What do you think?
Rate this book
Dilbia #2
Spacepaw
1st edition paperback, vg++
224 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 1, 1969
5 people are currently reading
200 people want to read
About the author
Gordon R. Dickson
587 books377 followersGordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author. He was born in Canada, then moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota as a teenager. He is probably most famous for his Childe Cycle and the Dragon Knight series. He won three Hugo awards and one Nebula award.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 15, 2012
From the start, it felt like I was reading something that was meant to be part of a series. I could easily see this as a script for a Star Trek episode, with only minor adjustments being needed. But I never thought that I could be right!
It turns out that this is the second in a series of three books that look to be only loosely connected by the fact that they all occur on the planet Dilbia.
This is a straight, linear adventure novel, without a lot of complications, and gets from point to point in an efficient and mostly entertaining fashion. But it does suffer from a good deal of exposition, particularly towards the start and end of the book. And the overall plot is predictable and the out-come seems preordained long before the end.
Even the last-minute romance between Bill and Anita that has no build-up at all until the last 20 pages (which comes after the climax), was obvious to me when Anita was first introduced back at the beginning of the book. She was the lone human female, Bill was the lone human male, and I could not help thinking: here is Bill's love-interest. The only thing that surprised me was how long it took to get around to their romance. Which they never actually explore, or speak about. Rather, the author just tells us that each loves the other.
A variety of Deus ex Machina devices and convenient revelations also populate the story, arriving just in time to get Bill out of his latest scrape. All of this removes any sense of danger, making it feel that Bill's victory over all obstacles is assured right from the start.
The non-Dilbian characters are all relatively one-note, and simple; cardboard cut-outs of stock characters. However, the Dilbians, and the treatment of their culture, is fairly well done, and rather interesting. While the humans and hemnoids may be rather dull, the Dilbians are well-layered, and intriguing.
The Dilbians are the characters that make this book entertaining, and I wonder if it might not have been a better story had someone like Hill Bluffer been the central character, rather than Bill.
It turns out that this is the second in a series of three books that look to be only loosely connected by the fact that they all occur on the planet Dilbia.
This is a straight, linear adventure novel, without a lot of complications, and gets from point to point in an efficient and mostly entertaining fashion. But it does suffer from a good deal of exposition, particularly towards the start and end of the book. And the overall plot is predictable and the out-come seems preordained long before the end.
Even the last-minute romance between Bill and Anita that has no build-up at all until the last 20 pages (which comes after the climax), was obvious to me when Anita was first introduced back at the beginning of the book. She was the lone human female, Bill was the lone human male, and I could not help thinking: here is Bill's love-interest. The only thing that surprised me was how long it took to get around to their romance. Which they never actually explore, or speak about. Rather, the author just tells us that each loves the other.
A variety of Deus ex Machina devices and convenient revelations also populate the story, arriving just in time to get Bill out of his latest scrape. All of this removes any sense of danger, making it feel that Bill's victory over all obstacles is assured right from the start.
The non-Dilbian characters are all relatively one-note, and simple; cardboard cut-outs of stock characters. However, the Dilbians, and the treatment of their culture, is fairly well done, and rather interesting. While the humans and hemnoids may be rather dull, the Dilbians are well-layered, and intriguing.
The Dilbians are the characters that make this book entertaining, and I wonder if it might not have been a better story had someone like Hill Bluffer been the central character, rather than Bill.
May 20, 2020
I almost couldn't believe Dickson's audacity in telling nearly exactly the same story in this "sequel". The only returning character is the Hill Bluffer, but the similarities include
-An intelligent and athletic shanghaied hero
-An unreachable superior
-A tough customer Dilbian keeping a damsel in distress
-The tough customer's bride to be and her father figuring in
-The damsel turns out not be in distress
-A Hemnoid ambassador who captures the hero and tries to convince him his superior wants him dead
-The Bluffer delivering the hero to the tough customer
-The hero being required to duel the tough customer against his will and without his initial knowledge
Up until page 45, I couldn't tell if he was playing some kind of joke on his publisher and readers by rewriting the first book with a slightly different set of circumstances. Luckily he does, in fact, introduce some differing elements. The hero's doom isn't as set in stone as in the first book, Bone Breaker has different motives from the Streamside Terror, the hero uses much more trickery to get his way, and we see some different sides to Dilbian society. All in all, it was about as good as the first, though the opening almost made me drop it in astonished disgust.
