Line #5 Creator/CordwainerSmith


1	[[quoteright:288:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cordwainer_smith_in_red_chair_3712.jpg]]
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3	Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Doctor Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966): ScienceFiction writer, poet, and psychological warfare expert. In fact, he ''literally'' {{wrote the book}} on psychological warfare — the standard US Army textbook on the subject. He looked like a classic nerd, wrote weird little ScienceFiction stories about cats, and was apparently regarded with respect by a generation of top US diplomatic and intelligence specialists. During the Korean War, he was asked to write a set of qualifications for the head of psychological operations for the US army; he got interested enough in the possibilities of the job and so set things up that he was the only person qualified to do it. He was a man of the world, but had particular ties to China and the Far East. His godfather was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen Sun Yat-sen,]] and he and his father were confidants of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek Chiang Kai-shek.]] He also liked Australia.
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5	The majority of his ScienceFiction work describes the future history of [[TheVerse the Instrumentality of Mankind]], which was richly described but left much to the reader's imagination.[[note]]And no, it's not [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion that Instrumentality]], [[ShoutOut but the name came from Smith's stories.]][[/note]] Influenced by Chinese short stories, Smith's books [[SignatureStyle cannot be mistaken for the work of any other writer]].
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7	Strong suggestion: read the stories first. No description can do justice to discovering the wonder of Smith's words firsthand.
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9	Music/FrankZappa named him in his influences list on the ''Music/FreakOut'' album.
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11	Do not confuse him with "Cordwainer Bird", the pseudonym fellow author Creator/HarlanEllison used for works [[AlanSmithee he personally disowned]].
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13	----
14	!!Works by Cordwainer Smith include:
15	[[index]]
16	* "Literature/TheGameOfRatAndDragon" (1928)
17	* ''Literature/{{Ria}}'' (1947, as Felix C. Forrest)
18	* ''Literature/{{Carola}}'' (1948, as Felix C. Forrest)
19	* "Literature/ScannersLiveInVain" (1950)
20	* "Literature/TheBurningOfTheBrain" (1958)
21	* "Literature/WesternScienceIsSoWonderful" (1958)
22	* "Literature/APlanetNamedShayol" (1961)
23	* "Literature/UnderOldEarth" (1966)
24	* ''Literature/{{Norstrilia}}'' (1975)
25	[[/index]]
26
27	----
28	!!Cordwainer Smith had an affinity for:
29	* AfterTheEnd: A good chunk of the Instrumentality cycle is set after the Ancient Wars, which left only Morons and Saints barely surviving on a wasted, poison world, hiding from death machines. "Mark Elf" and "Queen of the Afternoon" are set in an era following some recovery, and even in stories set millennia later, the scars of the war remain.
30	* AliensAreBastards: The Apicians are a downplayed case. Given their superior telepathic powers and equal weaponry, mankind can do nothing but put up with these rude guests. On the bright side, they do pay for their meals. Even then, however, they insist on paying cash on the nose, which is considered bad form in a credit-driven society.
31	* ArcNumber: "Five-six" appears in several of Smith's tales, mostly as names of people and places in different languages.
32	* AristocratsAreEvil: Played with in the case of the Lords of the Instrumentality. They are corrupt, ruthless, callous, and make arbitrary decisions. However, they are devoted to protecting humanity and are benevolent, creating a utopia for mankind.
33	* ArtificialAnimalPeople: The Underpeople from the ''Instrumentality'' series, who are animals engineered to have human intelligence and a more humanoid form.
34	* AuthorAppeal: Meow!
35	** Linebarger was interested in Australia (thus Norstrilia), and his knowledge of China is reflected in his works.
36	** There are a number of references to duck feasts, [[spoiler:which makes it unfortunate for the Apicians that they happen to taste like the finest duck imaginable]].
37	** Oh yes, the cats. Linebarger liked cats, and the stories feature a lot of cats, cat-people, and evolved cats -- one or two of them named after Linebarger’s pets.
