Gordon Rupert Dickson knew from the time he began to read at age four that he wanted to write. After his father, a mining engineer, died in the summer of 1936, he moved with his mother to Minneapolis, where in 1939--at the age of fifteen--he enrolled in the University of Minnesota. In 1943 Dickson's schooling was interrupted by the army; afflicted with asthma, he missed combat in the Pacific but was decorated for service on the West Coast. After his discharge in 1946 he returned to the University of Minnesota and completed his undergraduate work in creative writing. In what he terms his "only wavering" from his chosen calling, he enrolled in the graduate school to begin work toward an academic career, but with restored nerve he left without a second degree. Since then he has written more than 150 stories and more than thirty novels, surviving almost solely on the potency...