Cordwainer Smith

Typical Smith short stories are "The Game of Rat and Dragon" whose hero is erotically obsessed with the cat he uses via a telepathic link to fight demonic beings that lurk in hyperspace, and "A Planet named Shayol" in which convicts are condemned to a penal planet where they grow extra organs for harvest and spend an eternity in drugged torment. His poetic work stretched the possibilities of space opera and future history and perpetually promises transcendence without having finally and anticlimactically to deliver it.