Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 11, 1913. Linebarger’s father, Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger, served as a Federal District Judge in the Philippines before working with Sun Yat Sen, a Chinese statesman who would become Linebarger’s godfather.

Throughout his childhood, Linebarger studied at several schools, including the Punaho Academy in Honolulu, Hawaii from 1919-1920, the British Cathedral School in Shanghai, China from 1920-1922, and the Oberrealschule in Baden Baden, Germany from 1923-1924. He received his Bachelor of Arts at George Washington University in 1933 after studying at the University of Nanking and North China Union Language School. He received his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from John Hopkins University in 1935 and 1936, respectively.

Linebarger married Margaret Snow in 1936, with whom he had two daughters before their divorce in 1949. He married Genevieve Collins in 1950, who would go on to publish several pieces under the Cordwainer Smith pseudonym after Linebarger’s death.

Linebarger’s first major publication came with his Ph.D. thesis, a scholarly work on Asian politics entitled The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat Sen (1937). He wrote several other non-fiction books on Chinese politics, including Government in Republican China (1938) and The China of Chiang K’ai-Shek (1941). These publications were followed by Linebarger’s Psychological Warfare (1948), a book based on Linebarger’s military experience and understanding of psychology.

In addition to his nonfiction work, Linebarger wrote fiction under several pseudonyms, including Cordwainer Smith, Carmichael Smith, Felix C. Forrest, and Anthony D’Este. Ria (1947) and Carola (1949), written under Felix C. Forrest, were his first published fiction works and were followed closely by Atomsk (1949) as Carmichael Smith.

Linebarger as Cordwainer Smith would first publish “Scanners Live in Vain” (1949) in a pulp magazine called Fantasy Book. “Scanners Live in Vain” was the first of Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality of Mankind stories, which included “A Planet named Shayol” (1961), “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell’ (1962), and “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” (1964). The Instrumentality of Mankind would culminate in the novel Norstrilia (1975) and several anthologies of short stories.

Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger died on August 6, 1966.

[Information taken from collection materials and the Cordwainer Smith official website.]