Gordon Dickson’s list of works is huge, but for some of us they all boil down to the Childe Cycle, known to us mortals as the Dorsai books. At some future date I plan a series of posts in appreciation of them, but for now the issue is his use of the local stellar neighborhood.

Dickson provided us with fifteen extrasolar planets circling seven nearby stars. His primary interest wasn’t in planet building, but he had an ability to paint a planet with a broad brush, then close in and give telling details about those local scenes where the action was taking place. It worked; it was just enough world building to carry each story forward.

Since the Childe Cycle consumed twelve novels over forty-seven years, there was plenty of time to visit each world at some time during the series. Some of the worlds, the Dorsai world in particular, were instrumental in shaping the character of the actors, but for the most part, Dickson’s focus was on a larger issue.

Even though the Childe Cycle featured a form of FTL almost from the first, Dickson’s characters never ventured beyond the local neighborhood. The overarching story he was telling concerned man’s early venturing into space, which led to the formation of three splinter cultures, and the semi-mystical forces which were attempting to reintegrate them into the mainstream.

(Yes, Dorsai Irregulars, I know that is an inadequate rendering, but you try putting fifty years of another man’s sophisticated thoughts into one sentence.)

The Friendlies (religious fanatics or men of faith, depending on who was writing the description, and not really that friendly at all) inhabited the planets Harmony and Association under Epsilon Eridani. The Exotics (scientists of the mind, following a believable mash-up of psychology and zen) inhabited Mara and Kultis under Procyon. Dorsai, the warrior world, lay under Fomalhaut. Incidentally, the phrase under (a star’s name) was one Dickson used often. I find it charming, and presume he was exporting to the stars the notion that there is “nothing new under the sun”.

The rest of his planets were well thought out and inhabited by humans who were not of one of the splinter cultures.

Wikipedia has a nice summary of the Childe Cycle, including a full list of Dickson’s planets. Better still go to your used bookstore and start reading.

*****

At the risk of arrogance – a risk any author is always willing to take – I’ll add my own fictional view of the local neighborhood.

My first science fiction novel, Jandrax, used a sabotaged FTL drive to set things in motion, stranding a group of colonists on an unknown planet. The only thing they – or I –  knew about their location was that it was far beyond the limits of exploration, and that none of them were ever going to return.

Cyan was going to be different. I wanted it to exploit the plot possibilities of relativistic flight, and to be a part of the exploration of the local neighborhood. I worked out this backstory as I wrote:

Early in this century, science makes a discovery that allows total conversion of matter to energy, providing the power to reach the stars at relativistic speeds. A multi-ship expedition to Alpha Centauri finds that the planet around Alpha Centauri A which should have been in the habitable zone, actually has an orbit so erratic that it is alternatively fried and frozen. However there is a barely habitable planet circling Alpha Centauri B. They name it Cinder and begin limited colonization.

Every novel of my childhood found an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri A; I had to break the pattern.

The second expedition, to Sirius, finds an Earth sized planet in a reasonable orbit for life, but this time the planet Stormking has a Uranian inclination. There is life, but it is basically uninhabitable. This sets up a future novel with an orbiting civilization made up of refugees from the inhabitants of Earth’s asteroid belt. They have chosen Sirius because it doesn’t have a habitable planet. They use Stormking as a prison, which set up the moral basis of the plot.

Three third-generations starships are built in orbit. The first two set out, one for Epsilon Eridani and one for Tau Ceti. A year later, the third set out for Procyon. This is the voyage which is the focus of the novel Cyan. When the explorers return to Earth, they find that the other two expeditions have both found prime planets, Haven and Elysium. Preparations to colonize them are taking all Earth’s resources; Cyan is not to be colonized, which sets up the events of the second half of the novel.

The starship which carried explorers to Cyan now goes on with a new crew to explore Epsilon Indi, before events which I can’t (spoiler alert) tell you about bring this stage of human exploration to a close.

Check out Cyan, due for release in a month or so, for details.

In the science fiction books of my youth, no one ever mentioned heading out into the universe already knowing what planets would be circling the stars they would visit. Even when I began Cyan, no one was thinking like that, so the first thing my explorers do is to map Procyon’s solar system and discover the eponymous planet which they will explore.

Alpha Centauri A is a near twin of our sun, as well as the closest to us. It used to be logical to assume that we will visit there first. That is no longer true. By the time we find the breakthroughs that will allow even relativistic speeds, we will probably have a full inventory of the nearby cosmos, and our first star journeys are likely to be to relatively well known destinations.

I really hate that. What fun would Columbus have had, if he had seen the National Geographic special first?

Where were we? Ah, the neighborhood.

Ignoring the various stellar specks out there, these are the stars we might have interest in, in order of closeness to Earth.

Alpha Centauri – luminosity 1.0 – 4.4 light years from Earth – already covered yesterday.

Sirius – luminosity 23.0 – 8.6 light years from Earth – is the brightest star in the night sky, as seen from Earth, due both to its inherent brightness and to its closeness to us. Sirius is a binary star. Sirius A is extremely bright and hot; Sirius B is a white dwarf.

Epsilon Eridani – luminosity 0.25 -10.5 light years from Earth – is the closest star which has a reasonably well confirmed planet, a giant thought to be about 3.4 AUs out. An AU (astronomical unit) is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, making it ideal for a quick mental picture of distance. The presence of a giant planet at that distance leaves us free to postulate smaller, more human-friendly planets closer in.

Procyon – luminosity 5.8 – 11.4 light years from Earth – is another binary. Procyon A is hot and white (but nowhere nearly as bright at Sirius) with an even fainter white dwarf companion, Procyon B.

Epsilon Indi – luminosity 0.12 – 11.8 light years from Earth – has three-fourths the mass of the sun and a much lower luminosity. Any human-habitable planets would be close in, with a very short year. If it has a decent tilt, its seasons could go by quite rapidly, leading to interesting story possibilities.

Tau Ceti – luminosity 0.36 (newer figures suggest .55) – 11.8 light years from Earth – Tau Ceti is a slightly smaller Sol type star. It is the nearest single star to so resemble our sun.

When I worked out the backstory for Cyan, I only considered stars within 5 parsecs; I will add two more to this list because Gordon Dickson used them in his version of the neighborhood, which we will see in tomorrow’s post.

Altair – luminosity 11 – 16.7 light years from Earth – is a slightly variable blue white star with a rapid rotation (about 9 hours, compared to the sun’s 25 days) which gives a pronounced equatorial bulge.

Fomalhaut – luminosity 16.6 – 25 light years from Earth – is also blue-white with one known planet called Dagon. The size, nature and composition of Dagon is highly controversial, but it seems to be visible to the Hubble telescope only because it is surrounded by a dust cloud many times larger in diameter than the planet itself.