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. Donal! (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 settings 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 mankind, 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 inconsistencies, 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 despite 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.