Gordon R. Dickson

Writer

• Born: November 1, 1923
• Birthplace: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• Died: January 31, 2001
• Place of death: Richfield, Minnesota

Biography

Gordon R. Dickson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on November 1, 1923. He was the son of Gordon Fraser Dickson, a mining engineer, and Maude Leola (Ford) Dickson, a teacher. Like fellow science-fiction writer A. E. Van Vogt, Dickson spent the first years of his life in western Canada, a circumstance that, some have speculated, led to both authors’ penchant for creating isolated, quasi-supermen protagonists. After his father died, Dickson and his mother moved to Minnesota, where he spent much of his life.

He served in the U. S. Army from 1943 to 1946, and attended the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where he obtained a B.A. in English (creative writing) in 1948. He began graduate study at the university, but he dropped out of school in 1950 to become a full-time freelance writer. His writing career was long and prolific, and he won many awards including the 1965 Hugo for novel for Soldier, Ask Not; the 1980 Hugo for novella for Lost Dorsai; and the 1981 Hugo for novelette for The Cloak and the Staff. He was nominated for the Hugo in 1978 for Time Storm, and in 1979 for The Far Call. He won the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1966 for his story “Call Him Lord.” He also won the E. E. Smith Award for imaginative fiction in 1975, the August Derleth Award from the British Fantasy Society in 1976 for The Dragon and the George, and the Jupiter Award in 1978 for Time Storm

Dickson was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1969 to 1971, and edited the organization’s twelfth volume of award winning writing in 1978. He is fondly remembered as a leader in the writing community and a mentor to young writers. He often collaborated with Poul Anderson, a fact which led to the accusation of his being, like Anderson, a libertarian right-wing writer, although from the perspective of later years, neither seems all that radical. Charges of Dickson’s creating lightweight female characters have more validity. His most ambitious science-fiction project was the Childe Cycle, a series of novels and stories describing the modern evolution of humanity, including Necromancer, Soldier, Ask Not, The Tactics of Mistake, The Chantry Guild, Spirit of Dorsai, and The Final Encyclopedia.

Dickson saw humanity fragmenting into three types of cultures, centering on militarism, philosophy, and faith. A hero would emerge who could contain and reintegrate all three, gaining the ability to understand and manipulate time and causality, much like Paul Atreides does in Frank Herbert’s Dune or the Second Foundation in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Dickson also became an accomplished fantasy writer, his main series describing the adventures of a modern mathematics professor who finds himself in the medieval era with the power to turn himself into a dragon. Suffering from increasingly debilitating asthma, Dickson died in 2001 in Richfield, Minnesota. He was a solid and satisfying science-fiction writer who foresaw a contentious but ultimately redeeming future for humankind.