The Chantry Guild by Gordon Dickson

First Gordon Dickson is one of my all time favorite authors. The Childe Cycle is a series of books by Dickson on the future of man. Man has gone into the void in splintered cultures. These splintered cultures develop their respective strengths and weakness in their ideologically uniform environments. While the premise doesn’t sound terribly inviting, the series overall is excellent. This particular book features characters that have been involved throughout the series and is the culmination of events to that point. The series was never finished due to the untimely death of Dickson. If you are at all intrigued you should start with “Dorsai” the first book in the series. The Dorsai characters remained my favorite throughout the series.
Titles in the series in order of publication are:
Dorsai! (alternate title: The Genetic General) (1959)
Necromancer (1962) (vt No Room for Man)
Soldier, Ask Not (1968)
Tactics of Mistake (1971)
The Final Encyclopedia (1984)
The Chantry Guild (1988)

Body of work of Gordon Dickson

Overview of Dickson’s Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorsai