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The Phoenix Pick Ebook of the month for April 2018 THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH Edited by J. J. Pierce

"No one ever wrote like Smith, with his special blend of intense
myth-making and rich invention!"—Publishers Weekly

Spoiler:

Cordwainer Smith was one of the original visionaries to think of humanity in terms of thousands of years in the future, spread out across the universe. This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe (and other beings) around us and ultimately what it means to be human.

In “Scanners Live in Vain” we meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine—a scanner—to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another.

In “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” we get to know the underpeople—animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners—and meet D’Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior.

In “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is—as first raised in “The Dead Lady of Clown Town”—is put into action when an underperson, C’mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!

And in “A Planet Named Shayol” it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all.

Paperback Price $14.99, Ebook Price $5.99
Suggested Sale Price $1.50
Minumum Required Price $0.00

The Bundle include the above ebook plus:

NORSTRILIA Cordwainer Smith

A TRUE CLASSIC

"A major event for science fiction readers."—Publishers Weekly

Welcome to Old North Australia, or Norstrilia, the only planet that has "stroon," a substance that indefinitely delays aging in humans. Stroon is cultivated from huge, deformed sheep farmed by the wealthiest estate owners to ever exist in all of humanity's existence.

Spoiler:

Rod McBan is the last of one of the oldest and most honorable families on Norstrilia. But he himself has shortcomings that would normally have led to his death under the strict laws governing population control on a planet where immortality is cheap and imperfect citizens are ruthlessly "culled" to make way for more productive members of society.

But even McBan's vaunted stature in the society is not enough to save him from the basest of human emotions—jealousy—as the enmity of a former friend forces him to escape to Earth, where McBan's unprecedented fortune quickly makes him a magnet for all manner of crooks and revolutionaries.

Paperback Price $9.99, Ebook Price $5.99
Suggested Sale Price $3.50
Minumum Required Price $2.50

THE BEST OF EDMOND HAMILTON Edited by Leigh Brackett

Here is a collection of some of the finest short fiction penned by one of "fathers" of modern science fiction.

Spoiler:

These stories were selected (and edited) by his wife Leigh Brackett, an author and a screenwriter. Her screen-writing credits include work on such films as The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

This collection spans nearly half a century of Edmond Hamilton's work and was selected from a repository of hundreds of stories that he had written over that period.

Paperback Price $14.99, Ebook Price $6.99
Suggested Sale Price $4.00
Minumum Required Price $2.75

Note:

If you have the Two Cordwainer Smith volumes published by Baen Books then you have all the stories listed in these books then some.

My recommendation is if you do not have the Baen volumes is to get the bundle, I will be picking up the THE BEST OF EDMOND HAMILTON

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