Lost Dorsai

Afterword

The Plume and the Sword

by Sandra Miesel

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and origin of marvels."

- Goya

In life even as in art, the harmony of opposites is Gordon R. Dickson's constant goal. This man who unifies opposing principles in his fiction unites within himself the most disparate extremes of frivolity and keenness - the plume and sword alike are his to wear.

In person, Dickson's fluffiness has always made the greatest impression on the greatest number of people. He is everyone's favorite conventioneer. (During his forty years in sf fandom, he has attended hundreds of conventions.) His image as the jolly party-goer, singing and playing the guitar until dawn, led Ben Bova to parody My Darling Clementine in Dickson's honor. The chorus concludes: "Science fiction is his hobby/ But his main job's having fun."

Dickson is a veteran trencherman, a mainstay of epic dinner parties, but he has also been known to spend more time selecting the wine than eating the meal. His bizarre preference for drinking milk, juice, coffee, beer, and Bloody Marys at the same breakfast has been cause for comment since his student days at the University of Minnesota thirty years ago. Lately, allergies (including - alas - a mild one to wine) and a desire for waistline trimness have tempered these habits somewhat, but Dickson's zest for living remains uncommonly brisk.

Yet such pleasures are the least components of his joie de vivre. Dickson has a capacity for wonder that will not be worn out. It has been claimed that no one else can say "golly" quite as joyfully as he does. (Dickson's habit of burbling along in innocent schoolboy exclamations once inspired some of his friends to stage a "Gordon R. Dickson Murfle-Alike Contest.")

Enthusiasm colors everything he does. He not only admires fine craftsmanship, he quizzes craftsmen on the tools, techniques, and attitudes that support their skills. (How many men would demand to see the wrong side of embroidered fabric?) He is always eager for new knowledge and fresh experiences. Recent endeavors include lessons in bagpipe-playing and in akido. Moreover, he encourages the same adventurousness in others. His friends have found themselves wielding knives, making lace, or writing novels for the first time at his urging.

Dickson describes himself as "a galloping optimist," unshakably certain that "man's future is onward and upward.'" Right must inevitably triumph. He admits that human beings may not be quite perfectible - "Perfectible is a little too good to be true - but improvable, tremendously improvable by their own strength."

Idealism gives him confidence in his own potential as well as that of his species. After watching his own Childe Cycle gradually move from rejection to acceptance, after observing fractious humans slowly struggle to build things together, Dickson concludes that creativity can overcome all obstacles. It is the only sure key to progress.

This same confidence in creativity makes him patient with other people, no matter how unpromising they may seem. He is among the most approachable of all sf professionals. For instance, few others would have taken the time to explain the elementary rules of prosody to an aspiring ballad writer and then been on hand afterwards to applaud her first acceptable efforts. Dickson's forbearance, skill, and above all, his respect for even the grubbiest amateur's dignity, have made him a superb mentor for young authors who are serious about their art. (Among the newer names in sf who have at times listened to him are Joe Haldeman, Robert Aspirin, and Lynn Abbey.) Dickson tends to down play his influence because he believes that "fine teaching comes as automatically as breathing" to experienced writers. Yet his inner nature is revealed by the positive effects he has on those around him. For the past three decades his encouragement of talent and his support of professionalism have worked like buds of yeast to leaven the sf field.

One thing Dickson will not endure patiently is a shoddy performance. His Victorian upbringing imbued him with high standards of excellence. He has a born aristocrat's awareness of his own prerogatives, even in trivial matters: woe to the careless waiter who serves Dickson's vichyssoise improperly chilled. But his special ire is reserved for time-wasters too lazy to develop their own talents. "Some people," he com plains, "like my advice so much, they frame it and hang it on the wall instead of using it." Fortunately such failures are rare. Most of those who beseech his advice or cry on his broad shoulders put the experience to good use.

Dickson's helpfulness arouses a corresponding help fulness in others. Whether he asks for a Puritan sermon text, an Italian menu, a sample of Gregorian chant, or medical data on battle wounds, someone will promptly provide it - fandom is a living data bank. So grateful is he for help, he attracts almost too much solicitude. At times the attentiveness of friends reduces Dickson to the status of a favorite teddy bear in danger of having all its fur petted off.

Dickson's admirers do react intensely. Women's tears over the fate of Ian Graeme in Soldier, Ask Not prodded him to re-examine the implications of his text and see a solution to the tragedy. Other fans want to elaborate the Cycle's background with or without the author's sanction. There was the lawyer who speculated on interstellar legal systems and the artist who tried to predict future art tastes. The most conspicuous example of this phenomenon is a non-profit organization known as the Dorsai Irregulars which provides security services at sf conventions, sometimes in costume. The author has licensed their use of the Dorsai name and insignia.