38	* BearsAreBadNews: Inverted in the case of the Bear in "Mark Elf" and "Queen of the Afternoon" -- wise, educated, and sporting spectacles, when the Bear shows up things improve for the human characters.
39	* BeastMan: The Unauthorized Men in "Queen of the Afternoon". Called "puppy-dog people" by Juli vom Acht, they're intelligent, small anthropomorphic animals. However, they are not Underpeople -- the Unauthorized people seem to have their origins in the Ancient Wars.
40	* BigDumbObject: Smith was never averse to sheer scale, with buildings reaching up to the stratosphere and all. But crucially, the titular craft of "Golden The Ship Was--Oh! Oh! Oh!" is ''ninety million miles long'', taking it beyond the PlanetSpaceship range and into this category. [[spoiler:Even if it is mostly foam. Smith may have been {{parody}}ing the trope before it really got started.]]
41	* BilingualBonus: More like Multilingual Bonus -- many names in the Instrumentality cycle have secondary meanings if one knew the language used. And Smith used Chinese, Russian, German, Finnish, Japanese, and many other languages for his theme naming.
42	* BodyDouble: In ''Norstrilia'', Rod gets ten body doubles when he arrives on Earth. Eleanor is surgically modified to look like him. Nine robot doubles are also sent out.
43	* BodyHorror: "A Planet Called Shayol" explores this from beginning to end, describing a horrific PenalColony where [[spoiler:prisoners are used to grow extra organs for transplants]].
44	* BrownNote:
45	** "The Fife of Bodhidharma" involves an ancient flute that [[spoiler:radically strengthens aspects of hearers' personality, in ways that can be beneficial or terrible]].
46	** "No, No, Not Rogov!" involves attempts to artificially induce telepathic powers. However, the user [[spoiler:telepathically accesses an experience so intense that he goes mad]].
47	* BrainComputerInterface: The ''Wu-Feinstein'' in "Literature/TheBurningOfTheBrain". Except for one symbolic lever, the ship's controls are either electronic or telepathically controlled.
48	* CallASmeerpARabbit:
49	** Norstrilian "Sheep". Granted they were once sheep, but they are now house-sized and very ill creatures that generate an immortality drug.
50	** The "Dragons" or "Rats". To telepathic people they appear like the former, to cats they appear like the latter, and in reality they're formless creatures of interstellar dust.
51	* CatGirl: Literally with C'Mell. What's particularly notable about this example is that she may have been the ''[[UrExample first]]'' literal cat girl, arriving in 1961. (Smith also depicts dog girls, snake girls, buffalo girls...)
52	* ChinaTakesOverTheWorld: The Chinesian Goonhogo becomes a superpower by virtue of surviving the apocalypse. In fact, it's the only nation to survive. In "The Queen of the Afternoon", the rest of the world not under the Goonhogo is ruled by Chinese philosophers. "When the People Fell", in which China takes Venus by sheer weight of numbers is something of an UrExample of Chinese space colonization plots.
53	* CivilizedAnimal: The Middle-sized Bear in "Mark Elf" and "Queen of the Afternoon". No, he's not an Underperson. The Bear is simply an intelligent and civilized being. Yeah, even for the ''Instrumentality'' stories, this comes out of nowhere.
54	* ComfortFood: Eggs for Lord Jestocost, who makes it a point to eat some once a year as a treat.
55	* CrystalLandscape: In ''On the Gem Planet'', the titular world of Anderson is compromised mostly of precious gems and crystals. As a result the human inhabitants need to import soil, which they consider more valuable than rubies and diamonds.
56	* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: Subverted in that the Instrumentality deliberately allow the people to go back to a more retrograde way of life, with their approval. Still, one does see an interesting mix of amazing tech and weird and sometimes archaic furniture.
