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Ordeal in Otherwhere — Andre Norton

Published on October 3, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of Ordeal in Otherwhere

Ordeal in Otherwhere
Andre Norton
203 pages
published in 1964

As I said in my review of Andre Norton’s The Zero Stone, where I’d wondered about its lack of women, what was truly odd was that Ordeal in Otherwhere, published four years before it, had a female protagonist. Which I knew because I was already reading it when I wrote that review, as the second book in my Week of Norton. And whereas The Zero Stone contained no women, Ordeal in Otherwhere is one that easily passes the Bechdel test. Nevertheless, as we will see, it does share some of the same gender assumptions as that other book and indeed, most of Norton’s stories I’ve read so far. They’re a product of the time they were written in after all and so it’s not surprising they confirm to the gender roles of fifty years ago.

Nevertheless, this is a novel in which the standard Norton hero is a young woman rather than a young man, one just as inventive, smart and brave as her male counterparts. Charis Nordholm is a young woman left an orphan when her father died of the White Plague sweeping the new colony on Demeter. Ander Nordholm was the educational officer off the colony and had raised his daughter to be inquisitive and competent, something resented by the religious fanatics in the colony. So they sell her into slavery (have her sign a contract of indefinitive length) to a Free Trader, who in turn sells her on to another trader, who takes her to the planet Warlock. The trader needs her to establish trade with the native inhabitants of Warlock, a matriarchal society called Wyverns, the women of which have strange powers. These only talk to other women, hence the need for Charis, who herself hopes to find a way to contact the Survey station somewhere on Warlock to get herself feed from bondage. Of course, things don’t quite work out that simply…

Before long Charis is transported, kidnapped, lured (?) out of the trading post and into the wilds of Warlock, a restless power driving her on. She has to battle this force as well as the natural dangers of the wilderness, but soon gains an ally in the form of a small, furry, telepathic creature called Tsstu. It soon becomes clear to Charis that her half waking, half sleeping ordeals are a test, a test of her character and abilities, one she has passed as she finds herself with the Wyvern women in their citadel, learning to use the same dream powers they have. By concentrating on her guide, a small disc engraved with a spiral design that serves as a focus for her mind, she becomes able to transport herself to other places at will, as long as she can picture them.

Time passes as in a dream and Charis is content with it, until one day she notices a general sense of unease amongst the Wyverns. It prompts her to get back to the meadow where she first met Tsstu. There she finds evidence of violence and it becomes clear something had happened to the trader that had brought her to Warlock. On impulse she transports herself back to his trading post, only to find it destroyed, with a body lying in the ruins. Before she can look who it is though she’s intercepted by a member of the Survey post established on Warlock, who introduces himself as cadet Shann Lantee. Together they start to investigate what happened to the trading post and when they find a spear, of the type Wyvern men use amongst the rubble, Charis calls one of her friends amongst the Wyvern witches, who takes one look at the situation, banishes Shann and takes Charis back to the Citadel.

For the witches all this is a sign they need to purge their planet from all outsiders and force their men back into their service. Charis, meanwhile is desparate not just for her own safety but that of Shann as well and attempts to convince the witches to let her try another way. The reluctantly agree and set her another test, one she must escape before she can rescue Shann, find the people responsible for the attack and stop them from using the male Wyverns to gain the power of Warlock for themselves.

Charis is a capable, competent protagonist and she doesn’t fade when Shann comes in the story; Norton portrays them as equals each with their own strengths. As with all old timey science fiction authors, she packs a lot of plot into twohundred pages and it all moves at breakneck speed. Ordeal in Otherwhere is not as well written as The Zero Stone though, partially because so much happens. At first this looks like it’s going to be about how Charis wins her freedom, but then the focus switches to her exploration of Warlock under the tutelage of the witches, then it becomes a standard Norton adventure story in which Charis and Shann have to fight off the machinations of an evil trading company. It’s all a bit much, with some plot points dropped halfway through the story.

You do wonder how much of the problems on Warlock could’ve been prevented if the Survey Corps had sent some women to it, rather than men. But of course that’s impossible, as only men seem to work for the Corps… Granted, I am inferring this from the other Norton novels I’ve read, but that seems to be the prevailing attitude in her fifties and sixties works, an unthinking reflection of the gender mores of the time. You can see the same thing at work in the paternalistic attitude paid to the inhabitants of Warlock, who have to be prevented from exploitation by unscrupulous human traders whether they like it or not. The people in the Survey corps are idealistic and well intentioned, but there’s still a whiff of colonialism about their works.

