It is very idiosyncratic. A heavy role for psionics, uplifted animal species, and animal brains conditioned to perform tasks and then preserved in something like a circuit board. And space, economics, politics, and a civil rights movement for the uplifted animals.
"Oh yeah, I'm here on another planet having a telepathic chat with an uplifted cat who is mad about the oppression of her species."
But engaging writing and worldbuilding that makes that feel more plausible.
I think you could say that it's space opera that puts organisms' bodies and minds at the heart of things, rather than machines. Electronic devices with any kind of important agency in the stories are rather few and far between, but stuff about bodies and minds, and what Cordwainer Smith could imagine them doing and wanting, kept coming back again and again and again.
Anyway thanks for the reminder!
I enjoyed Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia (1975). Australians in space, and utterly weird things to do with sheep (sorry, that may sound a bit iffy, but the book is cool).
I'm having a hard time finding that comic book series across the translation barrier.
That being said, I loved Mother Hittons Little Kittons
NESFA Press has excellent omnibus reissues of The Rediscovery of Man and Norstrilia. I just wish they had eBook versions as well like they recently did for Fredric Brown.
I myself first read his work in French translation when I was 12 or so (unlike the US, classics like Cordwainer Smith or Fredric Brown never went out of print in France, thanks to Denoël's excellent Présence du Futur imprint).
R A Lafferty, Alfred Bester, maybe Algis Budrys? And a bit later, James Tiptree Jr.
Definitely agree with Sturgeon.
Either good scifi is getting harder to find or I'm turning into a right snob.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
It's always easier to find good material after the fact, going back in time and letting others filter it, instead of trying to figure out which of the present day material is not crap.