Cordwainer Smith

Rod McBan 151st farms stroon, the immortality drug, and is the last scion of one of the oldest and most honourable families on Norstrilia, the only source of stroon. But he's also a telepathic cripple and faces the ever-present risk of being culled under the government's draconian population laws. To protect himself, he uses his not-strictly-legal computer to play the...

Welcome to the strangest, most distinctive future ever imagined by a science fiction writer. An interstellar empire ruled by the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, whose access to the drug stroon from the planet Norstrilia confers on them virtual immortality. A world in which wealthy and leisured humanity is served by the underpeople, genetically engineered animals turned into the semblance...