57	* {{Cyborg}}: Some stories feature the use of living rat and wolf brains as components in technology. Also, individual robots sometimes have other kinds of animal brains; two different robots are described having a chicken brain and an owl brain. In "Literature/ScannersLiveInVain", by contrast, Habermans and Scanners are entirely human-based cyborgs, technologically augmented to endure the weird stresses of space travel.
58	* DaysOfFuturePast: The societies of Smith's future galaxy are many and varied, and some follow archaic patterns, notably including Nortstrilia's old-school Australians.
59	* DefectorFromDecadence: The Instrumentality forces this on all of civilization, inducing complexities and difficulties to avoid a fall into decline.
60	* DepravedHomosexual: The klopts in "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal". It's not clear if they are depraved ''because'' they are homosexual, or because of the social, psychological and hormonal disruptions brought about by their need to become a monosexual culture or die out.
61	* DividedForPublication: ''Norstrilia'' was originally split into two volumes, ''The Planet Buyer'' and ''The Underpeople'' (with a chapter and a half of additional bridging material). Smith died before the second volume appeared, and so never got to see the single-volume version.
62	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything:
63	** Most of Smith's stories are Christian allegories, but are subtle about it; many readers will miss the references.
64	** "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a retelling of [[spoiler:Joan of Arc]].
65	** "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" was written during the peak of the civil rights movement.
66	** A number of his stories were also inspired by Chinese literature. The aforementioned "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" was influenced by "conspiratorial scenes" in ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms''.
67	** "Drunkboat" is an allusion to Arthur Rimbaud's "Le Bateau Ivre". The main character Artyr Rambo is named after the poet.
68	** The planet Mizzer, the homeworld of Casher O'Neill, has a natural and political climate mirroring that of 1950s Egypt.
69	* DoomyDoomsOfDoom: In ''Norstrilia'', Rod is the heir to the Station of Doom. It was named back when it was actually dangerous.
70	* EasterEgg: A rather impressive one in "On the Storm Planet" (also collected in ''Quest of the Three Worlds''). The author manages to have the first letter of consecutive sentences to spell the phrases "KENNEDY SHOT" and "OSWALD SHOT TOO". And all without breaking the narrative flow.[[note]]Actually in at least one printing, one of the letters isn't at the beginning of a sentence; apparently an editor decided to combine two sentences, replacing the period with a semicolon. Fortunately this is corrected in the most recent collections.[[/note]]
71	* EldritchAbomination: The reason Planoform ships require pinlighting teams in "The Game of Rat and Dragon" is to defend them against the fundamentally incomprehensible but always hostile monsters between the stars.
72	* ElectricInstantGratification: For recreation and pain relief. Admiral Tedesco is so addicted to it, that he exceeds the legal usage and ignores everything. The only thing that brings him out is the call to defend Earth.
73	* TheEmpire: The Bright Empire, the Goonhogo (the surviving Chinese government), and the Empire mentioned in "A Planet Named Shayol" all seem to function as monolithic imperial powers which characters cannot challenge, only work around.
74	* FantasticLivestock: The mutated "sheep" of Old North Australia that are the source of the immortality drug stroon.
75	* FantasticRacism: Underpeople, [[LegoGenetics formed out of animals]] to serve humans, are treated as second class citizens at best. As the cat woman C'mell says in ''Norstrilia'', they can be [[DisproportionateRetribution put to death]] for using the wrong bathroom.
76	* FasterThanLightTravel:
77	** Planoforming, allowing for ships to make a series of FTL jumps through Space Two. "Drunkboat" discovers Space ³, which allows for instantaneous travel [[spoiler: without the use of a spaceship!]]
78	** There's brief mention of ships capable of entering [[SubspaceOrHyperspace "nonspace"]], allowing for FTL without the need for Planoforming. It's also a nice place to hide stuff as well.
