Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

I’ve read every­thing Cord­wain­er Smith ever pub­lished now. That is some­what dis­ap­point­ing because I like him and his tena­cious sto­ries quite a bit. Norstril­ia is one of the clas­sic sci­ence fic­tion books I bought for 10 cents apiece while antique shop­ping last week.

This is the sto­ry about Rod McBan, the rich­est man ever. He lives on the plan­et Norstril­ia [which used to be Old North Aus­tralia]. This is the rich­est plan­et in the galaxy because it is the only plan­et where stroon grows. Stroon is a sub­stance that grants immor­tal­i­ty to those who dose it reg­u­lar­ly.

So for var­i­ous rea­sons Rod uses an obso­lete super­com­put­er to cor­ner the stroon mar­ket for the next eight years, tem­porar­i­ly bank­rupt Norstril­ia and then pur­chase Earth. He goes to Earth, but does­n’t get to enjoy him­self much. The only thing he is look­ing for is an authen­tic Cape of Good Hope postage stamp. [Keep in mind this is 15,000 years in the future]. He ends up get­ting sig­nif­i­cant plas­tic surgery to make him look like a cat under­per­son, so he won’t be imme­di­at­ly assas­si­nat­ed. Then he gets led around by a girly­girl [sort of a geisha] cat­per­son named C’mell who helps him find his heart’s desire and then they take almost all of his mon­ey and send him back to Norstril­ia.

I think what I like best about Smith’s writ­ing is that he keeps things excit­ing, all of his char­ac­ters are full and inter­est­ing peo­ple, he has cre­at­ed a vibrant future world and he isn’t afraid to put the things clos­est to his heart into his sto­ries [which is why there are cats freak­ing every­where]. I’m going to buy the hard­cov­er ver­sion of Norstril­ia [new­ly pub­lished] to sit next to my copy of The Redis­cov­ery of Man.

The only real com­plaint I have is his inser­tion of his new­ly found Epis­co­pal reli­gious atti­tudes into the sto­ries. It seems real­ly forced, out of place. Every­thing else rocks though.