The Zero Stone — Andre Norton

Published on October 2, 20142 Comments

Cover of The Zero Stone

The Zero Stone
Andre Norton
221 pages
published in 1968

You can’t accuse Andre Norton from starting her stories slowly. When The Zero Stone opens, its protagonist, Murdoc Jern is fleeing through a primitive town on an alien planet, barely one step ahead of a mob of religious fanatics wanting to kill him. They already killed his boss when the priests of a local cult indicated the both of them for their next ritual victims, but Murdoc managed to escape. He finally manages to reach the dubious safety of a free trader ship, where his only friend is the ship’s cat, but when it falls pregnant after ingesting a strange stone on the traders’ first stopover and he himself falls ill of a strange plague once the cat gives birth, he learns not only that the trader’s crew plan to abandon him on an airless moon, but also that they had been hired to kidnap him. Luckily for him, the cat’s mutant offspring turns out to be a mysterious and powerful alien intelligence who calls himself Eet and who sets out to save Murdoc from his predicament.

The reason for Murdoc’s continuing bad luck turns out to be the old memento that was the only thing he’d taken from his adopted father’s home, who had been not just a gem trader but also a retired crime Guild boss. This memento is a ring too large to be worn and containing a dull, lifeless stone; it was found on a corpse drifting in space but Murdoc’s father could never find out anything more about it, which is why he called it the zero stone. As you’d expect in a story like this, his son has more success in finding out at least some of the story behind the stone, if only by being dragged behind it in a series of increasingly desparate escapes from danger, aided and abetted by his alien companion.

Escaping from the free trader ship doesn’t get Murdoc out of trouble. First he manages to get to a derelict alien ship, dead for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, which confirms his suspicions that the ring is a Forerunner artifact, something an ancient civilisation left behind long before mankind entered the scene. Then he gets stuck on a forest planet where he finds out he’s just a tool in the struggle between the crime Guild and the Patrol, the first wanting to use the stone to get them to a source of incredible power, the latter wanting to destroy it or at least make sure this doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. The telepathic, highly intelligent and annoyingly mysterious Eet meanwhile, whom the cover actually depicts remarkably well as a sort cross of cat, seal and monkey, says he has the best interests of both himself and Murdoc at heart, but that doesn’t stop him from using Murdoc too.

That relationship between Murdoc and Eet is the heart of the book and it’s a relief to have a telepathic space cat who isn’t incredibly cute and sweet but downright obnoxious and irritated at times. It’s somewhat of a Archie Goodwin/Nero Wolfe relationship, with Eet providing the brain for Murdoc’s brawn. They start out allies but end up sort of reluctant friends, being the only ones each of them can rely upon on.

What’s struck me about Murdoc and indeed about many of Norton’s boy heroes, is how often they are in over their heads, largely ignorant of what’s really going on and basically trying to survive rather than having the fate of the universe in their hands. It makes me wonder how much of influence she had on C. J. Cherryh, who after all specialises in this sort of protagonist and takes great delight in keeping them off balance and on the verge of exhaustion. Like Cherryh, Norton’s heroes are just trying to survive in a vast, ancient and hostile universe, only she’s nicer about it.

The Zero Stone is pure space opera with little hard science in it. It therefore aged remarkably well, some nonsense about navigation tapes notwithstanding. Instead, where it is dated is in its gender assumptions. This is literally a novel without any women in it, or females of any kind other than the ship cat. Not even the aliens are female. This is something that even in 1968, with second wave feminism starting to make noises, must’ve seen natural. No room for women in science fiction; that only distracts. So obvious a fact of life that this absence doesn’t even need to be noted, let alone explained. Half a century on though it stands out like a sore thumb.

From the various novels of her I’ve read it seems that Norton never had much time to include romance in her stories, perhas judging that her young, largely boyish audience would not put up with it. Yet she’s had female protagonists before, e.g. in Ordeal in Otherwhere. It’s therefore not so much malice than that leaves The Zero Stone womanless, rather it was just “natural” for a science fiction adventure story to be a sausagefest.

