Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon R. Dickson is an American SF and fantasy writer, best known for his Childe Cycle/Dorsai future history.

His other works include the Dragon Knight series, in which a couple of 20th-century graduate students find themselves in an alternate world that resembles Medieval England but with magic, dragons, and fairies; and the comedy Hoka series, co-written with Poul Anderson, about a planet whose inhabitants spend all their time pretending to be characters from Earth fiction.


 * Childe Cycle
 * The Dragon Knight series
 * Hoka series


 * Deflector Shields: In Way of the Pilgrim the personal force-shield of any Aalag soldier would allow him to hold out indefinitely against any weapons humanity could throw at him. Even nukes. The ship-board version is presumably even more robust.
 * Heavyworlder: In a short story, which adds an uncommon corollary: things fall faster (or rather, accelerate at a higher rate) on a high-gravity world. One alien from such a world is somewhat stronger, but much faster, because falling over on such a planet is a bad idea and being able to catch falling things is usually helpful too.
 * Superweapon Surprise: In a short story, an aggressive alien race discovers Earth by analysis of floating space debris and launches a covert surveillance mission as a prelude to invasion. Sadly for the aliens, they discover that the humans not only know about them, they used the alien mission as a tool to psychologically profile the would-be conquerors and find out all about their civilization and military capabilities.
 * Vichy Earth: The Way of the Pilgrim tells a pretty straightforward interpretation of this trope, with the protagonist, a translator/pet for the occupying Aalaag, organizing a revolution with the power of the indomitable human spirit. They have to, since militarily La Résistance is futile--if he had to, one fully armored Aalaag could defeat every human army in an afternoon.