Norstrilia

Cordwainer Smith

Victor Gollancz Limited, 1988 - Fiction - 277 pages

The discovery of stroon, a drug that confers near immortality on humans, has made Old North Australia rich. So rich that when Rod McBan has to flee the planet because someone wants him dead, he buys the Earth. His picaresque adventures on Old Earth offer an exuberant, eccentric and wildly imaginative vision of the universe - a vision like no other.

What people are saying

Review: Norstrilia (Instrumentality of Mankind)

User Review  - Angie - Goodreads

The most interesting fiction I've read in a long time. Smith does an amazing job creating his world. For some reason, I began to like it slightly less when I got about 3/4 of the way through. His ...

Review: Norstrilia (Instrumentality of Mankind)

User Review  - Smcleish - Goodreads

Originally published on my blog here in September 2001. Like much of Smith's work, his only singly conceived science fiction novel (The Quest for Three Worlds being a linked collection of stories) was ...

About the author

Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonym of Dr Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-1966). He grew up in China, Japan, France and Germany and had learned six languages by his late teens. He worked with his father as an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and served as an intelligence officer in China and Korea. He wrote an authoritative book on psychological warfare and became a member of the Foreign Policy Association and a professor of Asiatic Politics at John Hopkins University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Norstrilia; Gollancz S. F. Collectors' Editions Series
• Author: Cordwainer Smith
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Victor Gollancz Limited, 1988
• ISBN: 0575070188, 9780575070189
• Length: 277 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / General