His first glimpse of China came towards the end of 19167 after the death of Yuan, when Sun returned to his country and established a Nationalist government in the South in competition with the warlord-dominated regime in Peking that enjoyed international recognition. In those days, Sun often played with his godson, Sun sat him on his knee and fed him lichee nuts.

Young Linebarger's education was in large part dictated by the ups and downs of Sun's political fortunes, During civil disorders in 1919-20, for example, he was sent away to Punaho Academy in Honolulu. While there, he lost one eye in an accident, and would have lost both but fez the intervention of a ship's captain who "bumped" two of his other passengers to send the boy and his mother to San Francisco where facilities were available for an operation that saved his sight. Upon recovering he was brought back to China, where he was enrolled in the British Cathedral School in Shanghai in J920.

Linebarger was to develop a strangely ambivalent attitude toward China as a result of his youthful e×periences there. On the one hand, he admired Chinese culture deeply, as evidenced by the prominence in his Washington home of Chinese art objects and his use in his fiction of Chinese prose and verse forms. Yet at the same time he was appalled by the cruelty and disregard for individual life so typical of China, with its overpopulation and feudalistic mores.

This cruel side of China came out very strongly in CAROLA and from his Chinese experience Linebarger became obsessed with the sanctity of human life, disdaining concepts of "honor" whether Oriental or Western that seemed to be used to give excuses for the pointless sacrifice of life.

During the Korean War, when he was psychological warfare consultant to the US Eighth Army, he had a chance to put this philosophy into practice. Thousands of Chinese troops were being massacred when they tried to surrender because they believed it shameful to be seen without their weapons and would approach American lines with guns

held over their heads or carrying grenades
and generally looking hostile.

Linebarger met with thee Chinese prisoners and got them to come up with a string of words that sounded like "I surrender" but meant things like. "Love", "Virtue" and "Humanity". Leaflets were dropped by plane

behind enemy lines advising Chinese how ' give up by dropping their guns and shouting the "honorable" words. 'She number of prisoners taken increased dramatically.

"Paul said he thought that was the single most worthwhile thing he did in his life," his widow remembers. Perceptive readers can note a reflection of the same philosophy can be seen in his science fiction: the Instrumentality hardly ever kills its opponents if it can convert them or intimidate them instead.

Linebarger had learned to read at the age of four, but it was in Germany that he first became acquainted with science fiction. Trouble broke out again in China, and he was sent to the Oberrealschule in the Baden-Baden region in 1923. Among his favorite German S.F. works were GIGANTEN and

THE DOPPELGANGER. Later during a six month stay at Long Beach, he devoured the classics of S.F. by Verne, Wells, Doyle, Kipling and Stevenson, and even the Martian science fantasies of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He also loved the fantastic fiction of Haggard and Robert W. Chambers. He was a convert to Amazing from the first issue.

Whenever he was in the United States, Linebarger would stock up on science fiction to take back to China. And, surprisingly, he could obtain a considerable amount of S.F. in China itself. Shanghai was, in those days of foreign domination, one of the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Linebarger spent two years in Germany, as experience upon which he later drew for most of the background of RIA. After that, he was a student in a Catholic school near Monte Carlo for a year or so, then spent a half year in Long Beach before returning to China in 1926. By this time, Sun had died and been succeeded by Chiang Kai-Shek.

Chiang was accepting Communist support in those days, and this caused a strain in relations between him and the elder Linebarger, who refused to set foot in the country until the Generalissimo broke with the Communists in 1928. Young Linebarger, however, was nevertheless enrolled in the Kaiser Wilhelms School in Shanghai in 1926.

It may well have been in China that Linebarger first tried his hand at science fiction with 'War No. 81-Q'. The pseudonym he used - Anthony Bearden - was a combination of his third given name and his mother's maiden name. Even his widow does not know where 'War No. 81-Q' was published - he was in China at the time and apparently couldn't get hold of a copy of the magazine himself. But his cousin, Jack O. Bearden, read it and, in a fit of jealousy, responded by turning out as S.F. story of his own 'The Notorious C39' which was published in Amazing five years later.

Document scaning and conversion provided by Peter Barker

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