-An intelligent and athletic shanghaied hero
-An unreachable superior
-A tough customer Dilbian keeping a damsel in distress
-The tough customer's bride to be and her father figuring in
-The damsel turns out not be in distress
-A Hemnoid ambassador who captures the hero and tries to convince him his superior wants him dead
-The Bluffer delivering the hero to the tough customer
-The hero being required to duel the tough customer against his will and without his initial knowledge
Up until page 45, I couldn't tell if he was playing some kind of joke on his publisher and readers by rewriting the first book with a slightly different set of circumstances. Luckily he does, in fact, introduce some differing elements. The hero's doom isn't as set in stone as in the first book, Bone Breaker has different motives from the Streamside Terror, the hero uses much more trickery to get his way, and we see some different sides to Dilbian society. All in all, it was about as good as the first, though the opening almost made me drop it in astonished disgust.
March 18, 2021
Spacepaw is Gordie Dickson's second novel set on the planet of Dilbia, a planet whose inhabitants look like Kodiak bears and behave a lot like stereotypical vikings. The basic idea is similar to the previous novel, Spacial Delivery: a human agent, Bill Waltham, has been drafted to come to Dilbia because a human woman has been kidnapped by a Diblian, annoyed that humans have interfered in is marriage plans. Apparently the only way to get her back is to fight a duel, which seems tantamount to suicide for the human.
In usual Dilbian fashion, Waltham is given a nickname, Pick and Shovel (since the Dilbians are told he's here to teach them better farming techniques), as is the Anita, the captured woman (Dirty Teeth, since the Dilbians once saw her brushing her teeth). Hill Bluffer returns as Waltham's main Dilbian companion.
This is very much classic SF, in which the hero has to use his brains, plus courage, to figure out how to make everything work out in the end. It's also quite amusing at points.
I really wish Dickson had written more novels set on Dilbia (he wrote at least one short story), as I found these more entertaining than his Dragon and the George, a series he spent the last years of his life adding to.
In usual Dilbian fashion, Waltham is given a nickname, Pick and Shovel (since the Dilbians are told he's here to teach them better farming techniques), as is the Anita, the captured woman (Dirty Teeth, since the Dilbians once saw her brushing her teeth). Hill Bluffer returns as Waltham's main Dilbian companion.
This is very much classic SF, in which the hero has to use his brains, plus courage, to figure out how to make everything work out in the end. It's also quite amusing at points.
I really wish Dickson had written more novels set on Dilbia (he wrote at least one short story), as I found these more entertaining than his Dragon and the George, a series he spent the last years of his life adding to.
February 23, 2025
A lightweight but fun read for sf fans. Give it another star if you're a Gordie Dickson fan. I have a soft spot for him, because the very first sf book I bought on my own (I was maybe 12) was an Ace Double by Dickson -- SPATIAL DELIVERY b/w DELUSION WORLD. This book, SPACEPAW, is a sequel to SPATIAL DELIVERY, as it happens, and is like its predecessor set on the planet Dilbia, whose natives are ten-foot ursine humanoids, bluff, boisterous, and always eager to get into a physical brawl. The book's human protagonist, Bill Waltham, is sent to Dilbia on a mission that he soon realizes is going to be impossible for him to complete successfully. Another humanoid race, the Hemnoids, are also competing for Dilbian resources and trade, and they are like the Dilbians physically powerful, which commands the bear-like Dilbians' respect more than the puny Earthmen. Bill is soon going to find himself over his head, but he still has the help of a native postman, the Hill Bluffer, who was a main character in SPATIAL DELIVERY. And Bill is going to prove to be smarter than anyone thinks he is -- even himself.
October 17, 2018
Bill Waltham is on his way to his dream job, terraforming a planet for human occupation. Then he is reassigned to teach some early iron age 9 foot tall bears how to use a pick and shovel. To say he is not happy is an understatement. Open arrival, he finds no one to great him, trouble with the local outlaw band, and in danger of being killed within hours of his arrival. It only gets worse from there as he is required to fight a duel with the outlaw leader, and whatever he attempts, can't avoid the duel. He's finally understanding the social society, morals, and political structure enables him to stay alive to await the return of the authorities and his indignation of being put in this terrible position.
