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.