Scanners Live in Vain

"Scanners Live in Vain"
cover illustration by Jack Gaughan
Author	Cordwainer Smith
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction short story
Published in	Fantasy Book volume 1 number 6
Publication type	periodical
Media type	print
Publication date	January 1950

"Scanners Live in Vain" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Linebarger), set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. It was originally published in the magazine Fantasy Book in 1950. It was judged by the Science Fiction Writers of America to be one of the finest short stories prior to 1965 and was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964. A revised text, based on Linebarger's original manuscript, appears in the 1993 NESFA Press collection The Rediscovery of Man (where it is accompanied by a facsimile of his original cover letter) and the 2007 collection When the People Fell. The story was nominated for a Retro Hugo award in 2001. It has been published in Hebrew, Italian, French, German and Dutch translations.

This was Linebarger's first published SF story as an adult (his short story "War No. 81-Q", which he wrote at age 15, was published in his high school magazine), and the first appearance of the Cordwainer Smith pen name. It was written in 1945, and had been rejected by a number of magazines before its acceptance and publication in Fantasy Book in 1950. It was in that obscure magazine that it was noticed by SF writer Frederik Pohl who, impressed with the story's powerful imagery and style, subsequently re-published it in 1952 in the more widely read anthology Beyond the End of Time.

Part of the appeal of the story was its uniqueness, from the strange future world to the cynical ending. Robert Silverberg called it "one of the classic stories of science fiction" and noted its "sheer originality of concept" and its "deceptive and eerie simplicity of narrative".John J. Pierce, in his introduction to the anthology The Best of Cordwainer Smith, commented the strong sense of religion it shares with Smith's other works, likening the Code of the Scanners to the Saying of the Law in H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.