79	* Fiction500: In ''Norstrilia'', the people of the planet Old North Australia have a production monopoly on the drug stroon, which grants immortality. The resulting wealth threatens to destroy their hard-working rural way of life, so they impose an import duty of 200 million percent on all imports and spend the revenue on defence. The result is that everything costs two million times as much on their planet as off planet, and an ordinary agricultural labourer's income is billions per week. In this setting, [=Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan=] the 151st is the owner of one of the oldest and largest sheep stations, a major stroon producer, and is fabulously rich even on Old North Australia. To escape some political difficulties he buys Earth, "lock, stock, and underpeople". A lot of people are embarrassed and annoyed that that was possible.
80	* FluffyTheTerrible: "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons". There's a good reason why they're sedated most of the time; [[spoiler:they are screaming self-destructive psychotics. They are the core of a planetary defense system which can project their psychosis telepathically into the brains of attackers]].
81	* AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted: ''Norstrilia'' starts with Rod making enough money to literally buy everything on Earth; by the end of the book, he's given away almost all of it (though he keeps enough to be rich).
82	* ForegoneConclusion: ''Norstrilia'', for example, tells you exactly how everything's going to turn out in the prologue.
83	-->See, that's the story. Now you don't have to read it.\
84	Except for the details.\
85	They follow.
86	* FutureImperfect: The great Terran metropolis of Meeya Meefla -- which is what you get when you try to pronounce "MIAMI FLA." phonetically. Incidentally, this is the one city in the Instrumentality whose name has changed the ''least'' in the centuries since its founding.
87	* GalacticConqueror: Raumsog attempts to become one by taking over Earth. [[spoiler: He fails, badly.]]
88	* {{Geisha}}: The job of a "girly-girl" is compared to this -- they entertain off-worlders through dance and conversation.
89	%%* GenderBender: Eleanor in ''Norstrilia''.
90	* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Used to help add layers of meaning, as well create a sense of the exotic.
91	* GreatOffscreenWar: The Ancient Wars are referred to and were clearly apocalyptic, but are never depicted directly.
92	* HegemonicEmpire: The Instrumentality of Mankind. It's a bit vague how it's actually ruled -- day-to-day administration appears to be left to local authorities of various kinds -- but its Lords and Ladies are collectively very powerful with unlimited authority; each "could do anything he found necessary or proper to maintain the Instrumentality and keep the peace between the worlds", and they are smart and devious enough for this to work.
93	* HumanHardDrive: Monitors -- usually condemned criminals modified to sit back, do nothing, and record events. [[ThePoliticalOfficer And secretly kill whoever they monitor if they attempt to commit treason]].
94	* HumanSubspecies:
95	** When colonizing the stars, humanity had to adapt to several different worlds. These changes results in many True Humans looking nothing like humans.
96	** Inverted with the Underpeople. They're animals genetically modified to be human. In fact, they're more human than True Humans.
97	* HumongousMecha: The titular "Mark Elf" manshonyagger -- [[spoiler: a "Model 11" German-made man-hunting robot, continuing its mission long after the war was over]].
98	* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Dealt with in "Drunkboat" and "The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All", where Space Two and Three turn out to be very, very strange places. Not that the interstellar void is any safer, with the Dragons[=/=]Rats lurking to eat human souls.
99	* HypocriticalHumor: There's a very dark example, illustrating the Instrumentality's corruption, in "Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh!" The Lords of the Instrumentality accept huge bribes from the tyrant Raumsog not to attack his planet. Then they declare the bribes off the record and attack his planet anyway, killing ''95% of the population'' including Raumsog himself.
100	* IChooseToStay: At the end of ''Norstrilia'', Eleanor decides she likes being Rod and stays on Earth in his body.
101	* InterspeciesRomance:
102	** In ''The Game Of Rat And Dragon'', humans and cats must telepathically link to fight off aliens that MindRape humans traveling through deep space. The protagonist finds he enjoys being linked with his feline partner a little ''too'' much and the story ends with him repeatedly reminding himself "She's a ''cat!''"
103	** In a 1980 Radio Adaptation of ''The Ballad of Lost C'mell'' the story opens with a human woman and an Ox-Man trying to leave Earth for New Mars so they can start a family. [[StarCrossedLovers It...doesn't end well...]]
