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The Underpeople, Cordwainer Smith

The Underpeople (1968, USA) follows directly on from The Planet Buyer (1964, USA), although four years separates their publication. In fact, both were published in magazines in 1964, but the second wasn’t published as a paperback until 1968, two years after Smith’s death. The two books were later merged and published as a single novel, Norstrilia (1975, USA) – and it is that version which has been reprinted a number of times since, including in the SF Masterworks series in 2016.

The Planet Buyer left Rod McBan, of Norstrilia, the wealthiest man in the universe, and the new owner of Earth, newly arrived on Earth, where he is met by C’Mell, a catwoman and girlygirl and one of the underpeople. McBan, incidentally, is disguised as a catman.

There’s no real plot to The Underpeople, just a series of incidents which sort of lead to a conclusion and an implied resolution. The latter is the freeing of the underpeople, who are little more than slaves (the callousness with which they are disposed of is quite disturbing). The former sees McBan back home on Norstrilia, happily married, and Earth no longer in his ownership.

There are things to like about Cordwainer Smith’s oeuvre. He certainly built a unique universe, and had a distinctive voice. And it worked well in his short fiction. But both The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople read like badly-welded together collections of short stories, and in that format they’re not so impressive. Also, I really hate poetry and songs in narrative unless they’re part of the plot.

I am… undecided about Smith’s fiction. Some of his short stories are very good, even if the language is a little cringeworthy at times. Norstrilia, ie, The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople, has some good ideas. But it’s all too haphazard and never really quite links together. I wanted to like The Underpeople more than I did. There is a book out there somewhere, possibly even The Instrumentality of Mankind (1979, USA), which is in the SF Masterworks series, which presents the best of Smith’s fiction in a way that displays what’s good about it. The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople do not. 

Which may well be why they’re no longer in print (although perhaps the corridor of naked bottoms played a part).


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The Planet Buyer, Cordwainer Smith

Shortlisted for the Hugo Award in 1965. I suspect Smith is better-regarded these days than he was when he was writing. According to sfadb.com, he had only two Hugo nominations: a short story in 1956, and this novel (incorrectly given on the site as Norstrilia); and a Nebula nomination for a novella in 1966, the first year of the award. Norstrilia (1975, USA), by the way, is actually an expansion of The Planet Buyer (1964, USA) and its sequel, The Underpeople (1968, USA), and while I say “sequel”, it would not be entirely accurate to say The Planet Buyer is a complete novel – it even says as much in its Epilogue and Coda:

… the reason why this chronicle ends now is that the players have made the moves that will determine the outcome.

So, a somewhat baffling choice for an award for “best novel”.

Those familiar with Smith’s work will find everything they expect in The Planet Buyer. It opens on the world of Old North Australia – tellingly at one point given as Old North America, which makes more sense of the “north” – the richest planet in the galaxy, thanks to the immortality drug, stroon, which is harvested from giant mutated sheep. In order to maintain their simple dinkum cobber life-style, everything imported onto Norstrilia is charged 20,000,000% import duty. Even so, the Nortstrilians are stupidly wealthy, even more so than those moronic US-based techbros who seem determined to make humanity extinct. Rod McBan is one of the richest Norstrilians, although he has yet to come into his majority. A childhood enemy is out to get him, so he consults a secret AI he happens to have lying around, which tells him he should leave Norstrilia for Old Earth. But only after buying Old Earth. And can the AI please have permission to use Rod’s riches to manipulate the stroon futures market until he has enough money to buy Earth, please?

Rod is then smuggled to Old Earth by a Lord of the Instrumentality sympathetic to Rod’s problems (which, to be honest, seem somewhat weak sauce to drive such a momentous plot). He is disguised as a cat-man, one of the Underpeople, to keep him safe, and accompanied by C’Mell, a cat-woman who appears in other stories by Smith. There is discussion of the economic consequences for Old Earth of Rod’s ownership of the planet. There’s a reference to some prophecy or other. Rod arrives at Old Earth.

End of book.

I’ve enjoyed Smith’s stories when I’ve read them – and I read one of his collections only last November – and the Instrumentality, and Old Earth, make for an interesting setting. Smith’s prose style works more often than it doesn’t. But. Norstrilia is a somewhat dull place, and its inhabitants are not very engaging; and, unfortunately, The Planet Buyer spends much of its length on that world. I expect – I’m hoping – The Underpeople, which continues the story, is better (although it wasn’t nominated for the Hugo; go figure).

Not a book worth seeking out, given it’s only the first half of the later-published Norstrilia. Even then, I’d recommend Smith’s Instrumentality short stories, available in a number of collections, before Norstrilia or its two constituent novels.