Daybreak 2250 A.D. - Andre Norton

   1952; 191 pages.  Alternate Titles: “Star Man’s Son” and “Star Man’s Son, 2250 AD”.  New Author? : No.  Genres : 50’s Sci-Fi; YA; post-apocalyptic.   Overall Rating: 8/10.

 

    Fors's father, Langdon, was a highly regarded Star Man.  He had roamed the ruined lands around the Eyrie extensively, drawn maps of it, and brought back precious loot.  And even though Langdon was now dead, it was natural to assume that Fors would follow in his father’s footsteps.

 

    But his mother was of an alien race, one could tell that just by looking at Fors.  Which made him a half-breed, a mutant.  And when it came time for the yearly Choosing ritual at the Star Hall, the Council’s opinion was that Fors’s genes were more important than his training or his father's fame.

 

    Five years Fors had been nominated to be a Star Man; five years he had been rejected.  Five years was the limit; a sixth nomination was forbidden.  Fors would be relegated to the status of a commoner, suitable for working in the fields.  Nothing more.  All because of his looks.  And there's nothing he can do about it.

    Is there?

 

What’s To Like...

    Andre Norton (real name: Alice Mary Norton, b. 1912, d. 2005) was a prolific and popular sci-fi/fantasy author; Daybreak 2250 AD is one of her early works.  We follow Fors as he travels into the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world with his companion cat, Lura (see cover image).  In a land where nuclear war has annihilated almost all of civilization, Fors encounters various beasts and humans, which at best, distrust any stranger passing through their territory, and at worst, want to kill and eat them.

 

    The target audience is YA boys, which was true of all sci-fi novels written in the 1950s.  Therefore there is lots of adventure here, and absolutely zero booze, drugs, adult situations, and/or cussing.  When the latter seems called for, Andre Norton delightfully resorts to phrases like “by the great horned lizard!” and “forest filth!”.

 

    In amongst all the exploring and adventuring, the author subtly weaves some keen insight about several serious themes.  The book was published in 1952, just seven years after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  This introduced a new global dread: a massive, life-ending nuclear holocaust.  Andre Norton uses that scenario as the setting for Daybreak 2250 AD.  She also offers some provocative opinions, for that era, on racial bigotry (the southern tribespeople are dark-skinned) and feminism (one of the clans is led by a woman).  Plus, there is an overarching theme of the futility of war.  Pretty awesome for 1952!

 

    It was fun to comb through the ruins alongside Fors searching for long-lost gadgets and artifacts.  The rusted, derelict automobiles, both the nuclear-powered and the older gasoline-burning ones, are ignored; the technology for making their fuels has long been lost.  Store mannequins scared and mystified Fors because at first he thought they were petrified victims of the nuclear blasts.  OTOH, finding pencils, especially the colored ones, and a ream of paper, cause him to rejoice.  So do foodstuffs preserved in cans and jars that are still sealed.  Ordinary forks are also valuable finds.

    The ending is satisfying and heartwarming, albeit pretty straightforward and not very twisty.  Given several choices for a tribe that will accept him, and mutant though he is, Fors opts for the obvious one.  The book screams to be developed into a series chronicling Fors’s further adventures, but that has never happened.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 58 ratings and 34 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.02*/5, based on 2,539 ratings and 163 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    They might have forgotten about his night sight and too-keen hearing.  He could have concealed those as soon as he learned how wrong it was to be different.  But he could not hide the color of his close-cropped hair.  And that had damned him from the day his father had brought him here.  Other men had brown or black, or, at the worst, sunbleached yellow, covering their heads.  He had silver white, which showed to all men that he was a mutant, different from the rest of his clan.  Mutant!  Mutant!  (pg. 6)

 

    “Mountains—man made—that is what we see here.  But why did the Old Ones love to huddle together in such a fashion?  Did they fear their own magic so that they must live cheek to cheek with their kind lest it eat them up when it was loosed—as it did?  Well, they died of it in the end, poor Old Ones.  And now we have a better life—”