February 1, 2023
This is a fun, light sci-fi about a human engineer who is sent to train bear-like inhabitants on the planet of Dilbia on how to build farms. Of course, he lands only to find a chaos of conflicts among the inhabitants and his human contacts missing. The book is only a little over 200 pages, making it impossible to have thoroughly developed world or characters. Saying that, it's a fun ride, with some hilarious characters and great action scenes.
March 31, 2022
The sequel to Spacial Delivery. Another "shorty" has to challenge a Dilbia over a political problem; in this case a human being held by an outlaw gang. Our old friend, Hill Bluffer (Postman), is back and lugging our champion around, just like he did the hero of the first book.
The story is similar to the first book and just as engaging.
The story is similar to the first book and just as engaging.
January 26, 2020
The first time I read Spacepaw I was charmed by the Dilbians and by the clever plot. After reading Spacial Delivery and Spacepaw in such a short length of time I'm beginning to see a pattern. It was still a decent read, but I wasn't as impressed as the first time I read it.
August 31, 2019
Funny, cute, and fun to read!
September 9, 2019
Great story, a S?F classic.
Also in anthology
The Right to Arm Bears
Also in anthology
The Right to Arm Bears
September 22, 2022
Anthropologists uses his quick wits to defeat another empire in this tale of space colonization.
November 8, 2022
I didn’t finish the book, it’s rare for me to not read a book all the way through but this book was incredibly boring and hard to follow. Did not like it. The cover is the best part of the book.
March 31, 2023
A fun, light hearted sci-fi novel. And a quick read. Good for a day or two's distraction. A good read but not the greatest sci-fi novel. Still very enjoyable.
September 26, 2020
Spacepaw is the story of Bill Waltham, an agricultural machine engineer who is drawn into the local conflicts of the bear-like Dilbians, when all he wants to do is teach them how to plough fields faster and dig wells deeper.
The maintaining of a clear distinction between the culture of the space bears and the humans don’t always hold up. The Dilbian don’t have literature, science, religion, or a specific work/life balance, yet they somehow know what a minute is, and know it well enough to effectively wait around for 15 of them when asked.
Dickson gets a bonus point or two for devising a “programmable lathe”, a turning machine that generates artefacts and tools based on user schematics, eleven years before Star Trek’s replicators started doing it, and nearly fifty years before the current 3D printing boom.
But the lack of a coherent, ongoing story that leaves me unsure exactly what to think. Given that a lifting contest, some agricultural training, and a local turf war are all the plotting there is, I can’t help but feel that I was reading more into Spacepaw than was there, simply because there was so little there.
I also feel some disappointment that I never really got a sense of the Dilbian space bears as creatures or entities in their own right, only an understanding of what being a tiny awkward man looking at those bears might feel like.
Nick
xx
The maintaining of a clear distinction between the culture of the space bears and the humans don’t always hold up. The Dilbian don’t have literature, science, religion, or a specific work/life balance, yet they somehow know what a minute is, and know it well enough to effectively wait around for 15 of them when asked.
Dickson gets a bonus point or two for devising a “programmable lathe”, a turning machine that generates artefacts and tools based on user schematics, eleven years before Star Trek’s replicators started doing it, and nearly fifty years before the current 3D printing boom.
But the lack of a coherent, ongoing story that leaves me unsure exactly what to think. Given that a lifting contest, some agricultural training, and a local turf war are all the plotting there is, I can’t help but feel that I was reading more into Spacepaw than was there, simply because there was so little there.
I also feel some disappointment that I never really got a sense of the Dilbian space bears as creatures or entities in their own right, only an understanding of what being a tiny awkward man looking at those bears might feel like.
Nick
xx
December 17, 2012
Bill Waltham is redirected from his terraforming assignment to the world of Dilbia to teach the bearlike natives. The senior man is off planet and his female team member is a semi-captive of outlaw natives.Another off world species is competing with the humans for influence with the natives. Bill has to figue out how things work and survive a duel with the outlaw leader.
January 14, 2011
Melds elements of high fantasy with classic scifi. Comical and a good read. Has become one of my favorites.
September 5, 2009
A pretty enjoyable stand-alone sci fi book. It seems like not many are these days.
January 9, 2012
Grade C+.
May 19, 2012
An early-ish SF - simple people and plot but like everything he wrote, a solid read.
January 29, 2014
About an emissary to a planet ruled by intelligent bears. What's not to like?
July 19, 2016
Interesting tale of a small man on a big planet.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews