| Author: | Cordwainer Smith |
| Copyright: | 1975 |
| Date Reviewed: | 6/22/86 |
| Rating: | 6.0 |
Synopsis: The descendents of Australian farmers live a quiet life as sheep farmers on Norstrilia (Old North Australia). These are very special sheep that they tend. The sheep are hundreds of tons in weight and are always sick. The sickness is caused by something on the planet and results in the production of stroon, a life prolongation drug. Some people on Norstrilia are a thousand years old. To protect the old ways and guard against decadence, the Norstrilian government has outlawed luxuries. Norstrilians are very wealth - the lowliest farmhand could own a fleet of yachts on any other world - but because of a 20 million percent import tax, few conveniences ever reach the populace. Some Norstrilians choose to leave their planet with their wealth but can never return under pain of death.
The Norstrilians are telepaths but Rob McBain is not. He can neither speak nor hear. Three times before reaching his sixteenth birthday, Rod has been sent back to his childhood in the hopes that he will develop these talents. This is his last chance. If he doesn't pass the Garden of Death, he will be killed. To maintain the stock, Norstrilians can not tolerate inferiors. Rod does pass because even though he can not normally speak, he is an intermittent broadband telepath. This could have certain military advantages for Norstrilia.
Rod has a computer to play with that was left to him by an ancestor. It is the only computer capable of lying; being originally designed as a military strategy machine. With the machines instructions, Rod sells some stocks, buys some futures and parleys these few transactions into unimaginable wealth. After 14 hours of trading, Rod becomes the wealthiest human that ever lived and buys Earth.
After an attack by a jealous childhood friend, Rod wakes up aboard Lord Redlady's ship. Redlady is an agent of the Instrumentality. Since Rod has bought Earth, the only way for him to keep it is to go there and manage it. To protect him enroute, Rod is turned into a cat man (c'man), given a cat wife named C'mell and transported to Earth with 10 robot copies of himself.
On Earth, Rod learns of the plight of the underpeople. They are animals that were given human shape and intelligence but are second class citizens. They can be killed out of hand for taking a wrong magnetic lift or looking at the merchandise of a market. The underpeople come in many forms: monkeys, birds, cats, and dogs. Modern surgical techniques can change them from one form to another. The underpeople have some sympathizers among humans.
Their living savior is E'telekele -a bird man who was created from the egg of a Daimoni. The Daimoni were advanced beings that built impressive architectural buildings but have now retreated back to their home planet whose location is unknown. The Earth humans have become lazy and though they don't know it, the underpeople are really running their planet. E'telekele convinces Rod to place the bulk of his money in a trust fund to help the underpeople. For his money, E'telekele gives Rod the memory of a thousand years of life with C'mell. It takes about half an hour. With the good deed done and an artificial hearing/speaking aid, Rod returns to Norstrilia.
Review: "Norstrilia" started out with some interesting ideas. I liked reading about the Norstrilian way of life - at the same time very rich and very poor. Their economy and morals bordered on the believable. Then Rod went to Earth and we went to fantasy land. Suddenly anything could be done. We had thinking animals and animals that turned into other animals. Events were more absurd than believable. So that he wouldn't attract attention, the Lord Redlady turns Rod into a c'man and puts him on a ship for Earth with 10 copies of himself - one being his worker woman Eleanor. Certainly 10 copies of one instantly famous person walking off a ship is going to draw attention to anyone and anything connected with that ship. I believe this whole plan was simply a plot device to get Eleanor into the body of a man.
The bizarre life on Earth, in contrast to the stoic life on Norstrilia, was a change too much for me to adapt to. I found the Earth sequences very boring. The same points about how the underpeople were being mistreated were drummed in over and over again. Not enough detail was given to the Earth government or the underpeople government (the Insurgency) and the Instrumentality was left entirely vague. The "About the Author" page said that "Norstrilia" was "intended to be the centerpiece of a mosaic of shorter works about the Rediscovery of Man and the Holy Insurgency". It certainly felt like I was missing the first part of some trilogy.
The parallels to a great science fiction, "Dune", by Frank Herbert are impossible to miss. The people of this novel left their previous hell hole planet, Paradize IV, to come to the desert planet Norstrilia where they learned how to get the immortality drug stroon from huge sheep. The people of Dune left their previous hell hole planet, Salusa Secundus, to come to the desert planet Arrakis where they learned how to get the immortality drug melange from huge worms. Ornithopters are used as a method of transportation in both novels. I wonder which author is the plagiarist.