Dickson appreciates such vivid identification be cause he enjoys playing roles himself. The historical persona he designed to join the Society for Creative Anachronism is "Kenneth of Otterburn," a fourteenth-century border lord whose heraldic badge is the otter. This character is a bow to duality in general and to Dickson's own Anglo-Scottish heritage in particular. One earlier member of his family. Simon Fraser, the eleventh Lord Lovat, was beheaded in 1747 for supporting Bonnie Prince Charlie. The official Dickson crest is: "a hart couchant gardant proper; at tired, or within two branches of laurel leaves vert in orle," which is to say, a stag with gilded horns at rest on a field bordered with green laurel leaves. The family motto is "Cubo sed euro," "I lie down but I remain watchful."

More importantly, this SCA project, like so many of Dickson's activities, is a remote preparation for the Childe Cycle. The climax of Childe, the concluding volume of the series, will be modeled on the Battle of Otterburn fought between the English and the Scots in 1388. Furthermore, investigating the life of an imaginary medieval nobleman will also give the author special insights into the mind of the real Sir John Hawkwood, hero of the Cycle's planned opening volume.

Dickson is never content to do his research from books, even from primary sources. Whenever possible, he must visit sites and handle actual artifacts. For ex ample, he absorbs historical mana by fingering Plantagenet coins and reading gothic manuscripts. When reality is unattainable, he turns to replicas. His most ambitious plan yet is to commission the making of a complete suit of armor such as Hawkwood might have worn. (He rejects suggestions that experiments with fleas, lice, and dysentery might be equally instructive.) So far, he has acquired only the mailshirt, helmet, and a magnificent pair of armored gloves. But attired in a friend's full equippage, Dickson cut a marvelously gallant figure - six feet of russet-haired, blue-eyed knight with a bit of lace visible at his wrist to accent the steel and leather. "I feel as if I could walk through doors," he proclaimed, striding off down the motel corridor. Fortunately, no other guests disputed his passage.

But his own experience did not suffice. He wanted to observe another man's reactions as well. So he convinced a less-than-eager Kelly Freas to try on the armor next. Freas, being shorter and stockier, probably approximated a real medieval knight better than Dickson. Others might have followed suit, but by then the outfit's undergarments were disagreeably drenched with sweat. The author's zeal for medieval weaponry is so compelling that on another occasion he insisted that one notably unmartial colleague take up arms and beat on the maple trees in Dickson's back yard with a sword - all by way of sealing a business partnership.

Although mimetic research sounds amusing, it is no game to Dickson but rather a measure of his dedication to his craft. He needs to set all his senses gathering data in order to generate the authentic details his writing requires. His creativity is almost a metabolic process: information digested, art synthesized. Consider the awesome volume of material he had to process for The Far Call, the finest realistic novel about the space program yet written. This book's flavor comes from the author's own fervent pro-space views. Its sub stance is the product of many visits to Kennedy Space Center and lengthy consultations with experts on the scene. Dickson believes he must eat the bread of a place before he can truly know it.

Dickson deliberately incorporates his own interests, experiences, and values in his fiction. Take, for in stance, his fascination with animal psychology. "I tend to gestalt things," he says. "I see humans and animals as illuminating one another by what they do and also humans and animals illuminating aliens and vice versa." Thus Dickson's favorite beasts show up in his pages, either wearing their own hides or disguised as extraterrestrials: bears (Spacial Delivery, The Alien Way), wolves (Sleepwalker's World), sea mammals (Home From the Shore, The Space Swimmers), cats (Time Storm, The Masters of Everon), and, of course, otters (Alien Art). On the other hand, Dickson lent his own antic enthusiasm and exasperating glee to the teddy bear-like Hokas (Earthman's Burden, Star Prince Charlie written with his old college classmate Poul Anderson). Dickson contemplating a gourmet meal or a fine guitar is the very image of a Hoka.

Guitar in hand, Dickson is a pillar of convention "filksings," gatherings of people who perform odd songs which may or may not have any bearing on sf. Although his tenor has lost its original clarity, his renditions of classics like The Face on the Barroom Floor or The Three Ravens are still enjoyable. It is even more of a treat to hear him sing his own compositions like the grim Battle Hymn of the Friendlies, the wistful love song from Necromancer, or the rollicking Ballad of the Shoshonu. This has inspired some of his fans to write Childe Cycle songs themselves.

