1. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Andre Norton

    Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Xoic, Aug 17, 2021.

    I urge anyone who hasn't to find and read some Norton. My favorite is her science fiction, generally coming-of-age stories featuring young men forced to leave home and trek through frightening alien landscapes where they face horrifying dangers and often meet up with telepathic animals who help them along the way. She also wrote a lot of fantasy that I believe featured mostly if not all female protagonists, such as her very popular Witchworld series.

    Her actual name was Alice Mary Norton, and her characters frequently were or resembled what she called Amerindians, which I believe is an actual term for what are also known as Native Americans. I used to think she (Andre) was a native American storyteller herself, because she had a certain feel to her work that reminded me of the way they can relate a tale. Turns out I was wrong. She wrote about futuristic devices but never got into how they work at all, and called them only by simple names that suggest what they do, such as blasters, needlers, tanglers, and crawlers.

    Her world-hopping stories of interplanetary intrigue were really Westerns, with the planets being regions or continents, wild frontier areas with rustic towns and vast wilderness areas where the protagonist had to flee, pursued often by Patrol officers and mysterious indigenous beings and on the way encountered mystifying and horribly alien creatures.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2021
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  2. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Here's the beginning of one of my favorites by her: The Zero Stone

    It's the Read Inside on Amazon. And now I see what it is about Norton's work (one aspect of it anyway) that's so powerful. It's the way her descriptions are always more than just descriptions, she pulls those details through the senses and the feelings and emotions of the character experiencing them.


    Here's a good synopsis of the story

    The guy seems not to understand why it's an all male group though. It's not out of any misogyny, but because it was set on a ship in a time when ships were all-male environments. Aside from that though it's a very good synopsis. And as he says, it's the interaction between the protagonist Murdoc Jern and the strange half-alien cat hybrid Eet at the heart of the story.

    There are several entire books by Norton available as PDFs online, but they're some of her worst books, from the 50's I believe, before she really found her power as a writer. In the mid to late 60's is when she really got going, and this book is from that period.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2021
  3. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Here's a preview for Postmarked the Stars @ Archive.org

    Again very powerful, and the reader is placed right in it and experiences the feelings of the character. You could create an account and keep re-borrowing it to read the whole book, but that seems like it would be annoying.
     
  4. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Andre Norton was a favorite of mine in junior high school. Dread Companion was my favorite sci-fi but what I really liked were her Civil War and western history novels. They'd be considered shamefully unwoke today, but I don't much care- they were good stories.
     
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  5. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    Long time science fiction reader who didn't know until last week (from another forum) that Andre Norton was a woman.
     
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  6. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Writing science fiction (considered a boy's genre) in the 40's and 50's she had to use a male pseudonym, which originally was Andrew North. Later, when she had gained a lot of popularity and could throw her weight around a little she changed it to Andre Norton, Norton being her actual last name, and Andre being indeterminate. It could be a man or a woman.

    later another author used the pseudonym Andrew North to write sci-fi in a vein similar to hers. I forget who, was it David Drake or somebody?
     
  7. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Here's the Look Inside for another of my favorites: Catseye

    In this one you get at least a quick introduction to the telepathic animal (one of them) right in the preview. Troy Horan (the MC) is in some ways related to native Americans, because his home world has been burned off to cinders and his people (what remains of them) are forced to live in a very poor area known as the Dipple. His father was a Range Rider, so he was familiar with the wilderness and animals. But interestingly he's also associated with Nordic people. The planet he was born on is called Midgard (Earth in Norse mythology) and his people have blonde hair.

    One of her other really good series, The Solar Queen (name of a Free Trader ship) features an MC named Dane Thorson. Postmarked the Stars, which I linked to above, is part of that series. And it just struck me, her name being Norton might be related to North. In fact she went with the pen name Andrew North! Makes me wonder what her heritage is.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2021
  8. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    James Tiptree, Jr. as well, though that is perhaps more widely known.
     