    “Do we?”  Fors kicked at the loose stone.  “They had such knowledge—we are groping in the dark for only crumbs of what they knew—"  (pg. 70)

 

“Only a fool tries to teach the otter to swim.”  (pg. 157)

    There’s very little to quibble about in Daybreak 2250 AD.  As mentioned, there is nothing even remotely R-rated here.  One reviewer felt that the storyline was anti-feminist because Fors chose not to accept the female leader’s offer to accept him into her tribe.  But this novel came out in 1952.  Feminism was not yet an issue back then.  Personally, I was impressed that it portrayed an army of men as being willing to have a woman lead them into battle.

 

    The big problem was with the editing.  Typos abounded: tained/tainted; mid-dile/middle, horrow/horror, scatered/scattered, and a host of others, numerous enough to be a distraction. But again, this book came out in 1952, when spellchecker and word processing programs were just a figment of the imagination.   So I’m forced to cut the editing staff some slack.

 

    Daybreak 2250 AD kept my interest from the start to finish, which was a bit of a surprise, since I am not part of the target audience.  The text did not seem “YA-ish” at all, and the action, if not particularly realistic, did feel “balanced”—the baddies (aka “the Beast Things”) were capable of holding their own, using tricks and strategy to thwart the good guys.  1950s sci-fi can sometimes feel out-of-date.  I’m happy to say that wasn’t the case here.

 

    8 Stars.  Daybreak 2250 AD was a re-read for me, although it’s been about 60 years since I first read it.  It was one of two books that had a major impact on my literary preferences as a kid, the other being Evan Hunter’s Danger: Dinosaurs!  The latter sits on my Kindle, waiting to be read again.  I hope it delights me the second time around as much as Daybreak 2250 AD did.

Key Out Of Time - Andre Norton

    1963; 178 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : 50’s Sci Fi.  Book #4 of the Time Traders  series.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    Hawaika – according to a cosmic tape, it should be a lush, tropical, thriving planet.  Instead, the Time Traders found it almost entirely ocean-covered, with only a few spits of lifeless land jutting above the sea.  What happened?

    Fortunately, the Time Traders have a device they call a peep-probe, which can see how a selected place looked like in the past.  And 10,000 years ago Hawaika looked like what was seen on the tape.  A mere 500 years later, the planet was barren.  Could Hawaika’s fate be changed if the time travelers hop back to before “the big event”?  More importantly, should they interfere with history?   

What’s To Like...
    This is classic Science Fiction.  The target audience is teenage boys, who were only ones reading it in the early 60’s.  So Key Out Of Time has no cussing, no sex, and above all, no romance.  There is some killing and bloodshed, but the gore is kept to a minimum.

     The storyline is vintage Andre (Alice) Norton.  She loved to use time-travel themes, which is how I got hooked on her books as a boy.  But there are some remarkably forward-looking themes here too.  For instance, one of the protagonists is a girl, another is a croipple, and two others are dolphins.  Norton makes it a point to show they all are just as important on the mission as the white males.  Indeed, our main hero, Ross, sometimes feels like the backward one.

    Norton also takes a couple subtle pokes at the “Better dead than Red” mindset of the 1960’s.  Heady stuff for something published at the height of the Cold War.

    The story moves at a crisp pace.  We don’t really move around a lot in the alien world (that’s also vintage Norton), but she does throw a bunch of fascinating people, animals, gadgets, and magic at us to keep us entertained.  And Norton postulates the Prime Directive here, years before Star Trek employed it.  Maybe this is where Gene Roddenberry got the idea for it.

Kewlest New Word...
    Immure (verb)  : To enclose or confine someone against their will.

