may scrape off the patina of their names and appearances, but even history can do no more than brighten the love of Helen America and Mr. Grey-no-more. Both of them, one must remember, were sailors.

The story ran how did the story run? Everyone knew the reference to Helen America and Mr. Grey-no-more, but no one knew exactly how it happened. Their names were welded to the glittering timeless jewelry of romance. Sometimes they were compared to Heloise and Abelard, whose story had been found among books in a long-buried library. Other ages were to compare their life with the weird, ugly-lovely story of the Go-Captain Taliano and the Lady Dolores Oh.

Out of it all, two things stood forth their love and the image of the great sails, tissue-metal wings with which the bodies of people finally fluttered out among the stars.

Mention him, and others knew her. Mention her, and they knew him. He was the first of the inbound sailors, and she was the lady who sailed The Soul.

It was lucky that people lost their pictures. The romantic hero was a very young-looking man, prematurely old and still quite sick when the romance came. And Helen America, she was a freak, but a nice one: a grim, solemn, sad, little brunette who had been born amid the laughter of humanity. She was not the tall, confident heroine of the actresses who later played her.

She was, however, a wonderful sailor. That much was true.

And with her body and mind she loved Mr. Grey-no-more, showing a devotion which the ages can neither surpass nor forget.

History may scrape off the patina of their names and appearances, but even history can do no more than brighten the love of Helen America and Mr. Grey-no-more. Both of them, one must remember, were sailors.

In the preparation area, the make-ready was fast but not hurried. Twice the technicians urged her to take a holiday before she reported for final training. She did not accept their advice.

She wanted to go forth; she knew that they knew she wanted to leave Earth forever, and she also knew they knew she was not merely her mothers daughter. She was trying, somehow, to be herself. She knew the world did not believe, but the world did not matter.

The third time they suggested a vacation, the suggestion was mandatory. She had a gloomy two months which she ended up enjoying a little bit on the wonderful islands of the Hesperides, islands which were raised when the weight of the Earthports caused a new group of small archipelagos to form below Bermuda.

She reported back, fit, healthy, and ready to go.

The senior medical officer was very blunt.

Do you really know what we are going to do to you? We are going to make you live forty years out of your life in one month.

She nodded, white of face, and he went on, Now to give you those forty years weve got to slow down your bodily processes.

After all, the sheer biological task of breathing forty years worth of air in one month involves a factor of about five hundred to one.

No lungs could stand it. Your body must circulate water. It must take in food. Most of this is going to be protein. There will be some kind of a hydrate. Youll need vitamins.

Now, what we are going to do is to slow the brain down, very much indeed, so that the brain will be working at about that five-hundred-to-one ratio. We dont want you incapable of working. Somebody has got to manage the sails.

Therefore, if you hesitate or you start to think, a thought or two is going to take several weeks. Meanwhile your body can be slowed down some. But the different parts cant be slowed down at the same rate. Water, for example, we brought down to about eighty to one. Food, to about three hundred to one.

You wont have time to drink forty years worth of water. We circulate it, get it through, purify it, and get it back in your system, unless you break your link-up.

So what you face is a month of being absolutely wide awake, on an operating table and being operated on without anesthetic, while doing some of the hardest work that mankind has ever found.

Youll have to take observations, youll have to watch your lines with the pods of people and cargo behind you, youll have to adjust the sails. If there is anybody surviving at destination point, they will come out and meet you.

At least that happens most of the times."

I am not going to assure you you will get the ship in. If they dont meet you, take an orbit beyond the farthest planet and either let yourself die or try to save yourself. You cant get thirty thousand people down on a planet singlehandedly."

Meanwhile, though, youve got a real job. We are going to have to build these controls right into your body. Well start by putting valves in your chest arteries. Then we go on, catheterizing your water. We are going to make an artificial colostomy that will go forward here just in front of your hip joint. Your water intake has a certain psychological value so that about one five-hundredth of your water we are going to leave you to drink out of a cup. The rest of it is going to go directly into your bloodstream. Again about a tenth of your food will go that way. You understand that?