SF god(dess) Andre Norton has died.
Science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular “Witch World” series, has died. She was 93.
[…] Norton requested before her death that she not have a funeral service, but instead asked to be cremated along with a copy of her first and last novels.
Born Alice Mary Norton on February 17, 1912, in Cleveland, she wrote more than 130 books in many genres during her career of nearly 70 years. She used a pen name — which she made her legal name in 1934 — because she expected to be writing mostly for young boys and thought a male name would help sales.
[…] She was the first woman to receive the Grand Master of Fantasy Award from the SFWA in 1977, and she won the Nebula Grand Master Award in 1984.
I have at least a couple of dozen of her books on my bookshelf, and I still regularly reread a number of them. She wrote fabulous space opera and fantasy (and sometimes both), often with common settings, history and technology. The Witch World series was one of her most famous series, but her SF books — the Patrol, the Free Traders, blasters, stunners, veeps, Forerunners, Zacathans, Salariki, the whole lot — were my faves. I’ve probably read The Zero Stone and its sequel a score of times, and I always enjoyed her body-hopping Moon of Three Rings and its sequels. What SF conventions she didn’t originate she at least established in my head as to how an SF universe would work.
If not as flashy as a Heinlein or as erudite as an Asimov, she was still a solid, engaging writer, always balancing the fantastic with the personal.
It’s sad to know she’s gone, though she’s been in ill health for some time. It’s a joy to know that her work will live on.
(via Scott)
Andre Norton was the first Science Fiction author I read, and for years the first thing I looked for in any bookstore was books by Andre Norton.
There’s an obituary for Andre Norton in the NYT today.
… whose central theme was the rite of passage to self-realization undertaken by misfits or displaced outsiders …
Yup. One reason she was so popular as a “young people” (and “misfit”) writer (at least with this “young person” and “misfit”).
By the way, upon reflection (and a little Googling), I find I’ve misrepresented the Zacathans. Long-lived scholars and historians, they were not reptilian Vulcans as I’d had the vague knee-jerk recollection, but were quite benign and, if not overly expressive save in an intellectual way, hardly without emotion.
This had slipped past my radar screen. I’m so sad at her passing as she was one of my favorite authors ever. I started reading her books when I was very young, probably 12 or 13, and have memories of some of them still (and I’m 51!). Thanks for pointing this out for me.
I’m rereading The Zero Stone right now, and enjoying it as much as ever.
I’ve read a good chunk of her books, many times over. And to tie it all into gaming, all you have to do is read any of the Solar Queen tales and then take a look at GDW’s classic Traveller SF-RPG…Type A Traders and the like. Marc Miller and crew mined Norton (and others such as Anderson, Laumer and Tubb) for ideas to (errr) “borrow”.
The Zero Stone. I always was fascinated by the jewels in that one sequence where our hero makes a break and then buys some time in a refuge. I always wanted a couple of those carved jewels.
Good stuff. I’ll have to put a couple of her books on the To Be Read (or rather re-read) pile.
(If anybody’s looking for her books, Baen has been republishing a lot in omnibus editions–that are also available in eBook format. And Tor came out with an omnibus of the first two Star Queen books; hopefully they will come out with another one to finish up the series.)
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of her older stuff (some I hadn’t seen before) reprinted lately in paired/omnibus editions (largely because today’s paperbacks are larger than older ones). Getting the ZS pair in one volume would be nice.
Actually, I’d spring for some of her work in hardcover. I should check out used stuff …
I’ve never read any of her work! I may have a paperback or two that I picked up at a yard sale. Have to check.
I’d heartily recommend any of the works mentioned above. I didn’t care for her later works and collaboration as much as her output in the 50s and 60s, but I may have been prejudiced by when I was exposed to the latter.