Childe Cycle - Novels and Shorter Works

Novels and Shorter Works

The science fiction novels of the main Childe Cycle include:

• Dorsai! (alternate title: The Genetic General) (1959)
• Necromancer (1962) (vt No Room for Man)
• Soldier, Ask Not (1967)
• Tactics of Mistake (1971)
• The Final Encyclopedia (1984)
• The Chantry Guild (1988)

The final book, to have been titled Childe, had not been completed at the time of Dickson's death, and has never been published.

In addition, there are four shorter pieces and three novels that take place in the same fictional universe as the Childe Cycle, but are not part of the core cycle.

• "Lost Dorsai" (novella) and "Warrior" (short story), published together in Lost Dorsai (1981)
• "Amanda Morgan" and "Brothers" (short story), published together in The Spirit of Dorsai (1979)

In the latter volume, the stories are framed by a conversation between Hal Mayne and the Third Amanda Morgan, during the events of The Final Encyclopedia. "Warrior" (1965) and "Brothers" (1973) had previously appeared in other publications. The four works have since been collected in one volume as The Dorsai Companion (1986).

The three other novels are:

• Young Bleys (1991)
• Other (1994)
• Antagonist (with David W. Wixon) (2007)

These three novels concern the background and development of Bleys Ahrens, the antagonist of The Final Encyclopedia and The Chantry Guild. They take place in the decades leading up to those books, and were apparently added to the original series outline to provide more detail of the ultimate conflict in Childe. 2007 saw the publication of Antagonist, finished by Dickson's long-time assistant David W. Wixon.

The first published reference to the Dorsai came in "Lulungomeena", a 1954 short story published in Galaxy Science Fiction and later dramatized on the X Minus One radio program. The narrator is a man from "the Dorsai planets," who has been working far from home for a long time. The story portrays the Dorsai people as tough and matter-of-fact, but says little else about them.