Norstrilia, by Smith, Cordwainer

OK, here's the set up for this week's book review. See if you can guess what the novel is called before you start the second paragraph. And, please, try to ignore the name of the book and the author above. Thousands and thousands of years in the future on a distant and very arid planet in the buttocks of the galaxy a young man is preparing to under go a test of his humanity that is to be administered by a secret society. Should he fail the test, he will die for certain. He's[…]

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Published:: 06.18.07 / 5pm

Category:: Reviews

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monkeyfan 03.28.12 / 6pm

“it was not until about 13 years ago that NESFA (New England SF Association) brought both books together and published them under one cover”: This is a little misleading. Norstrilia was first published in a single volume in 1975. Granted, that edition’s full of typos, and some of the material in the NESFA edition (which I haven’t seen) may be missing from it, but it is the first complete edition of the novel, and its availability since then should be mentioned.
As for the parallels with Dune, I’m convinced, even if no one else is! Herbert may never have read Norstrilia, in any of its many versions, but he must surely have come across the references to stroon in earlier stories by Smith, and he really should have admitted as much … if only anyone had ever asked him to.
Omphalos 04.12.16 / 2pm

True, but those original publications did not have the “interstitial material” that I referred to in the next clause of that sentence. Read as a whole the sentence is not in the least bit misleading. Sorry you missed that.

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Norstrilia, by Smith, Cordwainer

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