 
Dr. Paul Linebarger, aka Cordwainer Smith
Cats, cruelty and children
Idealism and morality in the
Instrumentality of Mankind
[I found this article in the WayBack Machine, no current links for attrbution, so my apologies in advance for once again simply repurposing* content I find appropriate and essential for Sun Pop Blue.—kb]
"The Lords of the Instrumentality who are here
on Fomalhaut III. There is the Lord Femtiosex, who is just and without
pity ... There is the Lady Goroke ... who has shown kindnesses to
underpeople, as long as the kindnesses were lawful ones. And there is
the Lady Arabella Underwood, whose justice no man can understand."
["The Dead Lady of Clown Town",
Cordwainer Smith]
The science-fiction writings of Cordwainer Smith consist of some
twenty-odd short stories and two novels, which chart the history of an
evolving civilisation over some fifteen thousand years. The history is
internally consistent, and each story contributes to a coherent picture
of the technological, social and spiritual development of the future
described.
In real life, Smith was Dr Paul Linebarger, Professor in Asiatic
Studies at Johns Hopkins university and colonel in US military
intelligence, accomplished linguist and foreign policy adviser to the
state department. His writing style, partly inspired by Chinese
narrative techniques, more closely resembles poetry than the
conventional dry prose of science-fiction, and his stories are dense
with literary and historical references and more or less complex
linguistic puns. Running through the entire work is a consistent
morality and outlook, whose principal themes recur again and again in
stories often written many years apart.
The broad outlines of Smith's future civilisation can be briefly
sketched. Travel between the stars and the consequent expansion of
human culture through the universe is made possible by the invention of
'planoforming' ships that travel faster than light, and by the
development of novel systems to protect their passengers and crew
against the dangers of space. In this new interstellar culture, true
humans live lives of privileged ease, while work is done by robots and
by 'underpeople', animals genetically modified to have near-human
intelligence and form. Over it all presides the Instrumentality, a
benign but absolute dictatorship composed of a ruling nobility who use
their technological and telepathic powers to maintain the status quo
and to dispense an abstract and dispassionate justice. It is against
this background that the principal themes of Smith's stories - love,
courage, cruelty, hope, innocence, belief - are played out.
*Repurposing: dot-com-speak for outright theivery.
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Knox 
