A set of nine short stories published in magazines between 1952-69, "The Star Road" (col. 1973) presents clever, nicely-imagined ideas in fairly quick, easily-digested portions of Solid SF. The venues and dates for the stories give away a lot, however; these are very dated in the nature of the market they were aimed for. Dickson seems to have loved a good military hierarchy and the buzz-cut, uniformed officers of Cold War fiction dominate here, but it's not the manly-man casting that weighs these down, it's the telling.

If you like your plot points explained to you instead of shown, mansplaining of just about everything, frequent descriptions of imaginary gadgets clogging up the pacing, and infodumps in place of narrative, you'll love these. Seems the expectations of SFF have changed a lot since 1959. (Also, I'm not 12.)

A bright spot worth mentioning: the 1969 story "The Jackal's Meal" actually highlights the human civilian diplomat out-thinking and showing up the military command. Didn't expect that. ( )