2000 (this "Omnibus" edition); 438 pages. Genre : 50's Sci Fi. New Author? : No. See here. Overall Rating : 6*/10.
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This is a bundling of two Andre Norton books - Time Traders (1958) and its sequel Galactic Derelict (1959). Both books are set in the near future, when both Russia and the USA have discovered time-travel. But Russia has several additional technological wonders, and it is theorized that someone or something in the past is giving them those marvels. So newbies Ross Murdock (TT) and Travis Fox (GD) sign on with a spec ops team to journey back into the past to find this ancient source of secrets and "take it down".
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What's To Like...
Norton sets you down in some cool historical places, such as Bronze Age northern Europe and Ice Age southwestern USA. There are cool people, such as Beaker Traders, Ax people, Folsom hunters, and long-gone animals such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. And there are some not-so-friendly aliens that take exception to us savages making off with their property.
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The action starts off fast, and all chapters end with a "hook" to keep you turning the pages. There's not a lot of depth of character. Instead, Norton focuses on making the settings come alive. That's true even of the futuristic places, and she heightens the realism by inventing some neat things like "healing jelly" and a "home photo" gizmo which reads the viewer's mind an shows whatever individual images he has of home.
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There is no sex, booze, or drugs in these stories, so they're safe for the kiddies. There is some killing, but without the gore. The background setting - the cold war between Russia and the USA - is somewhat dated, and it appears that a couple sections of the book were given "updates" in 2000, such as the inclusion of a computer-generated role-playing game.
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Kewl New Words...
Welter : a confused mass; a jumble. Fetor : an offensive odor. Brindled : brown or grayish in color, with darker streaks or spots. Inimical : unfriendly. Snaffled : seized quickly and easily.
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Excerpts...
"The Greeks built in stone, wrote their books, kept their history to bequeath it to their successors, and so did the Romans. And on this side of the ocean the Incas, the Mayas, the unknown races before them, and the Aztecs of Mexico all built in stone and worked in metal. And stone and metal survive. But what if there had been an early people who used plastics and brittle alloys, who had no desire to build permanent buildings, whose tools and artifacts were meant to wear out quickly, perhaps for economic reasons? What would they leave us - considering, perhaps, that an ice age had intervened between their time and ours, with glaciers to grind into dust what little they did possess?" (pg. 45)
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They had not even scratched the surface of was to be found in this ancient port. Had the jungle-cloaked city been the capital of some galaxy-wide empire, as Ashe suspected? They had no time to explore very far. Yes, there would be a return - sometime. And men from his world would search and speculate, and learn, and guess - perhaps wrongly. Then, after a while there again would be a new city rising somewhere - maybe on his own world - which would serve as a storehouse of knowledge gained from star to star. Time would pass, and that city, too, would die. Until some representative of a race yet unborn would come to search and speculate - and guess. (pg. 413)
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When you give up a belief in luck, you're licked! (pg. 402)
There is nothing epic about Andre Norton stories, but they do keep the action going on a local level, and capture bygone and alien eras quite nicely. The fate of empires might not hang in the balance, but what does transpire seems close to what would really happen the first time we step into the past or onto an alien world light years away from here.
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Norton's stories show their age, yet in some ways she was quite ahead of her time. The Apache Indians are presented in a favorable light, which is rare. We Americans may be better than them dirty Russkies, but the human race as a whole is cosmologically unimpressive. Her heroes tend to be loners, not squeaky-clean boy scouts.
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I loved Andre Norton's stories as kid; and still find them fun to read on an occasional basis. But Science Fiction has evolved significantly since its heyday in the 50's. Without that nostalgic tie-in, readers may find her books a bit "meh". 6 Stars.
2 comments:
That's a curious thing about sci-fi is how they show their age yet I like the prospect of being somewhat quite ahead of her time in contrast.
Great review points to bring up!
The Russia vs. USA setting makes the book seem old, which it is. but Norton is quite broad-minded when it comes to her characters, which was rare for the 1950's. the only other author that I can think of, who was like that at the time, was Robert Heinlein.
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