Among sf writers, Dickson is second only to Poul Anderson in the ornamental use of songs and poetry. Like Anderson, Dickson was raised on folk ballads, epics, fairy tales, and the great nineteenth-century novels, although there was more of a British than a Scandinavian slant to his literary formation. Further more, Dickson along with Anderson, Robert A. Heinlein, Jerry Pournelle, Richard McKenna, John Brunner, and Cordwainer Smith, has been heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling, (Kipling's impact on sf, now reaching into its second and third generation, has never been adequately investigated.) However, Dickson also cites major mainstream American and Russian authors and even Thomas Mann among his influences.

One expects a professional writer to maintain a large library and, indeed, the walls of Dickson's Rich field, Minnesota home are lined with books. But Dickson is a true bibliophile. He loves books simply as physical objects, delighting in fine bindings and crisp pages. He shows a marked preference for hardbound volumes even for works of passing interest. Accompanying him to a bookstore is like tagging behind a tornado. His ever-expanding holdings are systematically catalogued and he maintains a complete collection of his own editions.

Dickson has stronger opinions than most writers on how his work should be illustrated and collects originals of the illustrations that please him. (Wallspace in his home not devoted to books is mostly covered with art.) His feeling for visual aesthetics was deepened by years of night classes at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. His studies taught him the difference between written and painted visions. As he ruefully observes, too often writers try to paint with their "writing equipment" while painters try to write with their "painting equipment."

Dickson's life and career are also molded by a complementary set of physical pursuits. Allergies - and time - now bar him from the camping, climbing, and other outdoor recreations he formerly enjoyed. How ever, on a recent trip to Florida he caught the small marlin that decorates his office wall. Still, the experiences he has had with wildlife and open spaces remain with him as raw material for creative efforts. He would not be the same man or the same writer if boyhood memories of Pacific breakers did not echo in his dreams.

Dickson's handling of nature is subtler than Anderson's lush, almost pantheistic approach. He sees it primarily as a milieu for human action. (His preference for somber, austere landscapes is most sensitively revealed in Alien Art.) Having lived in Western Canada as a child and in Minnesota since prompts his frequent use of these regions as story settings, either directly or as models for alien worlds. His beloved Canadian mountains, "the bones of the continent," become the cool, rocky highlands of the Dorsai. Northcountry lakes and woodlands reappear in Pro.

Indoors, Dickson's ardor for fitness shames his more sedentary friends. His ambition to achieve something of the high performance under stress he admires in tough old fighting men like Hawkwood led to his involvement with the martial arts - the chivalry of medieval Europe and the bushido of feudal Japan have much in common. Formal training has done more than impart special physical skills. It has also reinforced views he already held on self-mastery and functional beauty. Performing a clean knife pass takes the discipline of a dancer; a well-designed blade is a pleasing piece of metal sculpture.

Dickson uses the Oriental martial arts to study the attainment and control of that perennially fascinating phenomenon, the exaltation state. He can and on occasion has discussed the topic for long hours on end. What lies behind hysterical strength, stunning intuition, heroic virtue? Creativity is once again his answer. When human beings operate at the very highest levels their bodies, minds, or spirits permit, they enter a transcendant phase Dickson calls "creative overdrive." In this condition, they can direct their conscious and unconscious powers to some otherwise unreachable goal. Salvation is integration and creativity integrates.

Thus, cerebral, artistic adventure heroes are Dickson's specialty. For instance, in The Final En cyclopedia, Hal Mayne is a poet who has passed through previous incarnations as a soldier (Dorsai!) and a mystic {Necromancer). Michael de Sandoval in Lost Dorsal is a musician and Cletus Grahame in Tactics of Mistake has tried painting. Dickson endows his heroes with the talents he himself esteems and lets them demonstrate overdrive by their deeds. They are offered as examples of what the entire race could achieve if only its creative energies were fully liberated.

Dickson himself is an advertisement for his theories. His memory lapses are legendary - once when making introductions, he could not recall his own brother's name. He often confuses the titles of his books, scrambles the locations of his planets, and forgets the lyrics to his own songs. Nevertheless, his mind be comes astonishingly supple and efficient when overdrive directs it in the service of his art. In this heightened state, he can move briskly through public appearances though exhausted and can soar to fresh imaginative insights. For Dickson, creativity is both the journey and the journey's end. It enables him to unite the plumy and swordlike extremes of his own nature in order to work.

He has an unparalleled sense of vocation, a commitment to his artistic mission as keen as any crusader's vow. By writing the Cycle, he hopes to bring the evolutionary progress he describes that much closer. When asked if he expects the Childe Cycle to appear on some thirtieth century list of Ten Books That Changed the Cosmos, Dickson replied with a smile, "And what are the other nine?" His idealism has been dismissed as naive in some quarters but events within and without the sf field continue to vindicate him.

