The Childe Cycle

The Childe Cycle is an unfinished series of science fiction novels by the American writer Gordon R. Dickson. Its name alludes to the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, which inspired some of its elements. The series is sometimes called the Dorsai series, after the Dorsai people who sit at its centre. The related short stories and novellas focus on the Dorsai, especially members of the Graeme and Morgan families.

Dickson conceived the cycle as a broad and deliberately thematic panorama of the evolution of the human race. Besides the six science fiction novels he completed, he planned three historical novels and three set in the present day. In an essay in his book Steel Brother he outlined the scheme: each group of three novels would centre on one of three archetypes, the philosopher, the warrior or the faith-holder. The historical volumes were to feature the mercenary John Hawkwood of the fourteenth century, John Milton during his years as a propagandist for the Cromwellian government, and Robert Browning. The contemporary ones would have dealt with George Santayana, a Second World War warrior, and a female faith-holder of the 1980s, the latter tied to space colonisation. The cycle was meant to span from the fourteenth to the twenty-fourth century, although the published books begin in the twenty-first.

Its principal themes are the tension between progress and conservatism and the interplay of humanity's core traits, chiefly courage, faith and philosophy. After the colonisation of some fourteen Younger Worlds, humanity splits into specialised Splinter Cultures. The Dorsai embody courage as honourable elite mercenaries; the Exotics of Mara and Kultis embody philosophy; and the Friendlies of Harmony and Association embody faith, which can curdle into fanaticism. Old Earth remains home to "full spectrum humans" as a control group.

The published novels appeared between 1959 and 1988: Dorsai!, Necromancer, Soldier, Ask Not, Tactics of Mistake, The Final Encyclopedia and The Chantry Guild. The final volume, Childe, was left incomplete at Dickson's death in 2001 and never published. Three prequel novels followed, Young Bleys, Other and Antagonist, the last completed by David W. Wixon. The cycle is valued for its ambition and for the way it blends military adventure with reflection on what it means to be human.