Notes
First published by Del Rey / Ballantine in 1979.

Publisher’s Blurb – Lower Cover
A collection of fourteen stories set in Cordwainer Smith’s extraordinary universe of scanners, planoforming ships and animal-derived Underpeople, The Instrumentality of Mankind completes the publication of Smith’s unique science fiction in VGSF.

Here is the story of the origin of the Vomact family and the Instrumentality itself, of the Colonel who came back from the Nothing-at-all, and stayed sane, and perhaps the saddest, maddest, wildest story in the whole long history of space, the tale of how one man’s love broke the secret of Space-Three . . .

"No one ever wrote quite like Smith, with his special blend of intense myth-making and rich invention"
- Publishers Weekly

"Smith made wonderlands. And he made us believe they could be real"
- Frederik Pohl

"One of science fiction’s most original writers"
- Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels