INTRODUCTION

 

The Quiet Giant

 

by Spider Robinson

 

Consider the Great Pyramid of Cheops, dominating the vast plateau of Giza. There it has stood since at least 2200 B.C., magnificent and awe inspiring, thirteen acres at the base.

Start considering that pyramid at about the time of Christ, and after about eighteen hundred years all you'll have come up with is that it's the god-damnedest tomb ever built. Only on second look, after you have refined your tools of observation, will you discern that it is indisputably not a tomb, but an astronomical observatory of Palomar precision, as well as a perfect timepiece, calendar, theodolite for surveyors, and geodetic and geographic landmark for the known world of its time. In order to have built it as they did, the ancient "primitive" Egyptians had to have known the precise circumference and shape of the planet, its distance from the sun, the existence and period of the precession of the equinoxes, and the value of pi to four decimal places – not to mention a hell of a lot of trigonometry.

Yet you don't have to know any of that to enjoy the Great Pyramid. Just look at the thing – it's literally the oldest and most astounding tourist attraction in existence, awesomely beautiful.

If you're not careful, you may only enjoy this book. For Gordon R. Dickson is a quiet giant, and this collection of his best short works is like unto a pyramid: Their mere appearance is highly enjoyable. Oh, only a few of them are anything like pyramidally vast in scope – but taken together they provide a view of man and his place in the universe at least as striking as that from the top of a pyramid. Gordy is a consistently reliable entertainer.

But if you take a second, deeper look, you may observe the exquisite skill with which these stories were crafted, and realize that implicit in their construction is a knowledge and understanding that was not at first apparent.

Anybody can enjoy a Fred Astaire dance – but if you take a second look, with a dancer's eye, you become even more impressed with the insane difficulty of those apparently effortless moves. The thing about really good carpentry is that it at no time obtrudes itself upon your attention: It manifests itself (to a noncarpenter) mostly as an utter absence of flaws, which is a subtle thing to pick up on. If you're not a mechanic, you may fail to realize what a great car your Volvo is – until you notice that it's fifteen years old and still running.

In just this way Gordy Dickson has time and again made world-class storytelling look so easy that only once have the Science Fiction Writers of America awarded him their Nebula (for "Call Him Lord," herein included), and only once have you, the readers, awarded him a Hugo (for "Soldier, Ask Not," too long for inclusion). While the rest of us advertise our writing muscles with theatrical grunts and groans, Gordy spends his time quietly, unobtrusively, effortlessly toting around pyramid-sized blocks of stone.

His are the real muscles.

I happened to be familiar with many of these stories already. I enjoyed rereading them enormously. Some of these Volvos are fifteen years old or more, and they all still run like a top. And each and every one of them repays that second, closer look. Editor Jim Frenkel's careful selection and arrangement (a staggering job, when you consider that he had over a million words of prime fiction from which to choose) is designed not only to demonstrate that there is no such thing as a typical Dickson story, but to stir up your brain as well. Try reading the last four stories in this book in a single afternoon, after each one asking yourself the question: "What does it mean to be human?" I find it incredible that a single writer could give us four such profoundly disparate answers. But then pyramids face in four directions.

If you just came here to be entertained, if all you want is a good read, then you've come to the right window. But if you want something a little more subtle, if you're willing to invest just a bit more than surface attention . . . you're in Fat City.

 

 

A few words about Gordon R. Dickson the man:

He is a renegade Canadian, born in Alberta in 1923. He has lived since age thirteen in Minneapolis, where he is something of a local landmark. He has been president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. His first novel was published in 1956.

He is one of the few people I know in this benighted age who understand that alcohol is for being merry. His capacity for merriment is legendary in sf circles and elsewhere.

Indeed, Gordy's capacity for anything is legendary. The first time I met him, Ben Bova took us both out to a restaurant in Boston where the proprietress/cook was so telepathic that, when we all settled on spaghetti and meatballs, she brought us portions of distinctly different sizes, which uncannily turned out to be exactly as much as each of us felt like eating. Gordy's portion was bigger than Ben's and mine combined.

But Gordy is a gentle giant; perhaps the gentlest man I know. He gives of his time prodigiously, and he may be the best-loved man in science fiction. A lot of us in this business have learned to rely on his unerring diagnostic skill as a story-doctor – we bring him stories we're stuck on, the plots that won't jell and the knots that won't untangle, and invariably he says a few words and we walk away smiting our foreheads and saying, "Of course!" (Last month Gordy said two sentences to me that changed a good novella into a better novel, which will sell for much more, too.) As I recollect he was one of the ad hoc committee who, at a cusp in my life, advised me to quit newspaper work and go freelance. When I needed an agent, he sensed it (long before I would have) and saw to it that I was introduced to an honest man. It just now comes to me that I have owed him twenty bucks for nearly four years.

He loves old ballads, the older the better, and he plays them on a guitar and sings them in a fine whisky-edged voice of fluctuating range. He's one of the few musicians I know who listens as well as he plays, and he never hogs the guitar.

I love him with my whole heart, and I'm happy and proud to find myself here in this book, the best collection available of Gordon R. Dickson's short work.

 

CONTENTS