The boundaries between the two groups of novels are hazy and young people may turn as readily to the contemporary adult tales (often variations on classical detection stories) as to the fantasies that are more remotely set. . . . Dickinson has a highly original, powerful imagination, which enables him to suggest the extraordinary with vivid conviction." Discussing what his writing means to him personally, Dickinson once told
New York Times contributor Eden Ross Lipson: "I believe the crucial thing for a writer is the ability to make up coherent worlds. I'm like a beachcomber walking along the shores of invention. . . . The imagination is like the sea, full of things you can't see but can possibly harvest and use."
Born in 1927 in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Dickinson "has said that he has little memory of his exotic African roots," wrote Raymond E. Jones in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. In 1935 Dickinson's father, an administrator for the British government's colonial government, moved the family to England, dying shortly thereafter. Six years later Dickinson enrolled at Eton College, and upon graduation in 1946 he was conscripted into the British Army, where he served as a district signals officer.
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