Some authors stumble into their trade for lack of anything better to do; others are forced into it by economic necessity. Not so Dickson: "I've been a writer all my life, as far back as I can remember. Nobody ever told me not to until later on, by which time it was too late." His talents were encouraged by his parents, an Australian-born mining engineer and an American school teacher who met and married in Canada. His older half-brother is the distinguished Canadian novelist Lovat Dickson, but his mother's influence was the crucial formative one. Her reading him books and telling him stories are among his fondest early memories.

Maude Dickson, a wonderfully gracious and spry lady of ninety-one, modestly disputes the importance of her efforts. Nevertheless, her son was a precocious writer: a newspaper published his poem "Apple Blossoms" when he was only seven years old. In 1939, at age fifteen, he entered the University of Minnesota to major in creative writing but his studies were interrupted by military service during World War II. Army aptitude tests predicted he would have a bright future as a dentist.

Dickson graduated in 1948, planning to take his doctorate, teach, and write on the side. He abandoned this "unduly sensible" scheme to follow his gift and write full-time. It was a desperate gamble. He sup ported himself by selling his blood - twice as often as permitted - and subsisted on a diet of stale bread, peanut butter, and vitamin pills. His sacrifices were rewarded when his first sf story, "The Friendly Man," appeared in Astounding in February, 1951.

Three decades, 40 novels, and 175 shorter works later, the gamble may be said to have paid off in honors and prosperity. Dickson has won the Hugo for "Soldier, Ask Not" (1965), the Nebula for "Call Him Lord" (1966), the Jupiter for Time Storm (1977), and the British Fantasy Award for The Dragon and the George (1978) as well as receiving many other award nominations. These days, a dedicated staff including a full-time business manager and part-time secretarial and research workers assist him. Maintaining his affairs in good order requires an otter-keeper's patience but the task should become easier once the intricacies of his newly purchased computer system are unraveled.

Dickson is one master who seeks perfection in his craft and freely shares his expertise with fellow guildsmen. He served two terms as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America (1969-71) and is currently working to extend the benefits of SFWA's organizational experience to the fledgling Association of Science Fiction Artists. Much in demand as a speaker and resource person, he is one of the few non-academic professional writers in the Science Fiction Research Association. He took part in one Clarion Workshop for new writers and regularly attended the Milford Conference for established writers during the 1960's. (However, he was never known as a member of the infamous "Milford Mafia.") He has also been invited to participate in sessions of the Science Fiction Institute, a teacher-training program held annually at the University of Kansas. Thus, chat by speech, he fosters professional excellence and public understanding.

Dickson's mastery of technique combines theoretical lessons acquired in university classes taught by such people as Sinclair Lewis and Robert Penn Warren with ruthlessly practical ones learned in the low-paying sf magazine market. His faith in his own ability saw him safely through both processes. "I was a fully-formed writer long before I got my degree," he explains. "I had enough mass and momentum along the road I wanted to travel so that I couldn't be jolted off." Neither lethal classroom situations nor the pres sure of gaining enough story skills to stay alive blocked his progress.

Now in the mellowness of his maturity, Dickson is reaching the destination he chose for himself half a century ago. He successfully merges style and content, polished literary form and research-based substance, into one liquid whole. Although clarity can be a handicap when critics equate obscurity with profundity, Dickson's art conceals his artfulness on purpose with a view to reaching the widest possible audience. He believes that "good fiction should become transparent so people end up reading it not so much for the words as for the ideas."

Dickson has always been a highly conscious writer. There is nothing random or spontaneous in his tightly structured prose, never a wheel misplaced, never a gear unmeshed. He seeks the optimum configuration for his fictional drive train in order to transmit messages most efficiently. Philosophical convictions generate the relentless power of his best work.

He calls his method of rendering principles in fiction the "consciously thematic novel." This technique, developed from mainstream models, enables him to argue a specific point of view without resorting to propaganda. It presents an unbiased selection of natural incidents to support its thesis. "The aim is to make the theme such an integral part of the novel that it can be effective upon the reader without ever having to be stated explicitly," says Dickson. A consciously thematic story can, of course, be read and enjoyed for its entertainment value alone. But ideally, when the reader sees all the resonances and repetitions, the author hopes that "he will do the work of looking at this slew of evidence I've laid out and will, on his own, come to the conclusion I'd like him to reach."

Dickson calls the Childe Cycle "my showpiece for the consciously thematic novel." Curiously enough, the Cycle itself originated in this very way, through a deeper interpretation of pre-existing evidence - as though the unconscious side of the author's mind were operating on the conscious side via thematic methods.

