A fellow Book Reviewer has declared January to be Vintage SciFi Month! For Vintage SciFi Month I decided to read a couple of books by Gordon R Dickson: Hour Of The Horde and Dorsai! GRD writes interesting books! His work feels like a mix between David Drake and Frank Herbert. GRD has been a very heavy influence on Military SciFi and spins very interesting tales that feature the continual evolution of mankind.

Hour Of The Horde puts the Fiction into Science Fiction. It’s a slightly laughable tale describing a horde of aliens that travel from Galaxy to Galaxy and eliminate all organic life before moving onto the next one. Somehow we know they do this and somehow we know they’re attacking us next. Ok so the overall plot fails because of simple distances involved. But the story itself is enjoyable because of the main character and his incredible drive to accomplish the impossible. He’s a flawed man that gets selected to represent humanity in our greatest hour of need and has to find ways to motivate several different alien species to accomplish their unified goal. A fun and enjoyable read.

Dorsai! is excellent. This is the first book of GRD’s famous Childe Cycle and it is a page turner. The main character (Donal Graeme) is like Paul Atreides without his prescience. He’s a person set apart longing to belong but embracing his uniqueness and in so doing possibly opening up the next step of human evolution. This book involves a lot of Military SciFi action and is one of the classics in that field. Well worth your time.

I’ve enjoyed Vintage SciFi Month and still have one more book to finish and review so be looking forward to my thoughts on Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke!