"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Cordwainer Smith Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966), better known by his pen-name Cordwainer Smith, was an American author known for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a US Army officer, a noted East Asia scholar, and a ...

, set in Smith's " Instrumentality" universe. It was first published in ''

Amazing Stories ''Amazing Stories'' is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances i ...

'' in May 1964, and is collected in ''

The Rediscovery of Man ''The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith'' () is a 1993 book containing the complete collected short fiction of American science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. It was edited by James A. Mann and published b ...

'' compendium.

Plot

Commander Suzdal is a captain of "The Navy and the Instrumentality" sent on a "one man" mission of exploration (in actuality he is accompanied by several generations of "Turtle-People"). He hibernates in

cryogenic sleep Suspended animation is the temporary (short- or long-term) slowing or stopping of biological function so that physiological capabilities are preserved. It may be either hypometabolic or ametabolic in nature. It may be induced by either endogen ...

while long-lived turtle underpeople run the ship, until the need for a "true human" arises. A deep space probe is found. It tells a brilliantly conceived but utterly false story about the plight of a group of settlers calling themselves the Arachosians. Suzdal is deceived and turns his ship towards the planet Arachosia and reenters hibernation. When he arrives he learns the horrible truth. The original settlers nearly became extinct, succumbing to a plague that (in Smith's words) rendered "femininity carcinogenic." They were only able to save their women by chemically (and later genetically) making them male. However, the resulting society is deeply unbalanced by the lack of females and ordinary family structure. The Arachosians, not truly male or female and calling themselves "klopts", realize on an instinctive level what they are missing and as a result, hate normal human beings with unbridled fervor and regard them as abominations to be destroyed (even though they have not seen one in many generations). To carry out this plan, they have dispatched traps in the form of messages, such as the one Suzdal encountered, throughout the galaxy. When Suzdal wakes up, the Arachosians are already crawling over the outside of his ship. On the advice of an artificial security officer, he uses an emergency device intended to send his large spacecraft back a few seconds in time to instead hurl feline genetic material (coded to evolve for intelligence and to obey Suzdal) millions of years back on the far side of the local moon. A race of advanced, space-faring cat-descendants appears instantaneously and hail Suzdal as their god and creator. They engage the Arachosians at his order, allowing him to escape. Despite saving the ship and successfully concealing Earth's location from the Arachosians, Suzdal is stripped of rank, name, life and finally death, finding himself sentenced to the prison planet Shayol for his misuse of the time device. He is later seen in the story "

A Planet Named Shayol "A Planet Named Shayol" is a science fiction story by American writer Cordwainer Smith (the pen name of Paul Linebarger). Like most of his science fiction work, it takes place in his Instrumentality of Mankind setting. It was first published in '' ...

". Meanwhile the Instrumentality officially declares all accounts of his story to be lies, including the text at hand.

Reception

Thomas Clareson has described "Commander Suzdal" as "more

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, w ...

than story",Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, Volume 3
by Thomas Clareson; published 1983 by Popular Press (via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

) while Eliot Borenstein considers it "an oblique

cautionary tale A cautionary tale is a tale told in folklore to warn its listener of a danger. There are three essential parts to a cautionary tale, though they can be introduced in a large variety of ways. First, a taboo or prohibition is stated: some act, lo ...

about men's attempts to manage without women."Men Without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929
by Eliot Borenstein; published 2000 by

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 Du ...

(via

) Rich Horton, writing for '' Black Gate'', calls the story "odd", "decidedly weird" and "disquieting", comparing the Arachosians disfavorably to the all-male society in

Lois McMaster Bujold Lois McMaster Bujold ( ; born November 2, 1949) is an American speculative fiction writer. She is an acclaimed writer, having won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein's record (not counting his Retro Hugos). Her no ...

's ''

Ethan of Athos ''Ethan of Athos'' is a 1986 science fiction novel by American author Lois McMaster Bujold. The title character is Dr. Ethan Urquhart, Chief of Biology at the Sevarin District Reproduction Centre on the planet Athos, who is sent to find out what ...

'', but conceding that it has "some of the incantatory power Smith always strove for".Amazing Stories, May 1964: A Retro-Review
by Rich Horton, in '' Black Gate''; published January 8, 2015; retrieved May 8, 2015

Paul Kincaid Paul Kincaid (born 22 September 1952 in Oldham, Lancashire) is a British science fiction critic. Career Kincaid's writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including New Scientist, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, New York ...

, at the ''

SF Site SF may refer to: Locations * San Francisco, California, United States * Sidi Fredj, Algeria * South Florida, an urban region in the United States * Suomi Finland, former vehicular country code for Finland In arts and entertainment Genre ...

'', described it as a story about the human "capacity to become monsters when we follow someone who is 'brilliant, remorseless, implacable'," and compared the Arachosians' broadcast lure to

Tokyo Rose Tokyo Rose (alternative spelling Tokio Rose) was a name given by Allied troops in the South Pacific during World War II to all female English-speaking radio broadcasters of Japanese propaganda. The programs were broadcast in the South Pacific ...

.When the People Fell, by Cordwainer Smith
reviewed by

, at the ''

''; published 2013; retrieved July 26, 2018

References

External links

* . Full text online, in various formats.
Full text online at Project Gutenberg
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal, The Short stories by Cordwainer Smith 1964 short stories Works originally published in Amazing Stories Single-gender worlds Cryonics in fiction Works set on fictional planets