The Zero Stone, Andre Norton

The Zero Stone, Andre Norton (1968)
Review by Redhead

Can someone please tell me why it took me so long to read this book? Nearly every Andre Norton I’ve picked up has been excellent, and The Zero Stone is no different. Skillfully written and wonderfully imaginative, I think this is my favorite Norton so far.

The story gets rolling right away when Murdoc Jern’s patron is assassinated. Raised by a gem dealer with shady connections and then apprenticed out to the legitimate gem merchant Vondar Ustle, Murdoc knows everything there is to know about gems and stones, but he’s woefully naive about everything else. When Ustle is murdered Murdoc finds sanctuary and then takes the first available ship off planet.

All this time, Murdoc has been in possession of a singularly strange ring. Too large for any human finger, the ring holds a weird lusterless stone. It was found on a corpse in space, and it seems to offer guidance to specific people. What does the ring point to? Is this why Ustle was killed? Is Murdoc in danger?

Befriended by the ship’s cat, Murdoc accidentally allows the cat to eat a strange pebble. The pebble impregnates the cat, and a weird little mutant cat is born. The mutant cat, who calls itself Eet, is telepathic, intelligent, and refuses to tell Murdoc anything about its origin. Eet helps Murdoc escape from those who would do him harm, and a partnership is formed between the two. Not quite trusting friends, they do need each other. Eet is stuck in a tiny feline body and needs a strong person to help, and Murdoc could certainly use some help avoiding certain death and learning more about the powers and origin of the ring.

Murdoc isn’t your typical space adventurer (he doesn’t even want to have an adventure!), and Eet most certainly isn’t your typical telepathic cat. The ring guides them to a planet, and at first it is believed this is the home planet of the ring and other powerful stones. At first all Murdoc and Eet find are cannibalistic natives. Eet doesn’t so much offer suggestions of how to survive as made demands of what Murdoc should do to do and when. If Murdoc wants to survive, he better listen to the mysterious little mutant.

Like Murdoc, at first I was a little creeped out by Eet, but I quickly came to care about that bossy little alien freak. The Zero Stone is pure adventure, and fun on every page. If you’re new to Norton, this is an excellent place to start. The story continues in Uncharted Stars, and both can be found in the Omnibus Search for the Star Stones from Baen Books.

The only thing I can complain about with The Zero Stone is that even though the entire thing is perfectly paced, for the first half of the book or so you have no idea where the plot is going. This really isn’t a big deal, as that first half of the book is filled with Murdoc’s fascinating and funny thoughts about what’s going on around him, background information about his family, and of course, the oh-so-alien Eet. So even though I had no idea where the story was headed, I was having so much fun I barely noticed.

Something that surprised me was the complete nonchalance of a lot of the minor characters. When the cat is pregnant with an alien kitten, no one seems to care much. They lock her in sickbay, and don’t seem to mind when she escapes to give birth elsewhere. Things like that, that these days (thanks to decades of sci-fi horror movies) are big deals, back then it was fine to gloss right over them. I found things like that very funny.

I’ve already mentioned it, but if you are new to Andre Norton, The Zero Stone is a perfect place to start. The story will pull you in right away (even if you’re not sure where it’s going) and as soon as you meet Eet, you’ll be asking yourself the same question with which I opened this review.

This review originally appeared on The Little Red Reviewer.

Star Born, Andre Norton

Star Born, Andre Norton (1957)
Review by Carl Vincent

Star Born packs quite a lot of storytelling punch in its brief 187 pages. Andre Norton’s 1957 story examines such issues as slavery, racial prejudice, apocalyptic warfare and governmental oppression and wraps it all up in the kind of adventure-filled story that was a pleasure to read as and adult and would have had me gazing heavenward as a child. Star Born is an example of fine world-building and classic space adventure that remains accessible and surprisingly relevant 55 years after its release.

At the beginning of Norton’s novel we are introduced to Dalgard, the progeny of members of a generation ship who escaped an oppressive government on Earth (Terra) and fled to the planet Astra in hopes to make a new start. Dalgard is traveling with Sssuri, a member of a sea-born race affectionately referred to as mermen, and merwomen. Dalgard and Sssuri are traveling together, examining the ruins of a race of beings who at one time brought destructive warfare to Astra and who are rumored to be returning to reclaim the advanced technology that would once again make them a formidable enemy. Through the buddy story of Dalgard and Sssuri the reader learns much of the history of both Terra and Astra as well as learning about the culture of the people indigenous to Astra and that of the colonists who long ago landed there.

Alternately the reader is treated to the story of Raf, a Terran pilot who is a member of a larger party of explorers sent out to explore the stars to see if they could discover any remnants of those long-ago missions now that the oppressive Pax government was dead. Through Raf’s eyes the reader is able to experience Astra as if we too were landing on a strange planet for the first time. The excitement and fear of the unknown is an interesting contrast to the journey that Dalgard and Sssuri are undertaking and Norton’s story alternates back and forth between these two viewpoints. In so doing the reader gets a picture of the mysterious Others who are the alleged warmongers of Astra.

