"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" was inspired in part by a painting from Smith's childhood, The Storm by Pierre-Auguste Cot, of two young lovers fleeing along a darkening path. Additionally, the names of the two principal characters, together with the conscious attempt to revive a French culture, recall the 18th century French novel Paul et Virginie. According to his widow and second wife, it was also partly about his first wife's attraction to another man.[3]:107[4] The name of the story is likely derived from that of Ralph Alpher, who himself was convinced of the connection.[5][6]
The ancient computer in the story is called the Abba-dingo, which some Smith scholars have speculated may mean "Father of Lies";[3][7][8] others have noted similarities to "the French phrase 'l’abbé dingo', or 'mad priest'".[9]It is also evocative of Abednego, who, along with Shadrach and Mesach, survived the Biblical “fiery furnace” in Daniel 3.
Plot summary
The all-powerful Instrumentality government, which in its overprotectiveness has driven the purpose from human existence, decides to turn back the clock to a less sheltered historical human era of 14,000 years before (i.e., our time). Virginia and Paul are enjoying the first moments of the recreations of the old human language, French, reading their first newspapers, and going to their first cafe, where the bugs in process are not resolved to the point of understanding how to use money.
With the restoration of cultural differences and new individuality, old friends Paul and Virginia fall in love. Not everything from the Instrumentality era has vanished, especially the underpeople, a subclass of people bred from animals such as dogs, cats, and bulls to provide manual labor. Paul is accosted by a provocative dog-girl, then by a drunken bull-man, who attacks them. A cat-girl, C'mell, rescues them from physical danger. She directs them to a cafe where Virginia begins to have qualms about the artificial aspects of the personality she's been given, and wonders whether her love for Paul is real or synthesized. She then meets another man she also finds attractive, Macht (a member of the Vomacht family prominent in Smith's future history). Macht tells her of a computer, the Abba-dingo, never understood by the Instrumentality, which has reached the status of a god, able to foretell the future. It can only be reached walking a ruined processional highway leading into the clouds: Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.
The three of them set off along, and up, the highway. Paul becomes worried when he realizes that the highway has no machines to supply food, water or medical help in case of accidents. Macht accidentally activates a moving walkway which carries him up the Boulevard rapidly; Paul and Virginia decide to follow. It transpires that the Boulevard has a large broken section, several kilometers above the ground, spanned only by hanging cables many meters below. Paul and Virginia are thrown off of the broken end of the moving walkway. Virginia's momentum carries her over the gap. Paul collides with the end of the roadway on the far side and has to hang on for dear life while Virginia pulls him up. They discover that Macht is crawling along a cable far below, but realize there is nothing they can do to help him. They continue upward until they finally reach the Abba-dingo, which seems to be an ancient computer system. It has a machine marked "Food", but they are disappointed to find that this no longer works. A machine marked "Meteorological" displays a sign which reads "Typhoon coming". A machine marked "Predictions" is surrounded by mysterious white objects which Paul slowly realizes are the bones of long-dead humans. Virginia puts her hand in a slot marked "Put paper here", which cuts words into her skin: "You will love Paul all your life." After bandaging her hand with a strip torn from his clothing, Paul inserts a strip into the slot. The machine prints "You will love Virginia twenty-one more minutes". Paul "accidentally" loses the strip to the wind and pretends his prediction was the same as hers.
The two set off back down as the typhoon begins lashing the Boulevard with wind and rain. By the time they arrive back at the gap twenty-one minutes later the storm is in full force and they are in danger of being blown off the road or struck by lightning. Macht is nowhere to be seen, having presumably fallen. C'mell reappears and tries to help Virginia, but Virginia recoils from being touched by an underperson and falls to her death. C'mell knocks Paul unconscious so that he will keep still while she carries him across the precarious cables.
Paul awakens at home to find himself being attended by a medical robot. Before C'mell returns to check on him, Paul ponders the nature of the machine that could make such accurate predictions, and grieves for his loss.
C'mell reappears as the title character in "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", and plays a major role in the novel Norstrilia, in which Paul also makes a cameo appearance.