104	** In the original version of the aforesaid story the cat-girl C'mell falls in love with the human Lord Jestocost, and spends the rest of her life regretting that he couldn't love her back. Not that their relationship could ever have been legally consummated anyway.
105	* ItsRainingMen: "When the People Fell"
106	* JeanneDArchetype: D'joan in "The Dead Lady of Clown Town."
107	* LaResistance:
108	** The Holy Insurrection, an underground Underpeople rights movement.
109	** The Band of Cousins and their supporters within the [[SecretPolice Instrumentality of the Jwindz]] against the philosophers who rule the post-apocalyptic Earth. [[spoiler:They succeed, and form the Instrumentality of ''Mankind'']].
110	* MagicMusic: "The Fife of Bodhidharma", which doesn't take place in the Instrumentality of Mankind universe, involves an ancient flute with nigh-psionic effects.
111	* MeaningfulName: Oh so many, with a healthy heaping of BilingualBonus.
112	** The Vomacts. "Acht" in German could both mean "proscription" and "care". Consider the role they play in these stories.
113	** Lord Lovaduck, whose ancestor [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin loved feasting on Peking Duck]].
114	** Paul Linebarger even did this with his pen names. "Cordwainer" is an old surname meaning "bootmaker", which in combination with "Smith" gives an image of a man who performs specialized, useful work; "Felix C. Forrest", another name he published under, was derived from the Chinese name he adopted, Lin Bailo ("forest of incandescent bliss").
115	* MilitaryCoup: Mizzer goes through one, overthrowing the decadent Hereditary Dictator Kuraf. At first, many (including Kuraf's successor Casher [=O'Neill=]) thought it was a great idea. Then the coup's leader institutes a reign of "terror and virtue", which drives Casher's mission of revenge.
116	* MilitaryScienceFiction:
117	** Oddly enough, "The Game of Rat and Dragon" has been published in at least two sub-genre anthologies. One editor pointed out that the story technically doesn't qualify. Of course, it does deal with cat-piloted {{Space Fighter}}s as they battle alien horrors.
118	** "War No. 81-Q" (''both versions'') and "Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!" deal with more traditional military matters. Well, in Linebarger's own way.
119	* MindScrew: Frequently. Smith's future is ''not'' like the present, and the stories challenge standard assumptions about people, government, morality, and narrative forms.
120	* MundaneLuxury: The planet Pontoppidian is a literal "gem planet". It's people have plenty of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. But simple things like tea, worms, and ''soil'' are a luxury on the planet.
121	* NakedOnArrival:
122	** "Literature/TheColonelCameBackFromTheNothingAtAll": Colonel Harkening appears naked and almost catatonic when returning to Earth through Space-2.
123	** "Literature/{{Drunkboat}}": Artyr Rambo appears naked and almost catatonic when returning to Earth through Space-3.
124	** "Literature/OnTheStormPlanet": Casher O'Neill is transported from Henriada to his homeworld of Mizzer by T'Ruth and gets badly sunburned, although his mental faculties recover more or less unimpaired.
125	** "Literature/ThreeToAGivenStar": The three protagonists have been transformed into living weapons as punishment for earlier crimes, but once their mission is completed they are allowed to resume human form, stepping out of their mechanical bodies on an uninhabited (by humans) planet as a kind of naked Adam and two Eves.
126	** In "Literature/UnderOldEarth" Santuna is naked (and depilated), but it's not clear if this also applies to her lover Sun-Boy.
127	** In "Literature/AlphaRalphaBoulevard" it's implied that C'mell is nude for at least one of her brief appearances, though it's unclear why.
128	* TheNamesake: "The Game of Rat and Dragon" refers to a battle that humanity is fighting against an unknown enemy. Humans see this enemy as dragons, fierce and dangerous, capable of tearing apart a telepathic mind. Partners (telepathic cats) see these enemies as rats, nasty monsters that they can beat and kill.