To sum up The Zero Stone was an enjoyable romp even if the lack of women looks really odd. I liked the universe Norton build and the fact Murdoc was never a superhero, just an ordinary guy caught up in forces beyond his control.

Voodoo Planet — Andre Norton

Published on April 29, 20141 Comment

Cover of Voodoo Planet

Voodoo Planet
Andre Norton
192 pages
published in 1956

Genre science fiction got its start in the pulp magazines of the twenties and thirties and many of its early writers were just pulp authors writing the same old stories they’d always written, just with some sf flavourings. So instead of the brave sheriff depending on his horse and trusty six gun to fight off the bandits out in the Oklahoma badlands, you got the brave space marshall depending on his trusty rocket and raygun to take out the bandits hiding out in the Martian badlands. It’s this what fans meant when they talked about space opera, before that got co-opted for something more respectable, crappy fake science fiction stories that might just as well have been westerns. As the field matured and new writers moved in actually interested in science fiction as a genre, these stories quickly disappeared.

Even so, they never completely went away and every now and then you run across a story whose pulp roots are clearly visible, even with a writer like Andre Norton. Voodoo Planet, as you may have guessed, is one example. The sequel to Plague Ship, this is another adventure of the crew of the Solar Queen, who have been invited to a big game hunt ~~in Africa~~ Khatka, a planet settled by African colonists, where they run straight into a trap set by the resident witch doctor.

Which is just as pulpy as it sounds. Khatka is a planet that’s like the Africa out of pulp magazines, mostly untamed wilderness full of dangerous animals, while the natives are somewhat more sophisticated than in the prewar pulps. Norton is at pains to emphasise that Khatka is just as civilised a planet as any other, they just prefer the primitive life of their terran ancestors. It’s all a bit separate but equal, not very progressive even for the fifties.

The plot doesn’t help, pitting the rational crew of the Solar Queen against one of the hoariest of pulp cliches, the evil medicine man who uses superstition to oppress the hapless natives. Even though the various black characters are just as well rounded as the Solar Queen’s men, ie solidly twodimensional, that kind of plot still taps into all sorts of racist, colonial imagery. Again, Norton does seem to do her best to avoid this, but the shape of the story works against her. It remains too obviously an pulp African adventure transplanted to a science fiction setting. Not her best story.

Plague Ship — Andre Norton

Published on February 6, 20141 Comment

Cover of Plague Ship

Plague Ship
Andre Norton
192 pages
published in 1956

Hold on to your tail fins, space fans. This retro rocket boosted tale is sure to knock you out of your orbit. Oy, did this very fifties future slang get old fast in Plague Ship. This is another of Norton’s books at Project Gutenberg and mildly irritating as its language occasionally was, it was also the perfect kind of light adventure science fiction to be read in small snatches on my phone, while getting coffee at work.

Plague Ship is the second in Norton’s Solar Queen series, about the adventures of the crew of the ship the series is named after, free traders trying to eke out a living making the kind of trading deals the big companies can’t. The Solar Queen is literally a huge rocket ship, complete with humongous fifties tail fins to land on. Amongst its crew is Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice and our hero, prone to saying things like “rest easy on your fins” and “right up the rockets” and all other sorts of horrid expressions you have to read around.

Plague Ship starts with the Solar Queen visiting the planet Sargol, for which it now holds a trading license, due to the events of the previous novel. This planet is the source of a new sort of jewels which are very much in fashion back on Earth. Getting those jewels means dealing with the natives, which isn’t the easiest of tasks, as these have a very rigid concept of how negotiations should take place, which the Solar Queen’s crew has no choice but to adapt to. Worse, it turns out there are also representatives of one of the big trading firms present on Sargon, waiting to see if the Solar Queen slips up so they can take over their licence…

Luckily, through a series of misadventures, in which Dane plays a large role, they do manage to get the natives to trade as it turns out they’re very partial to catnip. However, as they blast off from Sargol their problems are only starting as most of the crew, save for Dane and three others fall ill to a mysterious sickness. It’s up to the four of them to get the Solar Queen back to Earth without being quarantined or giving the big trading company an excuse to take over.

