American SF and fantasy writer, best known for his
Childe Cycle/Dorsai future history.
His other works include the
Dragon Knight series, in which a couple of 20th-century graduate students find themselves in an alternate world that resembles Medieval England but with magic, dragons, and fairies; and the comedy
Hoka series, co-written with
Poul Anderson, about a planet whose inhabitants spend all their time pretending to be characters from Earth fiction.
Works by Gordon R. Dickson with their own trope pages include:
Other works by Gordon R. Dickson provide examples of:
- Deflector Shields: In Way of the Pilgrim the personal force-shield of any Aalag soldier would allow him to hold out indefinitely against any weapons humanity could throw at him. Even nukes. The ship-board version is presumably even more robust.
- Heavyworlder: In a short story, which adds an uncommon corollary: things fall faster (or rather, accelerate at a higher rate) on a high-gravity world. One alien from such a world is somewhat stronger, but much faster, because falling over on such a planet is a bad idea and being able to catch falling things is usually helpful too.
- Superweapon Surprise: In a short story, an aggressive alien race discovers Earth by analysis of floating space debris and launches a covert surveillance mission as a prelude to invasion. Sadly for the aliens, they discover that the humans not only know about them, they used the alien mission as a tool to psychologically profile the would-be conquerors and find out all about their civilization and military capabilities.
- Vichy Earth: The Way of the Pilgrim tells a pretty straightforward interpretation of this trope, with the protagonist, a translator/pet for the occupying Aalaag, organizing a revolution with the power of the indomitable human spirit. They have to, since militarily La Résistance is futile—if he had to, one fully armored Aalaag could defeat every human army in an afternoon.
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