129	* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Lord Jestocost and Lord Crudelta, whose names mean "Cruelty" in Russian and Italian respectively. Subverted in that they're not sadists but merely insensitive, but benevolent.
130	* NoBiochemicalBarriers: The Apicians in "From Gustible's Planet" have extremely Earth-like biochemistry; this is specifically called out as unusual, although it's very much PlayedForLaughs.
131	* NoodleIncident:
132	** As a mark of good writing, Smith would allude to major historical and personal events, but never describe them in-story.
133	** "Literature/APlanetNamedShayol" has a "crime without a name" committed by the protagonist, but we never learn the nature of this crime.
134	* NumberedHomeworld: Fomalhaut III, Khufu II and Earths Two and Four (and presumably Earth Three).
135	* OneGenderRace: The Arachosians in "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal" have been forced to transform themselves into an all-male race because biological circumstances on their colony world rapidly and unavoidably kill any woman.
136	* OneProductPlanet: Norstrilia, which has the monopoly on the immortality drug Stroon. In addition, there's Viola Siderea (an Underworld) and Shayol (see below). The novel ''Norstrilia'' also mentions Khufu II, which produced a lichen more luxuriant than the finest fur, and became almost as wealthy as Norstrilia -- until the lichen was killed off by an infection and the Khufuans were reduced to begging.
137	* OneWorldOrder: The Instrumentality, after the fall of China, governs all of humanity, albeit in a largely hands-off manner.
138	* OurMinotaursAreDifferent: Bull-Men are often prominent characters in Smith's stories. They include B'dikkat in "Literature/APlanetNamedShayol" and B'dank in ''Literature/{{Norstrilia}}''.
139	* PenalColony: Shayol is a prison world of the BodyHorror kind; [[spoiler:prisoners are used to grow new organs for transplant use]].
140	* PlanetSpaceship: The Golden Ships are larger than most stars. [[spoiler:They're actually almost entirely foam, and are used as a psychological weapon and a distraction]].
141	%%* PlotRelevantAgeUp: In "The Dead Lady of Clown Town", D'joan is force grown from age five to fifteen.
142	%%* PunctuationShaker
143	* PopulationControl: Norstrilia practices population control by way of a RiteOfPassage: you go into a room, are examined by a panel, and either come out a full citizen or are given a painless death.
144	* PosthumousCollaboration: Genevieve Linebarger, Paul's wife and story collaborator, finished "The Queen Of The Afternoon" and wrote "Down To A Sunless Sea" from scratch.
145	* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: T'ruth in "On the Storm Planet" looks between ten and thirteen years old, but Casher knows she must be older because Administrator Meiklejohn has been sending unsuccessful assassins after her for eighty years [[spoiler:of whom Casher himself is the latest. He can't bring himself to kill her precisely because she looks so young]]. She's actually nine hundred and six, more than twice the normally-allotted span even for true humans, but has an artificially-extended life expectancy of ''ninety thousand'' years.
146	* RecurringCharacter:
147	** The Vomact family, the descendants of the vom Acht sisters. Various Vomacts show up through the series -- some helpful, others malevolent.
148	** C'mell, who figures in several of the underpeople tales and ''Norstrilia''.
149	** Casher [=O'Neill=], the focus character of the ''Quest of the Three Worlds'' sequence.[[note]] This comprises three stories, "On the Gem Planet", "On the Storm Planet" and "On the Sand Planet", together with a loosely-connected story, "Three to a Given Star". These were collected together in 1966 and presented as a novel, ''Quest of the Three Worlds''. Whether they, or at least the first three, really constitute a novel is debatable. Later collections have simply printed the four stories in chronological order with their titles reinstated.[[/note]]
150	* TheRemnant: The Manshonyaggers, [[spoiler:robotic killing mecha built by the long defunct Sixth German Reich]].
151	* {{Revision}}: Done in a [[{{Rewrite}} rewritten]] "War No. 81-Q". The story is reworked to fit into the Instrumentality universe, as well as add some backstory.