↑ MacCaffery, Larry and Gregory, Sinda, Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s, p. 177, University of Illinois Press, 1987. ISBN978-0252060113
↑ Elms, Alan C., Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology, p. 26, University of Oxford Press, 1994. ISBN978-0195082876
↑ Elms, "Building Alpha Ralpha Boulevard": • "Linebarger, in addition to his long-established interest in astronomy, was privy to a good deal of academic gossip, and he greatly enjoyed wordplay. It seems likely that he not only read about Alpher’s discovery in the Washington Post but heard about—if he didn’t actually read—the Physical Review paper that equated Alpher’s name with the letter 'Alpha'. ["Alpher, Bethe, Gamow, sounding roughly like the beginning of the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma."] Looking up Alpher’s name in a university directory or in the local telephone book, he would have found it listed as 'Alpher, Ralph A.'" • [Adams's note 7] "Alpher’s own judgment was: 'It would be difficult to accept the notion that the title is pure coincidence. Linebarger must have constructed it from my name' (personal communication, 23 May 1984). Alpher notes that when he was younger, some friends nicknamed him 'Alpher Ralpher,' others called him 'Alphalpher,' and still others simply 'Ralpher'—though he does not suggest that Linebarger had any way of knowing these nicknames."
↑ Rosana Hart, Smith's daughter and the webmaster of the official website Cordwainer-Smith.com, personal communication, July 20, 2015: "Knowing my father, he never missed a chance to make a pun on names, but I don't know if this one was."
↑ Lewis, Anthony R. (September 2000). "A". Concordance to Cordwainer Smith: A (Third, revised, 2000ed.). Framingham, Massachusetts, USA: NESFA Press. ISBN1-886778-25-6. Archived from the original on 2013-01-09. Retrieved 21 July 2015. Abba (Aramaic) father + dingo (Australian slang) to betray = father of lies? less possible: from Abed-nego = worshipper of nebo (lofty place)
↑ Elms, "Building Alpha Ralpha Boulevard": "Given the Abba-dingo’s unpredictability and its godlike status among the Underpeople, I suspect that Smith derived the name instead from the French phrase 'l’abbé dingo,' or 'mad priest.' A quasi-omniscient character in another of Linebarger’s favorite French novels, Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45), is nicknamed 'the mad priest', though Dumas used a less colloquial phrase with the same meaning, 'l’abbé fou'."
Elms, Alan C. (October 27, 2014). "Building Alpha Ralpha Boulevard". Star-Craving: The Website of Alan C. Elms. Retrieved 23 July 2015. Date of blog post is from the abstract in Elms's archive index. The post is headed "Originally published in Science Fiction Studies, 2013, #120, 40, 209-227", i.e.:
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, 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 an expert in psychological warfare. Although his career as a writer was shortened by his death at the age of 53, he is considered one of the more talented and influential science fiction authors.
The New England Science Fiction Association, or NESFA, is a science fiction club centered in the New England area. It was founded in 1967, "by fans who wanted to do things in addition to socializing". NESFA is currently registered as a non-profit literary organization under IRS section 501(c)(3).
In science fiction, uplift is a developmental process to transform a certain species of animals into more intelligent beings by other, already-intelligent beings. This is usually accomplished by cultural, technological, or evolutional interventions like genetic engineering but any fictional or real process can be used. The earliest appearance of the concept is in H. G. Wells' 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, and more recently appears in David Brin's Uplift series and other science fiction works.
The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (ISBN 0-915368-56-0) 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 by NESFA Press.
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" is a classic science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith, first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1961, and partly based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It is collected most recently in The Rediscovery of Man. It details the methods by which the Norstrilians of Smith's fictional "Instrumentality" universe maintain their monopoly on the precious immortality drug stroon. The story details part of the background to the novel Norstrilia.
Norstrilia is a science fiction novel published by Paul Linebarger under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith. It is the only novel he published under this name, which he used for his science fiction works. It takes place in Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind universe, and was heavily influenced by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. The novel is in part a sequel to Smith's 1962 short story "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", featuring some of the same characters and settings.