During the 1940's, Dickson started - but never finished - an historical novel entitled The Pikeman about a young Swiss mercenary serving in fifteenth century Italy. This plot, enhanced by ideas drawn from Rafael Sabatini's Bellanon and from Astounding editor John W. Campbell, yielded Dorsai! in 1959. Then during the course of a night-time asthma attack at the following summer's Milford Conference, a hitherto unsuspected pattern sprang at Dickson from the pages of Dorsai!. "Eureka! I had it!" he recalls. "I got up the next morning and spent three hours trying to tell Richard McKenna about it, a process by which I sorted it out in my mind. The essential structure was born full blown at that moment."

The Childe Cycle is an epic of human evolution, a scenario for mankind's rite of passage. Over the course of a thousand years, from the fourteenth century to the twenty-fourth, interactions between three archetypical Prime Characters - the Men of Faith, War, and Philosophy - succeed in uniting the unconscious/conservative and the conscious/progressive halves of the racial psyche. The result is a fully-evolved being endowed with intuition, empathy, and creativity whom Dickson calls Ethical-Responsible Man. At that point, the human organism will no longer be a "childe" but a spurred and belted knight.

In Dickson's future universe, mankind has shattered into Splinter Cultures that develop only one facet of human nature at the expense of the others. The most important Splinter Cultures are: the Dorsai (Warriors - Body), the Exotics (Philosophers - Mind), and the Friendlies (Believers - Spirit) but none of these is fully human and none has the ultimate society. Dickson's Messianic hero Donal Graeme, first-born of the Ethical-Responsible Men, lives three lives and thereby absorbs the best qualities of Warrior, Philosopher, and Believer. His indomitable will divides the racial psyche in order to develop it, then reunites it in order to perfect it

When completed, the Cycle will consist of three historical, three contemporary, and six science fiction novels. Dorsai! (1959), Necromancer (1960), Soldier, Ask Not (1968), and Tactics of Mistake (1971) have already appeared and are scheduled for reissue by Ace. The Final Encyclopedia and Childe are currently in preparation. These novels are accompanied by a series of shorter works or "illuminations" that stand outside the argument of the Cycle proper but share the same set tings and characters: "Warrior" (1965), "Brothers" (1973), "Amanda Morgan" (1979) and Lost Dorsai (1980). "Amanda Morgan" and "Brothers" have been set in a narrative frame with illustrations and published by Ace as The Spirit of Dorsai (1979). Although each work can stand alone, it is even more enjoyable understood in proper context. The novels are best read in order of publication rather than according to internal chronology - one should begin with Dorsai! to follow Donal Graeme's forays backwards and forwards in time.

The illuminations must not be lumped together with the Cycle in one amorphous mass. There is no such thing as the "Dorsai series." Dickson's subject is man kind, not the Dorsai. Indiscriminate labeling also obscures the uniqueness of Dickson's plan. He is not writing a coherent future history in the manner of Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, or Jerry Pournelle. Neither is he merely re-using a familiar universe the way Andre Norton and R.A. Lafferty do. Least of all is Dickson building alien planets like Hal Clement or alien cultures like C. J. Cherryh.

Notice the vagueness of the chronology, the improbability of the colonial locales, and the essential familiarity of the environments thanks to terraforming. Dickson's universe is not wildly futuristic despite advanced military hardware and a few props like floating chairs. The interstellar flights shown might as well be intercontinental.

Compare Dickson's approach with the exoticism of Frank Herbert. Although Dune postdates Dorsai!, it, too, features a Messianic hero surrounded by equivalents of the Dorsai, the Exotics, and the Friend-lies. Herbert clothes his philosophy in fabulously intricate costumes but Dickson presents his in sleekly functional garb to reveal the form beneath the fabric. In all respects. Dickson's universe is a selected reality, neither naturalistic nor fantastic.

Dickson has staunchly resisted pressure from enthusiastic readers to elaborate the Cycle's background. He introduces new details (such as Dorsai domestic arrangements in "Amanda Morgan") only as required to tell his story. For most of the two decades between Dorsai! and The Final Encyclopedia, he carried all his notes in his head. This bred a host of small in consistencies, now purged from these Ace editions. The artistic energy that might have otherwise gone into constructing genealogies or inventing languages powers the illuminations instead. These short works enable the author to spotlight certain characters and events within the Cycle without disturbing its structure.

The illuminations serve many purposes. They dramatize events that are off-stage in the novels: Dorsai non-combatants repelling Earth's elite troops has to be taken on faith in Tactics of Mistake but "Amanda Morgan" makes the defense convincing. They magnify incidents: Kensie's death is a mere plot device in Dorsai!, attains mythic stature in Soldier, Ask Not, and is finally depicted in "Brothers." They bring characters into focus: Corunna El Man has only a cameo role in Dorsai! but serves as the roving narrator of Lost Dorsai and may become the hero of his own illumination someday. Above all, they elucidate principles: "Warrior" reveals the values a true man of war will live and die for.

