Gordon Rupert Dickson (November) 1, 1923

Gordon Rupert Dickson (November 1, 1923 – January 31, 2001) was a Canadian-American science fiction writer. He was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000.[1]

Dickson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1923. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1937.[2] He served in the United States Army, from 1943 to 1946, and received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Minnesota, in 1948. From 1948 through 1950 he attended the University of Minnesota for graduate work. His first published speculative fiction was the short story "Trespass!", written jointly with Poul Anderson, in the Spring 1950 issue of Fantastic Stories Quarterly (ed. Sam Merwin), the inaugural number of Fantastic Story Magazine as it came to be titled. Next year three of his solo efforts were published by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction and one appeared in Planet Stories. Anderson and Dickson also inaugurated the Hoka series with "The Sheriff of Canyon Gulch" (Other Worlds Science Stories, May 1951).[3]

Dickson is probably most famous for his Childe Cycle and the Dragon Knight series. He won three Hugo awards and one Nebula award.

For a great part of his life, he suffered from the effects of asthma. He died of complications from severe asthma.[4]

John Clute has characterized Dickson as a "gregarious, engaging, genial, successful man of letters", who had not been an introvert.[5] Clute considers Dickson a science fiction romantic.[5] The early Canadian years are not thought to have exerted an all-too strong influence onto the author's work.[2] Nevertheless, Clute stresses in connection to Dickson that science fiction welcomes "images of heightened solitude, romantically vague, limitless landscapes, and an anguished submission to afflatus", due to its origin in Gothic fiction.[2]


Clute points out that Dickson, like Poul Anderson, with whom he collaborated in the Hoka series, "[tends] to infuse an austere Nordic pathos into wooded, rural midwestern American settings".[5] His works often have (misogynistic) mercenaries as their protagonists and deal with aliens that are "less deracinated and more lovable than humans" (Clute).[5] They "are inclined to take on a heightened, sagalike complexion" (Clute),[5] particularly through the insertion of lyric poetry that is sometimes rather inferior.[5]

Born November 1, 1923
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Died January 31, 2001 (aged 77)
Richfield, Minnesota, USA
Occupation Writer
Nationality American
Period 1950–2001
Genres Science fiction, fantasy
Notable work(s) Childe Cycle