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 yardstick 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 personally 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 ef-
ficiency 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 Encyclopedia 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 suppressed 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 observer 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. (Coincidental-ly, 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 contemporary 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 issue. 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 pre-
cisely why he suffers so much in “Brothers” and afterwards. Amanda strikes a better balance than the men. Though the Star Maiden grieves both her twin suitors, 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 remains of his family and people a century later for Hal Mayne and his beloved, the third Amanda, to use in the evolutionary struggle.