Cordwainer Bird (b. 1934) is a short, choleric, self-possessed writer of mystery stories and science-fiction for television. Whereas his (writing-partner?) Harlan Ellison has been known to remove his name from scripts altered against his wishes by studios, Bird has no compunction about punching directors and producers two foot taller than himself right in the mouth. He has nevertheless been awarded a record number of industry plaudits.
Bird's parents were Jason Bird and Rhonda Rassendyll, and he is nephew to The Shadow and a descendent of Leopold Bloom. As a member of the Wold Newton Family himself, Bird's illustrious heritage has made him something of a fighter for justice in his own right.
Cordwainer Bird's works include:
- "The Impotency of Bad Karma" (a short story rewritten by Philip José Farmer as "The Last Rise of Nick Adams")
- Menancing Glimpses (a collection of short stories by various authors)
- Wider Menacing Glimpses (a follow-up volume)
- The much-delayed Final Menancing Glimpses
and much in the way of film and TV work, as listed at his Internet Movie Database profile
Bird has also been portrayed in biographical, critical and semi-fictional works by a number of authors:
- "The New York Review of Bird" by Harlan Ellison
- Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life by Philip José Farmer
- "Who Killed Alex Debbs?", an episode of Burke's Law penned by Ellison wherein Bird is played by a somewhat miscast Sammy Davis Jr
- Murder at the ABA by Isaac Asimov, in which Bird is given the alias of "Darius Just"
- "The Curious Case of the Farmer's Daughter" by Art Bollman
- A Review of Final Menancing Glimpses by Art Bollman
Cordwainer Bird also strongly-resembles the fictional character of the same name, created in 1931 by Jonathan Swift Somers III for the second of his Ralph von Wau Wau stories, The Doge Whose Barque Was Too Big for His Bight... actually the resemblence is uncanny, if not downright suspicious. One might almost think Somers had predicted events forty years in his future....
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