Welcome to the strangest, most distinctive future ever imagined by a science fiction writer. An insterstellar 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 of people. A world in which the great ships which sail between the stars are eventually supplanted by the mysterious, instantaneous technique of planoforming. A world of wonder and myth, and extraordinary imagination.

Norstrilia

by Cordwainer Smith

Published 1 January 1975
The discovery of stroon, a drug that confers near immortality on humans, has made Old North Australia rich. So rich that when Rod McBan has to flee the planet because someone wants him dead, he buys the Earth. His picaresque adventures on Old Earth offer an exuberant, eccentric and wildly imaginative vision of the universe - a vision like no other.