Best Known As: Author

Gist:  Cordwainer Smith – pronounced CORDwainer – was the pseudonym used by American author Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913?August 6, 1966) for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a noted East Asia scholar and expert in psychological warfare.

Linebarger also employed the literary pseudonyms "Carmichael Smith" (for his political thriller Atomsk), "Anthony Bearden" (for his poetry) and "Felix C. Forrest" (for the novels Ria and Carola).

Life Facts:  Linebarger was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was Paul M. W. Linebarger, a lawyer and political activist with close ties to the leaders of the Chinese revolution of 1911. As a result of those connections, Linebarger's godfather was Sun Yat-sen, considered the father of Chinese nationalism.

As a child, Linebarger was blinded in his right eye; the vision in his remaining eye was impaired by infection. His father moved his family to France and then Germany while Sun Yat-sen was struggling against contentious warlords in China. As a result, Linebarger was familiar with six languages by adulthood.

At the age of 23, he received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University.

* 1937, The Political Doctrines of Sun-Yat-Sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press

* 1938, Government in Republican China, London: McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-88355-081-4

* 1941, The China of Chiang K'ai-shek: A Political Study, Boston: World Peace Foundation, ISBN 0-8371-6779-5

* 1948, Psychological Warfare, Washington: Infantry Journal Press; revised second edition, 1954, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce

* 1951, Foreign milieux (HBM 200/1), Dept. of Defense, Research and Development Board

* 1951, Immediate improvement of theater-level psychological warfare in the Far East, Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University

* 1954, Far Eastern Government and Politics: China and Japan (with Djang Chu and Ardath W. Burks), Van Nostrand

* 1956, "Draft statement of a ten-year China and Indochina policy, 1956-1966", Foreign Policy Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania

* 1965, Essays on military psychological operations, Special Operations Research Office, American University

Career Facts:  From 1937 to 1946, Linebarger held a faculty appointment at Duke University, where he began producing highly regarded works on Far Eastern affairs.

While retaining his professorship at Duke after the beginning of World War II, Linebarger began serving as a second lieutenant of the United States Army, where he was involved in the creation of the Office of War Information and the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. He also helped organize the Army's first psychological warfare section. In 1943, he was sent to China to coordinate military intelligence operations. When he later pursued his interest in China, Linebarger became a close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of major.

In 1947, Linebarger moved to the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where he served as Professor of Asiatic Studies. He used his experiences in the war to write the book Psychological Warfare (1948). It is regarded by many in the field as a classic text.

He eventually rose to the rank of colonel in the reserves. He was recalled to advise the British forces in the Malayan Emergency and the U.S. Eighth Army in the Korean War. While he was known to call himself a "visitor to small wars", he refrained from becoming involved in Vietnam, but is known to have done undocumented work for the Central Intelligence Agency. He traveled extensively and became a member of the Foreign Policy Association, and was called upon to advise then?U.S. President John F. Kennedy.