An Unexpected Find

I'm with my I'd Offer You Some, But They Mine friends this weekend, and we went to their local strange tanning booth/used book store right down the road today. I regularly look for an entertaining/ridiculous Christian-based eschatology or creationism book (I got this one last time). But while looking through a stack of books about Jesus and infinity, I found a precious jewel.

Have you ever read Cordwainer Smith? If not, I recommend getting his complete short story collection immediately and reading it beginning to end: it is some of the strangest, compelling, and--best of all--cohesive short story science fiction ever written. No one figured out that his little-read, seemingly unrelated short stories and his one sci-fi novel were actually all parts of one huge story until long after he died.

So here's another cool thing about Cordwainer Smith: he wrote one of the first--and still one of the definitive--books on psychological warfare during WW2. It's called, oddly enough, Psychological Warfare; and he used his real name for it...Dr. Linebarger. Guess what I found in the stacks of this backwater used book store for $4? The second edition of this book (revised shortly after Korea). It's been out of print for years; when I found it I let out a gay geek gasp.

Smith/Linebarger led a life less ordinary; you will die a lesser person if you do not explore his works. I was lucky to find one of his nonfictions ones.