Gordon Rupert Dickson papers

Gordon Dickson was born in Edmonton, Canada on November 1, 1923. He moved permanently to the United States in 1937. Dickson attended the University of Minnesota between 1939 and 1943, then interrupted his studies to serve in the army between 1943 and 1946. He returned to the University in 1947 and stayed there until 1950. Dickson received his B.A. degree in June 1948 and did some graduate work thereafter, though he did not go on to get a graduate degree. Since 1950 Dickson has been a full-time writer with no other occupation.

At the time of his death, Dickson had published over 250 short stories, novels, and collections of his novels and short stories. He had also written a number of factual articles as well. Numerous of his works are currently available in reprint editions and various collections and anthologies. Over two million copies of his books have been sold.

Dickson's major work was a series of 12 inter-connected novels, known collectively as The Childe Cycle, upon which he began work in 1956. The cycle was outlined to include three historical novels, three contemporary novels, and six futuristic novels. By 1977 four of the futuristic novels had been published: Dorsai!(1957), Necromancer(1960), Soldier, Ask Not(1967), and Tactics of Mistake(1971). Other books in the cycle include The Final Encyclopedia(1984), The Chantry Guild (1988), Young Bleys(1991), Other(1994), and Antagonistwith David W. Dixon (2007). When completed, the twelve books were to form a single "novel of thematic argument," a literary form invented by Dickson and to be exemplified by the Childe Cycle. Some sources include Lost Dorsai, The Spirit of Dorsai, and The Dorsai Companionas part of the Childe Cycle, while other sources note these take place in the same setting but are not actually part of the Cycle.

Dickson has won several awards for his work. In 1965 he won the World Science Fiction Award (Hugo) for a novella version of Soldier, As Not, and in 1981 for the novella Lost Dorsai. He received the Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Award in 1966 for Call Him Lord, the E. E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction in 1975, and the August Derleth Award from the British Fantasy Association for The Dragon and the George.

Gordon Dickson died in February 2001.

For further information, please consult the bibliography of Dickson's work by Raymond H. Thompson (Boston, Mass. : G.K. Hall, 1983).