But his own experience did not suffice. He wanted to observe another man's reactions as well. So he convinced a less-than-eager Kelly Freas to try on the armor next. Freas, being shorter and stockier, probably approximated a real medieval knight better than Dickson. Others might have followed suit, but by then the outfit's undergarments were disagreeably drenched with sweat. The author's zeal for medieval weaponry is so compelling that on another occasion he insisted that one notably unmartial colleague take up arms and beat on the maple trees in Dickson's back yard with a sword - all by way of sealing a business partnership.
Although mimetic research sounds amusing, it is no game to Dickson but rather a measure of his dedication to his craft. He needs to set all his senses gathering data in order to generate the authentic details his writing requires. His creativity is almost a metabolic process: information digested, art synthesized. Consider the awesome volume of material he had to process for The Far Call, the finest realistic novel about the space program yet written. This book's flavor comes from the author's own fervent pro-space views. Its sub stance is the product of many visits to Kennedy Space Center and lengthy consultations with experts on the scene. Dickson believes he must eat the bread of a place before he can truly know it.
Dickson deliberately incorporates his own interests, experiences, and values in his fiction. Take, for in stance, his fascination with animal psychology. "I tend to gestalt things," he says. "I see humans and animals as illuminating one another by what they do and also humans and animals illuminating aliens and vice versa." Thus Dickson's favorite beasts show up in his pages, either wearing their own hides or disguised as extraterrestrials: bears (Spacial Delivery, The Alien Way), wolves (Sleepwalker's World), sea mammals (Home From the Shore, The Space Swimmers), cats (Time Storm, The Masters of Everon), and, of course, otters (Alien Art). On the other hand, Dickson lent his own antic enthusiasm and exasperating glee to the teddy bear-like Hokas (Earthman's Burden, Star Prince Charlie written with his old college classmate Poul Anderson). Dickson contemplating a gourmet meal or a fine guitar is the very image of a Hoka.
Guitar in hand, Dickson is a pillar of convention "filksings," gatherings of people who perform odd songs which may or may not have any bearing on sf. Although his tenor has lost its original clarity, his renditions of classics like The Face on the Barroom Floor or The Three Ravens are still enjoyable. It is even more of a treat to hear him sing his own compositions like the grim Battle Hymn of the Friendlies, the wistful love song from Necromancer, or the rollicking Ballad of the Shoshonu. This has inspired some of his fans to write Childe Cycle songs themselves.
Among sf writers, Dickson is second only to Poul Anderson in the ornamental use of songs and poetry. Like Anderson, Dickson was raised on folk ballads, epics, fairy tales, and the great nineteenth-century novels, although there was more of a British than a Scandinavian slant to his literary formation. Further more, Dickson along with Anderson, Robert A. Heinlein, Jerry Pournelle, Richard McKenna, John Brunner, and Cordwainer Smith, has been heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling, (Kipling's impact on sf, now reaching into its second and third generation, has never been adequately investigated.) However, Dickson also cites major mainstream American and Russian authors and even Thomas Mann among his influences.
One expects a professional writer to maintain a large library and, indeed, the walls of Dickson's Rich field, Minnesota home are lined with books. But Dickson is a true bibliophile. He loves books simply as physical objects, delighting in fine bindings and crisp pages. He shows a marked preference for hardbound volumes even for works of passing interest. Accompanying him to a bookstore is like tagging behind a tornado. His ever-expanding holdings are systematically catalogued and he maintains a complete collection of his own editions.
Dickson has stronger opinions than most writers on how his work should be illustrated and collects originals of the illustrations that please him. (Wallspace in his home not devoted to books is mostly covered with art.) His feeling for visual aesthetics was deepened by years of night classes at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. His studies taught him the difference between written and painted visions. As he ruefully observes, too often writers try to paint with their "writing equipment" while painters try to write with their "painting equipment."
Dickson's life and career are also molded by a complementary set of physical pursuits. Allergies - and time - now bar him from the camping, climbing, and other outdoor recreations he formerly enjoyed. How ever, on a recent trip to Florida he caught the small marlin that decorates his office wall. Still, the experiences he has had with wildlife and open spaces remain with him as raw material for creative efforts. He would not be the same man or the same writer if boyhood memories of Pacific breakers did not echo in his dreams.
Dickson's handling of nature is subtler than Anderson's lush, almost pantheistic approach. He sees it primarily as a milieu for human action. (His preference for somber, austere landscapes is most sensitively revealed in Alien Art.) Having lived in Western Canada as a child and in Minnesota since prompts his frequent use of these regions as story settings, either directly or as models for alien worlds. His beloved Canadian mountains, "the bones of the continent," become the cool, rocky highlands of the Dorsai. Northcountry lakes and woodlands reappear in Pro.
Indoors, Dickson's ardor for fitness shames his more sedentary friends. His ambition to achieve something of the high performance under stress he admires in tough old fighting men like Hawkwood led to his involvement with the martial arts - the chivalry of medieval Europe and the bushido of feudal Japan have much in common. Formal training has done more than impart special physical skills. It has also reinforced views he already held on self-mastery and functional beauty. Performing a clean knife pass takes the discipline of a dancer; a well-designed blade is a pleasing piece of metal sculpture.
Dickson uses the Oriental martial arts to study the attainment and control of that perennially fascinating phenomenon, the exaltation state. He can and on occasion has discussed the topic for long hours on end. What lies behind hysterical strength, stunning intuition, heroic virtue? Creativity is once again his answer. When human beings operate at the very highest levels their bodies, minds, or spirits permit, they enter a transcendant phase Dickson calls "creative overdrive." In this condition, they can direct their conscious and unconscious powers to some otherwise unreachable goal. Salvation is integration and creativity integrates.
Thus, cerebral, artistic adventure heroes are Dickson's specialty. For instance, in The Final En cyclopedia, Hal Mayne is a poet who has passed through previous incarnations as a soldier (Dorsai!) and a mystic {Necromancer). Michael de Sandoval in Lost Dorsal is a musician and Cletus Grahame in Tactics of Mistake has tried painting. Dickson endows his heroes with the talents he himself esteems and lets them demonstrate overdrive by their deeds. They are offered as examples of what the entire race could achieve if only its creative energies were fully liberated.
Dickson himself is an advertisement for his theories. His memory lapses are legendary - once when making introductions, he could not recall his own brother's name. He often confuses the titles of his books, scrambles the locations of his planets, and forgets the lyrics to his own songs. Nevertheless, his mind be comes astonishingly supple and efficient when overdrive directs it in the service of his art. In this heightened state, he can move briskly through public appearances though exhausted and can soar to fresh imaginative insights. For Dickson, creativity is both the journey and the journey's end. It enables him to unite the plumy and swordlike extremes of his own nature in order to work.