Excerpts...
    “Suppose” – Ross rolled over on his stomach, pillowed his head on his arms – “we could uncover some of that knowledge –“
    The twitch was back at Ashe’s lips. “That’s the risk we have to run now.”
    “Risk?”
    “Would you give a child one of those hand weapons we found in the derelict?”
    “Naturally not!” Ross snapped and then saw the point.  “You mean – we aren’t to be trusted?”
    The answer was plain to read in Ashe’s expression.  (loc. 139 )

    Rule One: Conserve native life to the fullest extent.  Humanoid form may not be the only evidence of intelligence.
    There were the dolphins to prove that point right on Terra.  But did Rule One mean that you had to let a monster nibble at you because it might just be a high type of alien intelligence?  Let Karara spout Rule One while backed into a crevice under water with that horn stabbing at her mid-section!  (loc. 270)

Kindle Details...
    Key Out Of Time is a free download at Amazon, as are the first three books in this series.  The copyrights on a bunch of Andre Norton’s early works have expired, meaning anyone can publish them.  A lot of these are also available as free downloads.  You can tell them quickly at Amazon; none of them have a “real” book cover.  I’m guessing the artwork is still copyrighted.

“Ross, where are we?”  “Better say – when are we?” he replied.”  (loc. 529)
    FWIW, the fundamental question – what happened to civilization on Hawaika – is never answered.  Maybe that’s dealt with in the three sequels to KooT, but they were written 30 years afterward.  Maybe we’re supposed to ponder whether the Time Traders’ visit to Hawaika changed its history.  It’s hard to say.

    Science Fiction has come a long way since its Golden Age of the 1950’s/60’s.  Storylines are more complex, the books and series are longer, alien planets are much more detailed, and the physics of galactic travel is now an art in itself.  Sci Fi is no longer just for adolescent boys.

    Still, I enjoy reading classic Sci Fi on occasion, and Andre Norton is often what I reach for first.  7½ Stars.

The Defiant Agents - Andre Norton

1962; 222 pages.  Book #3 of the Time Traders series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : 50's Science Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    There is something important - something powerful - on the distant planet Topaz, the records of the ancient star-travelers say so.  We need to find it and take possesion of it fast, before the Russians do.  But conditions on Topaz are harsh and geeky scientists and technicians have poor survival skills.  So let's Apachify them before shipping them out.

    Alas, the Russkies got there first, and their crew has been Mongolized.  Spirit of Cochise, meet Spirit of Genghis Khan!

What's To Like...
    The "Apachifying" process is a unique twist, which Andre Norton calls "the Redax".  Basically, it's the imprinting of 1800's Apache knowledge and instincts into  modern-day brains.  You end up a little bit schizophrenic, but you can live off the land and are one heckuva fighter.  Two coyotes are also given the Redax treatment, making them beastmaster kewl.

    It seems Norton did a lot of research in prepping for this book - the Apache gods, phrases, and culture are convincing.  There's space-travel instead of time-travel,  and we get lots of action, an alien planet to explore, some nasty otherworldly fauna, and a good ending.  The characters aren't deep (this is 50's Sci-Fi, after all), but the two opposing sides are complex, with neither one being all-good or all-bad.

Kewlest New Word...
    Kumiss : a drink common among the Mongols, made from fermented mare's milk.

Excerpts...
    (T)he male coyote went into action.  Days ago he had managed to work loose the lower end of the mesh which fronted his cage, but his mind had told him that a sortie inside the ship was valueless.  The odd rapport he'd had with the human brains, unknown to them, had operated to keep him to the old role of cunning deception, which in the past had saved countless of his species from sudden and violent death.  Now with teeth and paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his mate, that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling their nostrils - a wild world, lacking the taint of man-places.  (loc. 249)

    They thrust her out into the circle of waiting men and she planted her feet firmly apart, glaring at them all indiscriminately until she sighted Travis.  Then her anger became hotter and more deadly.
    "Pig!  Rooter in the dirt!  Diseased camel -" she shouted at him in English and then reverted to her own tongue, her voice riding up and down the scale.  Her hands were tied behind her back, but there were no bonds on her tongue.
    "This is one who can speak thunders, and shoot lightnings from her mouth," Buck commented in Apache.  "Put her well away from the wood, lest she set it aflame."  (loc. 1934)

Kindle Details...
    You can pay anything from $0.00 to $3.99 for the Kindle version of The Defiant Agents.  Needless to say, I opted for the freebie.  It looks like a number of Andre Norton books are now public domain, although only a few have been Kindle-ized so far.