Each illumination examines the twin moral issues of integrity and responsibility: how can human beings reconcile what they must be with what they must do? The major arena of conflict is the will - notice how little space is actually devoted to physical combat. The stakes are higher in each succeeding contest because the fates of more people are at risk: a few individuals in "Warrior," a city in "Brothers," a planet in "Amanda Morgan," and all the inhabited worlds in Lost Dorsai. Victory must always be bought in blood because the willingness to die is the ultimate proof of commitment. Again and again, the ancient myth of the hero's saving death is played out among the stars. Martyrdom at the hands of enemies in the illuminations complements Donal's voluntary self-sacrifices in the Cycle.

"Warrior" grew from a tiny detail in Dorsai! - the terrible scar on Ian's arm. This earliest and simplest of the illuminations sets the pattern for those that followed. It proclaims that fidelity to ideals and duty will ultimately prevail, whatever the odds. Vice is always vulnerable because it cannot comprehend virtue's tactics.

"Warrior" makes explicit what Dorsai! only implied: one of Ian's special functions as the ultimate Man of War is to avenge sins committed by and against warriors. In this story, set a decade before the opening of Dorsai.', Ian is still a young commandant. He punishes a reckless officer for wasting his men's lives, then destroys the culprit's gangster brother for goading him to hunt glory. Through Ian, the lone wolf facing mad dogs, Dickson defines the honorable and dishonorable uses of force.

Ian's triumph is shown through the eyes of Tyburn, a conscientious policeman who tries to protect Ian de spite his civilian distaste for the military. The reader sees what Tyburn cannot: he, too, in his humble way is a righteous Defender. The proud gifts that bloom in the Dorsai still remain in the rootstock people of Earth. Bringing the potential in all persons to harvest, not glorifying supermen, is the Cycle's goal.

Dickson uses an ordinary man as a "lens of heroic experience" even more skillfully in "Brothers." This story's first person narrator is St. Marie police chief Tomas Velt. He brings the larger-than-life Graeme twins into scale and his reactions make the epic events surrounding Kensie's death believable. Tom is stubbornly normal. He knows his own limitations but does not let them paralyze him. His balance and dedication collide with the self-hatred and thoughtlessness of his best friend and symbolic brother Pel. Pel adores Kensie yet betrays him; Tom undervalues Ian yet aids him. Responsibility is the thread tying Tom to Ian. It makes him Ian's smaller counterpart just as Tyburn was in "Warrior." The policeman and the commander cooperate to find Kensie's assassins before Dorsai wrath falls on the city where the outrage occurred.

Ian's dilemma is the crudest. He must uphold the Dorsai ideal of restraint and at the same time obtain justice for his slain brother. He risks his life rather than his principles and so gains the victory. His grief for the brother who was his "other self" is measureless in its very silence, like a scream of agony pitched too low for human ears to hear. Initially, Ian shows "no more emotion at his brother's death than he might have on discovering an incorrect Order of the Day." Yet his wordless last farewell to Kensie is fierce enough to crumple steel - and spectators' hearts.

Though Ian is left to walk in darkness all his days, dying cannot dim Kensie's godlike radiance. In retrospect, his murder becomes a sacrifice for his death saves what it was meant to destroy. When the people of St. Marie mourn this beautiful dead Balder, they are cleansed by their own tears. Kensie becomes their adopted hero. By emulating him they will achieve the self-respect and self-control their "fat little farm world" had hitherto lacked. Furthermore, Kensie's assassination interlocks with the voluntary martyrdom of Jamethon Black, the Friendly officer who gives up his life to save his troops in Soldier, Ask Mot. Both are victims of Tarn Olyn, a vengeful Earthman who negates everything they stand for. Yet, in the end this Judas is redeemed, partly through the merits of Kensie, Jamethon, and Ian. When wholeness of heart unites with devotion to duty, nothing evil can endure.

"Amanda Morgan" is as resolutely feminine as "Brothers" is masculine. The Spirit of Dorsal's two components fit together as smoothly as yin and yang, as naturally as root and blossom. Ian flourishes in the high summer of Dorsai. Amanda was already there at the first signs of spring. Though a century divides them, hero and heroine are complementary halves of the same defensive shield.

As her descendant Amanda III explains, Earth-born Amanda I "was Dorsai before there was a Dorsai world. What she was, was the material out of which our people and our culture here were made." Like the matriarch in John Brown's Body, Amanda builds her homestead "out of her blood and bone/ With her heart for the Hall's foundation-stone." She builds well. Her household, Fal Morgan, endures until the Splinter Cultures are no more.

