Delusion World

By Gordon R. Dickson

There had to be a reason why that isolated human colony had been able to survive mankind's implacable enemies. But nobody had been able to get to the quaintly named Dunroamin to find out. If they had a secret defense, it could be the answer to a hundred planets' prayers. And Feliz Gebrod realized as he came in for a crash landing that he'd know the secret sooner than he'd expected. Except that what he encountered was a life-and-death riddle that had nothing to do with stellar defense. It was this: how can two mutually irreconcilable Utopias occupy the same space at the same time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Science Fiction
• Release date: Dec 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781627934602

Reviews for Delusion World

[grizzly9anderson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this novella Dickson introduces us to the Dilbians, a primitive woodsman/agrarian race of kodiak bears walking around on their hind legs, and has the humans and the Hemnoids fight for the right to influence their development. Which is all the set up for a basic everyman discovers he's a hero (of course the everyman is an Olympic athlete that just wants to be known for his brain) and rescues the fair maiden. There is a little bit of world-building, but the Dilbians are really just caricatures of the noble savage, and the main human character is a two-dimensional cutout that has all of his character traits filled in by the end of the first chapter. It's not a bad quick read, and it has the advantage of brevity over the re-titled rewrite that is Spacepaw.