152	* RidiculouslyLonglivedFamilyName: In ''Literature/{{Norstrillia}}'', the protagonist's name is Rodrick Fredrick Ronald Arnold William [=McArthur McBan=] - the one hundred fifty-first.
153	* RightfulKingReturns: Averted with Casher. Though the rightful heir to the Hereditary Dictatorship, [=O'Neill=] doesn't want the position. Nor does he want to restore his infamous uncle to power. He just wants to stop Col. Wedder.
154	* RipVanWinkle: "Mark Elf" and "The Queen of the Afternoon" are about three German sisters from 1945 who end up in the future.
155	* StableTimeLoop: What ends up becoming known as [[TitleDrop "The Crime And The Glory of Commander Suzdal"]].
156	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Raumsog bribes the Lords of the Instrumentality with the most precious drug in the galaxy. Then the Lords merely note the bribes in their record, remove the record from the record, and [[ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules go to war with Raumsog]].
157	* SleptThroughTheApocalypse: The origins of the Vomact family. [[spoiler: They're the descendants of three German sisters, the vom Achts. During the last days of World War II, they were placed in suspended animation in some experimental rockets, and sent into space. Sleeping and preserved, they are awakened thousands of years after the Ancient Wars.]]
158	* SolarSail: Prior to the discovery of Planoforming, solar sails were used for interstellar voyages that lasted years (if not decades or centuries).
159	** In "The Lady Who Sailed ''The Soul,''" the viewpoint character, Helen America, is a sailor.
160	** In "Think Blue, Count Two," the viewpoint character, Veesey-koosey, a young girl, is a DamselInDistress intentionally sent on a voyage to motivate the crew to protect her by heroic efforts.
161	* StandardSciFiFleet: Gives two unique ship types: Football sized Fighters piloted by cats, and the Golden Ships, a sphere ''90 Million miles'' in length.
162	* StandardSciFiHistory: Plays the trope straight, but then the Instrumentality appears to have reached its Apex, it stays stuck in an Interregnum of stagnation until it decides to re-diversify humanity.
163	* StarScraper: Earthport, a wineglass shaped building made of a rust-, weather-, stress-, and time-proof material.
164	* StarshipLuxurious:
165	** The ''Wu-Feinstein'' is designed to look like Mount Vernon, with plenty of space for the rivers, grass, and buildings for its passengers.
166	** And there's the Golden Ships, with ''90 million miles'' of space [[spoiler: for a crew of one.]]
167	* StealthPun:
168	** Kind of. "...[T]he only living city with a pre-atomic name. The lovely meaningless name was Meeya Meefla [near] the warm, bright, clear beaches of the Old South East." ("The Dead Lady of Clown Town"). In other words... [[spoiler:A mispronunciation of "Miami, Fla"]].
169	** Another variation is "Mark Elf". The title means what it says, but there's nobody called Mark and no elves.
170	* StoryArc: The collection ''The Quest of Three Worlds''. The first three stories ("On the Gem Planet", "On the Storm Planet", and "On the Sand Planet") tell the story of Casher's mission of vengeance [[spoiler:only to find something greater]].
171	* SuperweaponSurprise:
172	** "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons". Everybody ''knows'' that the planet of Norstrilia has a secret weapon. ''What'' it is, nobody ever lives to tell.
173	** In "Golden the Ship Was-Oh! Oh! Oh!", Earth and the Instrumentality seem defenseless against Raumsog's invasion. However, they bust out an awesome Golden Ship to stop the attack. [[spoiler: And then zig-zagged, as it turns out the Golden Ship is just a decoy. The Instrumentality's real attack happens during the distraction.]]
174	* {{Telepathy}}: Common enough after the Ancient Wars, with the Unauthorized Men, some of the True Men, Pinlighting humans and cats, the Underpeople, and the Lords of the Instrumentality having the ability to mentally "Spiek".