This dynamic heroine makes "Amanda Morgan" a major landmark in Dickson's literary development. Women simply do not exist within the pages of "Brothers" - even its underlying myths are wholly male. However, in the six years following the original publication of "Brothers," Dickson taught himself step by step to expand this "collapsed area of the continuum." Tracing the course of his progress would be an essay in itself, but The Spirit of Dorsal is a fine yard stick to measure the gap covered.

Sex-role reversals abound in "Amanda Morgan" without shrieking for attention - this is art, not propaganda. No capital letters announce that the Dorsai world is a de facto matriarchy. Initially, women had to manage planetary affairs while their men were off to the wars. (The analogy to medieval chatelaines is obvious and intended.) As economic conditions improve, the proportion of soldiers in the population declines. By Ian's time, only a minority of Dorsai - women as well as men - are professional soldiers, but planetside women still guard the continuity of the culture.

Individual merit affects the pattern as much as necessity. While avoiding the fashionable error of belittling all males to exalt all females, this story allows men to be sensitive and women tough. Minor touches carry out the theme: a reckless young girl protects a smaller, shyer boy; formidable General Khan meekly prepares sandwiches. Major examples cluster around Amanda herself. In the colony's early days, she led the fight against outlaw gangs. Years later when Earth invades the Dorsai, she is still "the best person to command" her District - even at age ninety-two. Amanda person ally defies the invaders' General Amorine. (Note the unconscious word play in their names.) Neither his legions nor his shiny hardware impress her, for her strength is that of family, hearth, and the living world.

Unconquerable Amanda is both memorable and complex. Although she is Dorsai through and through, she (and her namesakes the second and third Amandas) can believe, think, and fight like the fully evolved humans of the future. Yet she is not complacent about her own excellence. Self-criticism keeps her learning and growing in her tenth decade of life. In the course of the story she achieves new insights. She discovers that "you love what you give to - and in proportion as you give." (Ian lives by the reverse principle.) She realizes that the most loving thing an integrated and responsible person can do is allow others to master these virtues for themselves. She learns how to let go after a lifetime of holding fast.

"To strive and not to yield" might be the Dorsai motto: no power can break the Dorsai will. It is the capacity to resist Wrong that defines a Dorsai, not physical might. (The one Dorsai renegade mentioned is superbly gifted.) The Dorsai spirit blazes as brightly in crippled bodies as in sound ones, as purely in Amanda as in Ian. What Dorsai indomitability protects is the right to be free. This is their practical function in interstellar politics and their metaphysical function in racial evolution. Whether they die defending their homes or attacking on some foreign battlefield, Dorsai must buy their freedom with blood. These Defenders' readiness to die - and the tactical efficiency of their dying - is their margin of survival.

Lost Dorsai couples the willingness to die with the refusal to kill. This story demonstrates that a Dorsai can even be a pacifist without repudiating his cultural ideals. Tensions between integrity and responsibility are especially severe here because of the number of characters and the intertwined complexity of the difficulties they face.

Both Michael and the second Amanda are "afraid that their instincts would lead them to do what their thinking minds had told them they should not do." His problem is war, hers, love. Her dilemma entangles Kensie, the warrior who loves her and Ian, the warrior she loves. Michael's runs parallel to that of Corunna who lost his beloved in war.

All the knots pull tight during the siege of Gebel Nahar, a "few against the many" situation so typical of Dickson. (The siege of Earth in The Final En cyclopedia will be the ultimate example.) This military crisis is a symptom of grave social imbalances, not only in Nahar but on Ceta and all the inhabited worlds. The web tears at a single pull. Michael's sacrifice affects far more than the lives immediately around him. He adds a bit of impetus to the forces breaking humanity free from the net that confines it.

Every issue in Lost Dorsai shares a common factor: the cleavage between being and doing. The troubled groups and individuals shown cannot reconcile private essence with social existence. The Naharese are obsessed with the form rather than the substance of el honor. They have no valid ethic to bridle their violent impulses. This morbid culture points up the healthiness of the Dorsai. It also demonstrates that in the long run, all Splinter Cultures are too distorted to be viable. The Dorsai regard Naharese martial fantasies as obscene - empty and unreal as pornography. But their judgment may be too harsh. Even these comic-opera soldiers can respond to a genuine hero when one appears.

Michael renounced his Dorsai heritage rather than compromise his non-violent beliefs. Corunna has sup pressed his feelings to bury himself in his work. The Conde is the ghost of an authority figure, not a man. His underlings prefer to keep their lives instead of their honor. Ian neglects his own needs in favor of the gestalt identity he shares with his twin. Kensie tries to attain his own dream without gauging the impact on Ian. Amanda is torn between the wish to belong to one person and the need to be available to many.