  9. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I think this is the last one I'll post at least for a while: Beast Master

    As it states in the introduction, Hosteen Storm is a Navajo. It's been a long time since I've read it, but IIRC his people, like those of Troy Horan in Catseye, were all but destroyed when their planet was burned off. You may have seen the movie of the same name, which was very (very) loosely based on Norton's book, but it bears very little similarity aside from a man with a telepathic link to a group of animals. Unfortunately the movie was made by Don Coscarelli, known for making bizarre mixed-up messes of movies—Beast Master and Phantasm are probably his best. Whereas Hosteen Storm in the book wears clothing and lives in a frontier society, in the movie he wears a loin cloth. It's clear to me they were trying to cash in on the success of Conan the Barbarian, and also mixed in a lot of Star Wars references. The lead actor bears very close similarity to a muscle-bound Luke Skywalker in fact.
     
  10. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I found this in a comment on Amazon under Beastmaster:

    Norton fans might be on a strange planet (in fact, Earth has been destroyed by the alien Xik), but in otherwise familiar territory: a young, psychically-injured human is companioned with intelligent, mutant animals, and manages to survive on an alien world with their freely-offered assistance. Norton repeatedly used this theme in novels that followed "Beast Master," e.g. "Storm over Warlock" (1960), "Catseye" (1961), and "The Zero Stone" (1968).​

    There are also indigenous Arzorians, called 'Norbies' by the Terran settlers, and treated with the same contempt that European settlers in the Americas used to deal with the Amerinds.​

    Andre Norton was a scholar of Amerindian history and lore, and incorporated her knowledge in many of her novels, e.g. "Sioux Spacemen" (1960), and these two novels. Her careful attention to detail will bring the Norbies to life as few other SF authors were able to do with their aliens.

    "Beast Master" has one of the most poignant scenes in all of Norton: Hosteen and his team stumble across an ancient alien artifact on Arzor: a whole mountain has been hollowed out to contain botanical specimens from many different planets, including a 'garden of Eden' from Earth. Now that Hosteen has stumbled across a miniature version of his lost home world, will he ever be able to force himself to leave it?​
     
  11. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Apparently Norton is an English name (from England I mean) and means Of the North Settlement. It's common in Scotland as well and apparently traces back to the Picts? So maybe not Viking-style Norse, but definitely Northern European, so closely related I think, and would have shared the same mythology and religion if you go back far enough.
     
  12. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Quag Keep, man! Characters with bracelets that have dice embedded in them permanently attached to their wrists. When the going gets tough, the dice roll themselves.

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    I ordered Ride Proud, Rebel and Rebel Spurs and received them in the mail a couple of hours ago. They're new productions of the books and the covers are hysterically inappropriate. Wonder if anyone bothered to read either book before churning out new covers? I haven't read either book in fifty years, but know there are no Himalayan-like peaks near any Civil War battlegrounds.
     
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  14. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Thanks @Iain Aschendale and @Catriona Grace both. I had never even heard of any of those books before. I didn't even know she wrote historical fiction! I looked at the Amazon page for Ride Proud, Rebel and from the blurb it sounds like another excellent story, just no telepathic animals or space ships. Ultimately what makes her stories so good is the interactions between people (and animals) (and... sometimes aliens) (who essentially are people). The rest is trappings.
     
  15. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I'm not saying Quag Keep is for kids, but I was in elementary school (I read at quite a high level) when I read and loved it. The idea that people could be basically in a sim blew my mind in the late 70s.
     
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  16. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Minds were very blowable at that time, at least the ones I was familiar with. Scratch that, they were already blown out. But damn did we have great music for it!
     
  17. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Damn! Speaking of minds blown...

    About a year ago I had to clean house in a big way, and I got rid of a couple of big boxes of old paperbacks. A bunch of Andre Norton, with those beautiful (in some cases) painted covers from the 60's and 70's. I took the boxes to a local used book store and just donated them to the ladies who owned the place.

    Now that I'm looking to re-acquire some of them, I see those editions, if they're in good shape, go for up to $900.00! Not sure anybody is paying that, unless it's in absolute mint condition. Mine were heavily read and dog-eared. Well, some were pretty decent actually. It didn't even occur to me they might be collector's items. And now I find it's hard to get ahold of even new editions, which have modern crappy covers on them, and they cost like $15 to $25 for some strange reason. I used to pick them up for a dollar sometimes in used book stores, or $3.99 new.
     
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