I’m not sure if Plague Ship was originally published as a serial, but it sure reads like one. Dane is put from one dangerous situation into another, with no time to catch his breath. He and his friends not only have to deal with getting the Solar Queen back to Earth with all their fellow crew members helpless and sick, no, theh also have to evade the space patrol and land on Earth without their knowledge. Then they have to find a way out of the radioactive zone they hid in, a remnant of World War III (another very fifties sf obsession) and get their plight known to the people of Earth, to get out of the fix they’re in. It all moves along quickly, too quickly at times, with no time to really dig deep into anything.

For me personally, I would’ve been happy had Norton kept the focus on the Solar Queen’s adventures on Sargol and skipped the rest of the plot. She had a knack for introducing small, telling details to sketch a world, (also on display in The Time Traders) and what she put in about the tribes of Sargol made me interested in reading more about them. Once the Solar Queen left the planet it all became a lot less interesting.

Nevertheless, if you can get used to the very fifties feel of Plague Ship and are not too bothered with how lowtech the Solar Queen and future Earth are, this is actually a perfectly adequate adventure science fiction story. It’s something you could read in half a day and ideally suited to read in short snatches on your mobile when bored.

The Time Traders — Andre Norton

Published on January 7, 20141 Comment

Cover of The Time Traders

The Time Traders
Andre Norton
191 pages
published in 1958

If it wasn’t for Project Gutenberg I might’ve never read this novel. Though Andre Norton was one of the most prolific US science fiction writer, mostly writing what we’d now call young adult novels, she never was translated into Dutch much so was missing when I went through my personal Golden Age. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve started to catch up with her, in no small part thanks to Gutenberg’s collection of her works. Because until roughly the seventies, American copyright was only valid for a limited time and had to be explicitly renewed, a lot of science fiction pulp and early paperback stories entered the public domain. In this case, the copyright on the original 1958 hardcover publication of The Time Traders was never renewed, making it fair game for Gutenberg.

I picked this out of the available Nortons for two reasons: it was the first book in a series and more importantly, it was a time travel story. It had been a while since I’d last read a good, old fashioned time travel story and this seemed to fit the bill perfectly. After all, it has time agents who have to travel undercover through prehistoric times to find the ancient civilisation from which the Soviets are getting sophisticated weaponry and technology they couldn’t have possibly produced themselves.

But that does point to the novel’s greatest problem: it was written in 1958, at the height of the first Cold War and it shows. It’s not just that this is a straight arms race between heroic, American time travellers and devious Soviet agents, it’s also that the protagonist, Ross Murdock, is an example of that other fifties bugbear, a juvenile delinquent, mollycoddled by society. He thinks he knows how the game is played until he finds himself being drafted in a top secret project, which we, even if the title hadn’t been a dead giveaway, know soon enough is a time travel project, but which costs him some time to find out. Though gifted with a bit of cunning and some inner strength, Ross at first is not the brightest bulb.

The Time Traders starts with Ross being drafted into the project, blind, as alternative to being sent to prison for unspecified crimes. He at first thinks to play along to bide his time until he has an opportunity to escape the polar base he’s sent to, but when his chance at escape would mean betraying the base to the Soviets, he can’t do it. This finally earns him some measure of trust as the goal of the time travel project is explained to him and he begins his training in earnest.

This second part of the book is dominated by I guess you can call it a love story, between Ross and his mentor, an older time agent called Gordon Ashe. Gordon is the father figure Ross never had and he does his utmost to win his respect. This comes to a head as they go on their first time travel journey together, back to prehistoric England, where the agents have established themselves as foreign traders and established a small base. Of course things go wrong and of course it turns to Ross to save the day.

If I’m honest, I would’ve liked to have seen more of Ross and Gordon’s adventures in prehistory, rather than it all devolving in spy games with Russian time agents. Though much of what Norton shows of prehistoric, iron age Britain may be obsolete or have always been nonsense, she does have a good eye for the small, telling detail to make a world come alive and I would’ve liked to spent more time there. The plot itself is of course dated, especially because it is supposed to be set sometime in the near future, but after a while it didn’t bother me. If it would you, there’s an updated version brought out by Baen Books, if I’m not mistaken, which has updated the Cold War plots. I’m not sure that was needed.

The Time Traders was popular enough to spawn three sequels, two of which (but not the second) are also available at Gutenberg, as well as three much later continuations by Norton plus a junior writer. Again, not having read them, I’d be wary to try these latter. Famous writers revisiting popular series with the help of less famous writers never work out.