175	* ThemeNaming:
176	** The Underpeople have names prefixed by a one-letter abbreviation of their species, e.g. C'Mell = Cat Mell.
177	** Many of the Lords of the Instrumentality have names which are actually numbers in various languages.
178	* ThievesGuild: Rules the planet Viola Siderea. Once a decent planet, [=FTL=] travel ended up bankrupting the planet. To survive, its people became thieves.
179	* TimeDilation: Played with in "The Crime And The Glory of Commander Suzdal". It's mentioned that Suzdal would subjectively experience thousands of years of traveling through non-space - the inverse of regular time dilation. Though once he heads back to Earth "the time will wind back up again", and by the time he returns it would only be a few years objectively since he left. [[spoiler: And this is only some of the wacky time travel hi-jinks in this tale.]]
180	* TimeMaster: In times of danger, Chronopathic people can transport themselves (and whatever vehicles they ride) back to a position they were a few seconds previously. Useful in avoiding enemy attacks. The Instrumentality has developed [[TimeMachine Chronopathic]] devices to generate the same effect.
181	%%* ToServeMan: [[spoiler:Inverted]] in "From Gustible's Planet".
182	* TranshumanAliens: Some humans are so adapted to the new worlds that some cease looking human at all.
183	* UnusualUserInterface:
184	** Genetically altered animals, a giant scrying dish and many more.
185	** The entire wall of laminated star charts, which aids the telepathic Go-captain in "The Burning of the Brain". [[spoiler: It proves to fail catastrophically at the worst time.]]
186	* UpliftedAnimal: The Underpeople.
187	* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: The Instrumentality feel it does. The means used do involve making the utopia rather qualified.
188	* VestigialEmpire: The Goonhogo is the last nation that managed to survive the collapse of civilization prior to the Instrumentality.
189	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Linebarger lost all his enthusiasm for the Instrumentality stories after he accidentally dropped the notebook in which he kept his plot ideas into a lake, rendering it unreadable and useless. He died before he could reconstruct any of the lost stories, and it's doubtful whether he would have bothered to try.
190	* WetwareCPU: Laminated animal brains are used for some of the setting's robots.
191	* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: The stories concentrating on the Underpeople. They can love, sing, think, pray... but they're less than nothing to the Instrumentality.
192	* WhoWantsToLiveForever:
193	** Subverted. When a certain planet is found to have the components to make one immortal, the opportunity is there, although the Instrumentality seems to settle for 400 years (there is a dismissive reference to people who try to live longer than that).
194	** Nostrilians themselves don't feel compelled to follow the Instrumentality's lead on this, however. But the life-prolonging drug has "queer side-effects, so that most Norstrilians preferred to die in a thousand years or so."
195	** Also, Lords and Ladies of exceptional value are sometimes allowed to live longer; Sto Odin, the eldest Lord of his era, was over 1000 years old at the time of "Under Old Earth" (in which he sacrifices his own life to save Manhome).
196	* WildChild: "On the Storm Planet" has the wind-people of the eponymous Henriada, who manage to survive being flung around by ''tornadoes'' and live on the fringes of human society. T'ruth temporarily captures a few of their children with the intention of giving them new motivation.
197	* WouldHurtAChild: Benjacomin Bozart in "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" kills an 11-year-old Norstrilian boy after snatching the name of the eponymous secret from his mind (although just learning the name is enough to seal his own death warrant).
198	* YouCantFightFate: In "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" the Abba-Dingo machine predicts that Virginia will love Paul for the rest of her life... and that Paul will love Virginia for 21 minutes. Poor Virginia. There is some implication that this effect makes the Abba-Dingo an EldritchAbomination.
199	* YouAreNumberSix: In-between the later age of Solar Sails and the Rediscovery of Mankind, most people on Earth have numbers instead of names. But to avoid sounding impersonal, the numbers are in different languages. For example, Sto Odin is "101" in Russian.
200	----
201	-->Go gently now, reader. Your Job is done.

Context Creator / CordwainerSmith