NESFA Press is the publishing arm of the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc. The NESFA Press primarily produces three types of books:
"A Planet Named Shayol" is a science fiction story by American writer Cordwainer Smith. Like most of his science fiction work, it takes place in his Instrumentality of Mankind setting. It was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1961.
"When the People Fell" is a science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith, set in his "Instrumentality" universe. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in April, 1959, and is collected in The Rediscovery of Man, and in the collection of which it is the title story. The story takes place relatively early in the Instrumentality timeline, and a "scanner Vomact" appears both in this story and the classic story "Scanners Live in Vain".
"The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in Smith's "Instrumentality" universe. It was first published in Amazing Stories in May 1964, and is collected in The Rediscovery of Man compendium.
"The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a science fiction novella by American writer Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1964. It was included in the collection The Best of Cordwainer Smith and most recently in The Rediscovery of Man short story collection. A graphic novel adaptation by Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta was to have appeared in DC Comics during the late 1980s, but never materialized.
"Scanners Live in Vain" is a science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith. It was the first story in Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind future history to be published and the first story to appear under the Smith pseudonym. It first appeared in the semi-professional magazine Fantasy Book.
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" is a science fiction novella by American writer Cordwainer Smith. It was first published in October 1962 in Galaxy Magazine, and since reprinted in several compilations and omnibus editions.
"Kirk Allen" was the pseudonym given to a patient of Robert M. Lindner's, in his book The Fifty-Minute Hour. Born in Hawaii, "Allen" soon became obsessed with a series of novels, the protagonist of which shared his name. Due to "Allen"'s anonymity, it is unclear what the series was, apart from the fact that it was science fiction. Some have theorized that the series was the Barsoom books, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, featuring the main character John Carter.
Space Lords is a collection of science fiction short stories by the American writer Cordwainer Smith. It was first published by Pyramid Books in 1965.
"Drunkboat" is a science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith. It was first published in the magazine Amazing Stories in October 1963. It was included in Space Lords, a collection of five stories by Cordwainer Smith published in May 1965. It appeared in The Instrumentality of Mankind, a collection published in May 1979, and it was in The Rediscovery of Man, a complete collection of his short stories, published in 1993.
Fomalhaut is a class A star on the main sequence approximately 25 light-years (7.7 pc) from the Sun. It is the brightest star in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus and at magnitude 1.2 is one of the brightest stars in the sky.
Fantasy Book is a defunct semi-professional American science fiction magazine that published eight issues between 1947 and 1951. The editor was William Crawford, and the publisher was Crawford's Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. Crawford had problems distributing the magazine, and his budget limited the quality of the paper he could afford and the artwork he was able to buy, but he attracted submissions from some well-known writers, including Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, A. E. van Vogt, Robert Bloch, and L. Ron Hubbard. The best-known story to appear in the magazine was Cordwainer Smith's first sale, "Scanners Live in Vain", which was later included in the first Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology, and is now regarded as one of Smith's finest works. Jack Gaughan, later an award-winning science fiction artist, made his first professional sale to Fantasy Book, for the cover illustrating Smith's story.
Karen L. Hellekson is an American author and scholar who researches science fiction and fan studies. In the field of science fiction, she is known for her research on the alternate history genre, the topic of her 2001 book, The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time, and has also published on the author Cordwainer Smith. In fan studies, she is known for her work on fan fiction and the culture of the fan community. She has co-edited two essay collections on fan fiction with Kristina Busse, and in 2008, co-founded the academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures, also with Busse.
The Best of Cordwainer Smith is a collection of science fiction short stories by American author Cordwainer Smith, edited by J. J. Pierce. It was first published in hardback by Nelson Doubleday in July 1975 and in paperback by Ballantine Books in September of the same year as a volume in its Classic Library of Science Fiction. The Ballantine edition was reprinted in October 1977 and July 1985. Phoenix Pick issued a new edition in trade paperback and ebook in April, 2017. A British paperback edition under the alternative title The Rediscovery of Man was published by Gollancz in June 1988, and reissued in 1999, 2003, and 2010; Gollancz also brought out hardcover and ebook versions in September 1988 and November 2012, respectively. The book has also been translated into German.
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