While reading Star Born I really appreciated the cleverness of Andre Norton. In reading classic science fiction stories like this there is always a chance that the story will not only feel dated but that the storytelling choices that were perhaps brilliant at the time will have a ‘been there, done that’ feel because of the decades of stories they have inspired since their release. Certainly some of the outcomes of Star Born were a foregone conclusion, but the manner in which Norton gets the story there and the surprising amount of social and political relevance for today allows Star Born to feel fresh despite the now well-worn tropes. In particular the examination of the Terran government’s views on racial prejudice and how that informs the actions of the space travelers as their adventure unfolds gave me pause as I thought about what goes on in our world today coupled with the imminent election of our President here in the United States.

But lest you think political and social commentary make for a boring work of fiction, let me assure you that Andre Norton keeps the story moving with the kind of action, suspense and sense of wonder that makes science fiction such a pleasure to read. Star Born ratchets up the tension right to the very end. Despite being well past my bed time I could not stop turning the pages as I was alternately curious about how the story would end and also how it could be possible for Norton to come to a satisfying end given the rapid disappearance of pages left to read. Without spoiling anything I will say that this reader was particularly satisfied with her execution and the choices she made as an author. She truly knew her audience and she delivered.

Star Born contains a nice mixture of Lost World fantasy and space-faring science fiction and Andre Norton manages to compare and contrast the two worlds without passing judgment on either. Critics could point out that the science is beyond iffy in Norton’s book. Unlike some of the Heinlein juveniles to which Star Born could and should be favourably compared, there is little attempt at explaining anything from the telepathic ability of the mermen and colonists to the advanced technology of the Others. The emphasis is firmly placed on the examination of the way in which mankind, or various intelligent species in this case, treats one another and given the time period in which this was written could and would have applicability across a wide range of historical events.

In the end I enjoyed Star Born because it was fun. Some of my favorite classic science fiction reading experiences have been thanks to the efforts of authors aiming science fiction at young people, providing them exciting adventures of space exploration while not talking down to them with his writing. Andre Norton too refuses to talk down to her readers, examining with maturity subject matter that is important to get a handle on early in life while at the same time providing the kid of page-turning adventure that recalls the novels that hooked me as a young adult. I am glad that I chose this as my first experience with Andre Norton. It will be the first of many, I assure you.

This review originally appeared on Stainless Steel Droppings.

Star Hunter, Andre Norton

Star Hunter, Andre Norton (1961)
Review by Martin Wisse

For a lot of American science fiction fans my age or older, Andre Norton was the first “real” sf writer they ever read, largely because she was hugely prolific and specialised in what we’d now call young adult novels. For some reason however she was never all that popular in the Netherlands so I’ve read little of her work so far. But that’s changing, thanks to Project Gutenberg, who have a fair few of her books available, those on which the original US copyrights had not been renewed. Star Hunter is one of them, originally published as an Ace Double. I read it during a couple of lunch breaks at work.

Ras Hume is a pilot for the Out-Hunters Guild who on a trip to the newly discovered planet of Jumala has made a discovery that could make him incredibly rich, but to exploit it he needs to make a deal with Wass, the biggest crime boss on Nahuatl. What he found was the lifeboat from the Largo Drift, a space ship which disappeared six years ago, taking with it the heir to the Kogan estate. He also has a plausible candidate to play the part of Rynch Brodie, the teenage heir. What he needs Wazz for is to condition this boy to actually believe he is this heir, then he will be let lose on Jumala for Hume to discover him when he brings over the safari party he’s scheduled to pilot there. It’s an almost foolproof plan, surely nothing can go wrong.

But there wouldn’t have been a story if something didn’t go wrong. The patsy Hume has chosen, Vye Lansor, an orphan plucked from the foulest bar in Nahuatl’s spaceport, was conditioned and dropped on Jumala, but the condition wasn’t good enough and he remembers flashes from his true life. Worse, while Jumala was deemed fit for human visiting and free of intelligent alien life, something has been woken up by the safari party and Hume and Lansor/Brodie find themselves as grudging allies against this alien menace as this attempts to herd them towards imprisonment in the hills of Jumala.

Since Andre Norton has only ninety-six pages in which to tell her story, it obviously has to be tight. Which means that while we do get a resolution to the central plot line, the mystery of the aliens and why they attacked the safari party is never followed through. Hume and Lansor bond, fight their way out of the alien traps and survive and that’s it. A bit unsatisfactory, but not the end of the world.

In the same way, there’s little room to develop the settings, Nahuatl and Jumala, very much. Both are solid pulp sf settings, feel more like small towns than whole planets, but are deftly sketched in by Norton with a few neatly chosen details, especially Jumala. There are the watercats for example, dangerous aquatic ambush predators lurking in creeks and rivers, and the scavengers that come out of the water to finish off their kills – or the watercat, if it’s unlucky. Clearly some thought has gone into setting up the planet, even if it’s only a stage for a pulp adventure.

As science fiction Star Hunter is of course incredibly dated, of the rockets and blasters school of adventure sf. The scheme that drives its plot, to substitute some lookalike for the heir of a vast estate, has long ago been made impossible by the development of cheap DNA testing, while most of the technology on display that isn’t part of the standard sf furniture doesn’t really look all that advanced either. But these are just quibbles. Taken on its own terms, this is a tight, fun, enjoyable little story. Ideal for reading in some stolen moments at work…

This review originally appeared on Martin’s Booklog.