Was the enemy always on the other side of the world?  Or could he wear the same uniform, even share the same goals?  (loc. 102)
    The Defiant Agents was published in 1962, which is important for two reasons.  First, it means the target audience was young, teen-age boys.  As such, there's no sex, no cussing, a straighforward plotline, and only a hint of romance.  Second, this was at the height of the Cold War.  Russia was The Enemy, and prudent people built fall-out shelters in their backyards.

    Given that mind-set, Andre Norton sneaks some powerful-yet-subtle messages into her story.  First, we may be the good guys, but we're not much different from the bad guys.  Second, our leaders can fool us, just like the Russian leaders fool their people.  Third, you really can't trust anybody with the possession of WMD's.

    7½ Stars.  Because it will entertain young minds while also giving them lots to think about.

Time Traders - Andre Norton

2000 (this "Omnibus" edition); 438 pages. Genre : 50's Sci Fi. New Author? : No. See here. Overall Rating : 6*/10.

.

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".

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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)

.

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)

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

The Crossroads of Time - Andre Norton

170 pages; 1956. Genre : Sci Fi (Young Adult). Overall Rating : A- to C+.

.   By having a premonition to help someone out, Blake Walker finds himself drawn into dimension-travel, and the tracking down of a rogue who's importing sophisticated weaponry into less-advanced dimensions for personal gain.

   .Andre Norton (1912-2005) was one of the top Sci-Fi authors in the 50's/60's. While she didn't introduce the concept of time- and space-travel, she popularized it by using it as a repeated theme in her books. TCoT is one of her earlier stories, which she then developed into a 4-5 book series.

What's To Like...
    This is a perfect story for a young teen boy. There's a fair amount of fighting and killing; and no yucky romance. Parents will appreciate that there's no sex or drugs. The bad guy is a UE (Ultimate Evil), but at least he's resourceful and cunning. And our hero doesn't start out as a perfect defender-of-all-that's-good. Indeed, he's as much of a liability as an asset in this present UE-hunt.
.
    I like Norton's treatment of our timeline. All too often, Alternate History authors portray our particular time/space continuum as being the most advanced there is. We boldly go where no one has gone before, benevolently enlightening the rest of the Cosmos.

   .No so here. Our dimension comes off as being quaintly naive, psionically primitive, and dangerously prone to violence. Just the sort of place a UE would want to take over. That's a refreshing viewpoint.

What's Not To Like...
    Not a lot. Norton doesn't spend a lot of time fleshing out most of the alternate worlds here, but I suppose that's to be expected in a 170-page book. And I swear, although every Norton book ever issued has at least two completely different bookcovers, none of them (including the one shown above) have anything to do with the story itself.
.
What If...
    Norton's general hypothesis here is that an alternate timeline spins off at every critical juncture in history. Thus you end up with thousands of parallel universes.

   .The one that Norton does take some time to explore here is a world where Hitler wins the Battle of Britain. The remnants of the British army and government flee to Canada, and the main phase of World War 2 consists of Germany and Japan besieging North America from both coasts. The effort eventually fails, but at the cost of tremendous destruction and anarchy in the United States. TCoT is set in the present (well, mid-1950's), and while Blake and his associates try to catch the UE, a few plucky, local New Yorkers are trying to re-establish civilization.
.
Overall Rating : Adults : C+; Young Adult : A-
    In the end, the plot is just a bit too straightforward to keep an adult reader's interest. And it has to be asked just how the universe decides what constitutes an critical juncture, worthy of an alternate world spin-off. But for a kid into science fiction, this should be a fun story. And it is cool to read someone who blazed the path for present-day Alt-History writers.