The Alien Way

(c) 1965, by Gordon R. Dickson

I really enjoy reading these types of books. But I don't read them often. After some reflection, I've come to an unsettling conclusion: they belong to the open-ended set of books that makes me mentally flail my hands about and scream at the sky, "How can I ever write like this?"

"Like this" doesn't mean a style of writing. It means a subject. This subject's a surprisingly niche one when it comes to science fiction. Surprisingly niche because it's not done as much as you think (or as I'd have thought). Surprisingly niche because when it is done, it has to be done full engines ahead. Nothing held back, nothing held in reserve. The writer's gotta give it all he's got.

"It" is the bringing of an alien culture to life.

"It's" not an easy thing to do. I could probably count on one hand (maybe, maybe two) the books I've read where this was done masterfully. Off the top of my head, the earliest exploration into an alien way of life would have to be Asimov's The Gods Themselves. This past decade I've read a couple of Philip Jose Farmer and Hal Clement works where life was similarly breathed into an extraterrestrial culture.

I would put Gordon Dickson's The Alien Way into that illustrious class.

The aliens here are the Ruml. Best envisioned as anthropomorphized bears, theirs is a society whose morality initially seems perpendicular to ours. Well, even after initial delvings Ruml ethics make us flinch. But Dickson provides a rationale that intellectually we can understand, if not emotionally. Wanna know what it is?

Read the book.

If not, here's the SPOILER: Ruml society is built on the concept of Honor the way our society is built on the individual love of a parent for his or her child. Exactly the same, but coming from different roots and having very different consequences. One of these, which I still don't understand despite spending a few minutes meditating upon it, is that the Ruml act logically where we act emotionally, and vice versa. Dickson's characters spout it and believe it, and that's enough for me, I guess.

How do we come to know the Ruml? Here the novel's science is a little sketchy, though the science fiction is marvelous. In some indeterminate future (I got the impression of a black-and-white 1950s Washington DC teleported a century ahead), we send out decoy or bait ships towards star most likely to have civilizations amongst their orbiting worlds. Extraterrestrial scout ships investigate the decoy, and virus-like entities enable us to live vicariously through those that take the bait.

In The Alien Way, the ensared is Kator Brutogasi, a young Ruml with a severe Napoleonic complex. Indeed, as discoverer of the decoy ship (quickly determined by alien scientists to have originated from Earth), he has dibs on conquering our humble planet. Moving up the food chain expertly navigating the Honor code of his species, Kator soon becomes a very dire threat to our way of life. It's up to the lone human contact, linked mentally to this warrior, to save mankind from both the Ruml and mankind itself.

It worked. There was a great climax, followed by a very satisfactory denouement twenty pages later. A twofer! All the lose ends were tied up and, yes, I felt a pang of sadness knowing I would spend no further time with my vicious furry Ruml friend.

Grade: A-minus.