A story for everyone who ever loved the work of the late, great SF writer Cordwainer Smith.
From "An Introduction to 'The Ruined Queen of Harvest World'":
Perhaps nobody in all the world had ever written the future so well, hauntingly, yearningly [as Cordwainer Smith].
And then he had gone, barely more than half a century old.
We would never learn the rest of those stories, that history of the deep future, that golden journey—oh, oh, oh.
Well, certainly I’m not foolish enough to imagine I might add to them, might emulate that distinctive voice building layer by layer its deceptively simple confection . . . But some reverberation of the voice of Cordwainer Smith drums away down inside, and finally I let it speak… not mimicry of the inimitable, but a respectful bow toward [Smith's] shade, with a wry grin and maybe a wink.