Padma is the only balanced personality in the cast and the only one without a quandary. This passive ob server watches and learns but does not appear to grow inwardly during the ordeal. For one dedicated to evolutionary progress, he is curiously static. There is a greater irony in the fiery Conde's unslaked thirst for martyrdom. The cup of glory goes instead to Michael, who never desired it. Paradoxically, it is Michael's refusal of his original calling that positions him for an unprecedented adventure - no other Dorsai ever defeated an army singlehandedly.

Dickson allows his hero a grand ceremonial tribute after death. There is none in the story that inspired Lost Dorsai, Kipling's "Drums of the Fore and Aft" (1889). There two scruffy British drummer boys turn rout into victory by charging the Afghans alone, but all the recognition they get from their shamefaced regiment is an unmarked grave.

Michael's monument, the Leto de muerte, is a custom Dickson invented for this story. It was suggested by the practice of throwing prizes - even personal belongings - to successful bullfighters, something he had witnessed during travels in Mexico. (Roman gladiators may have been rewarded in the same way.) He was not thinking of the mass sacrifices of battle trophies made by the Iron Age Celts, although the gestures are similar in spirit.

Dickson modeled quasi-Hispanic Nahar partly on Galicia. The Gallegos are the Scots or Bretons of Spain - a romantic but suspicious people. Their lean country is the ancient heart of Spain and the site of its holiest shrine, Santiago de Compostela. (Coincidentally, among Galicia's cities is La Coruna - medieval Corunna - from which the story's narrator takes his name.) However, Nahar's social conditions - hungry campesinos and greedy ricones - resemble those in con temporary Latin America. The Dorsai could easily be U.S. military advisers caught in a revolution. But the merits of the two warring parties are not really at is sue. What matters is preventing the tyrant William from exploiting the situation to his own advantage. Cries for justice - in Nahar and elsewhere - will not be properly answered until the Cycle's close a century hence.

Since the moment of fulfillment is not yet at hand, partial solutions are all Lost Dorsai's survivors can reach. Corunna's heart is just beginning to heal. (He will seem normal when he meets Donal Graeme in Dorsai I.) Whatever Padma has learned, it does not include a profound understanding of the Graeme twins. But having shared the Gebel Nahar experience with them may dispose him to act on their behalf in "Brothers." Losing Amanda weakens Kensie's will to live enough to doom him in "Brothers" about five years later. The excess of fraternal love Ian shows by refusing to compete with Kensie for Amanda is precisely why he suffers so much in "Brothers" and after wards. Amanda strikes a better balance than the men. Though the Star Maiden grieves both her twin suit ors, she does win peace of soul for herself. She becomes a spiritual mother to her people as the first Amanda was a physical one.

Only Michael's victory is final because it is sealed in death. Michael is a willing sacrificial lamb. Kensie is a bright golden Achilles cut down in his prime. Ian, on the other hand, endures like a battered Herakles. He is the ultimate Dorsai, with a darkness in him so deep it bedazzles. He demonstrates how much harder it is to live heroically than to die heroically. Not for Ian the quick, sharp moment of trial. He must prove himself day in and day out through one grim moral choice after another. His leadership and example help the Dorsai survive desperate times. Thus something re mains of his family and people a century later for Hal Mayne and his beloved, the third Amanda, to use in the evolutionary struggle.

Thus the illuminations, like the Childe Cycle they complement, turn on the question of balance. Though the demands of integrity and responsibility can clash, they should unite to reinforce each other. As the second Amanda concludes: " 'In the end the only way is to be what you are and do what you must. If you do that, everything works.' " Balance through union is a universal imperative for the race as well as the individual. The conscious and unconscious aspects of human nature must come together. Then evolved mankind - intuitive, empathic, creative - can win the future with out losing the past.

To dramatize these principles, Dickson has in effect assembled his own set of secular-historical archetypes. The Cycle and the illuminations function like an original system of mythology that correlates with nearly every area of human experience. It has shaped the author as much as he has shaped it: life anticipates art; art elucidates life. Dickson could apply Hopkins' definition to himself: "What I do is me: for that I came." His twenty-year quest to complete the Childe Cycle has become a kind of initiation for him, both as an artist and as a man. He tried to live the unity he preaches by combining fluffy and intense traits within himself. He knows that separately, the plume is frivolous and the sword ruthless. But together they are gallant.

The plume waves. The sword flashes. The proud chevalier has pledged himself to see the journey through and will not count the cost of keeping faith.

Editor's note: As a special bonus for readers o/Lost Dorsai, the author has consented to the publication of an extensive excerpt from his great work-in-progress, The Final Encyclopedia. Penultimate novel in the Childe Cycle, Mr. Dickson feels that The Final Encyclopedia is his most significant work to date. It commences on the following page.