Just because 221B Baker Street is fictional and Middle Earth is not on a tourist guide doesn’t make them declasse for adults; and just because Venus isn’t a swamp doesn’t mean sf set in such an imaginary locale doesn’t make a heckuva fun story.  I’m going to be running an sf selection from Project Gutenberg now and again, and my first one is a fun story for very young readers; or for older ones who want a trip down memory lane. Today’s featured author is Carey Rockwell, a pseudonym that has never been cracked, although some think it may have been more than one writer, and it could actually have been someone associated with Willy Ley, who wrote the first sf book ever admitted for a book report in the Lawton OK public schools (me.) So here is a link to the Project Gutenberg Carey Rockwell entry: dated but not done, so far as I’m concerned. Based on a radio show I listened to as a kid, translated to early TV—here it is…Saturday morning kids’ television at its finest, with, gasp! character complexity aimed at younger readers. I saved my lunch money and went hungry to buy these books. 🙂
Martian Deserts and Venus as a Swamp…
by CJ | Feb 6, 2010 | Journal | 52 comments
52 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I love/loved Andre Norton. I am not sure which was the first I read, but I vividly remember that I was 10. I know exactly where the book was on the library shelf. Beast Master and Lord of Thunder are still among my favorites, and CJ you are so right – the secret special talent in the young misfit person is what makes the books so compelling to so many young folks, I think. We recently read one of hers in the monthly book club over at S., and i could still recognize what it was I liked so much in my own youth. These days I prefer more dense work, but she will always have a special place with me, and I have kept all of the Norton I’ve ever had, even when I’ve had to purge large swaths of my library.
I’ve always thought of Carolyn as sort of a “second generation” Norton, in that she gives us (among much else, obviously) that more dense version of an Andre-style, young-misfit story. Times and markets changed. Norton wrote to a market that was (according to NY) primarily YA, and that set a tone for what are some underlying pretty sophisticated stories. Carolyn was free to make that leap to a more mature audience, and eventually given the freedom of much longer books.
My first Norton was Star Rangers. My older sis had checked it out from the library and “hidden” it under her side of the bed. (We were very possessive of being the ‘first’ to read something.) I always checked to see what was there. I remember hanging over the edge of the bed and starting to read it and being rather bored and shoving it back under. A few months…maybe even a year later, I checked out a “new” book by then-favorite author, Andre Norton, began devouring it, only to be struck by deja vu. I’d read this before! Or, at least the first few pages. It was, of course, Star Rangers. It became, and has remained, a personal favorite.
Which of her books was the first I actually finished? The one that got me hooked? Couldn’t tell you. But I sure remember SR.
I remember being that way about Kipling’s _Kim_. I’d read and loved the Jungle Books, and the Just So stories, and decided to try Kim. And I just couldn’t get into it… read the first chapter (I think), thought it very confusing and boring, and dropped. Picked it up again a year or two later, and just devoured it. I think that sometimes you just have to be the right age for a certain story.
I must be kind of juvenile,Ms.Norton ever held me
spellbound. But nobody has kept me reading and
rereading a series while I waited so impatiently
for the next book like our own CJ. I haven’t ever
seen the likes of the “Foreigner” series by anyone. I can only be thankful that I bought that first one,all unknowing, at the little Safeway in Deer Lodge,MT.
Great topic! For me, most books are read and forget, some are read, love and forget eventually until someone reminds you, and then ther’re the very few that just stay and become part of my life. Those last ones are trusty old friends … always there and returned to agaain and again when the season is right. Those books I can usually recall exactly when & where I discovered the book and author.
For me, in my young teens devouring the YA section in the local library, Andre Norton’s Moon of Three Rings is one of those.
As, a bit later, was Gate of Ivrel. I was away on a camping holiday with the boy in Far North Australia. We were in a book exchange because as usual, I’d run out of reading matter. I spotted this slim rather battered paperback by some author called CJ Cherryh. Now, some months earlier, the boy had borrowed from the local library and read Book 2 of a trilogy by said author. He’d tried to get me to read it too, but I refused, even then, to start in the middle of series. That series was Faded Sun. The book I’d found was Gate. Anyway, I bought the book, and, as they say, the rest is history – 25 years later, I’m still hanging onto every word. Thank you SO much.
PS. still have the paperback – and the boy was a keeper too!
Speaking of Leigh Brackett. A bunch of her sword-and-planet novels are available from Baen Books in cheap (but not free) electronic editions. You’ll have to hunt their website a bit to find them, but they are worth it. They also have several novels by husband Ed Hamilton for those who prefer their space opera without swords. 🙂
To refer back to your original post, CJ ji……for YA fantasy read Lloyd Alexander….especially The Chronicles of Prydaine….beautiful and evocative writing that holds up…..Disney did a version of The Black Cauldron that made readers cringe.
I gave that series to my brother when he was stressed out studying for his bar exams: he enjoyed it greatly.
My first Cherryh book was the trade edition of Cyteen which I received as Christmas book from the sf (and other areas) buyer of one of the major book chains (he has long, long since departed). This must have been 13/14 years ago. Not the best book to start with, partly because of the backstory of Downbelow Station, etc. and partly because ones first impression of Ari Senior and the world of Cyteen can be rather dismal. But it was extremely well written and I continued on (if a little depressed during a depressing period of my life). Can’t say persevered because I would have stopped reading if it wasn’t net enjoyable. Got caught up in the psychological, nurture versus nurture development of the themes plus characterization, and just great story telling. Best treatment I’ve seen, in any form, of the ambiguities of some of the issues. I reread the book, obsessively, many times over the years. and of course much else.
I am also much taken with Bren and the Foreigner series. I come from a family of language teachers and my wife was born in South America. Her concentration was on ethnicity and ethnic theory though she teaches Social Work. In fact we’ve written on using interpreters and are at the moment finishing a journal article on the subject. So close to where we live.
My first was when an awkward looking librarian recommended Cyteen to me (the three paperbacks with the 1980s style cover) and was waaaay too excited when I came back and said I had liked them. I think she was testing me or something and I must have passed. I had originally came into the library saying I was having trouble getting back into scifi (or entertainment reading in general) after spending college in love with Russian lit and Flannery O’Conner. Apparently the solution to that was Cyteen! Who knew? I am slowly getting back into scifi now, but pretty much anything I read pre-college I can’t return to.
The first science fiction series I can remember is the Lucky Starr one. About that time I happened upon a magazine of my uncle’s where there was a story about a boy who won a spacesuit, had a flying saucer (?) land, and was off on adventures with a little girl and the Mother Thing. Yeah, “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.” Took me years to find the end of that story.
When I was in high school I read a story about a bunch that crashed on a planed which used to be inhabited. The hero was a telepath whose best friend (also a telepath) was a reptilian type. At the end of the novel they found out that the planet they were on was Terra of Sol. (Anyone know what that was? I’d like to read it again. Read it in 1961, if that helps.) That ending left me amazed, elated, thrilled . . . . Never got such a charge again until I read the end of The Pride of Chanur. That series is one of my absolute favorites — still.
Thanks for all the suggestions of good books — I’m going to work my way through what I can of those I haven’t read. I’ve been lurking around this site for a couple of years, but this thread finally got me to register.
STAR RANGERS!!!!! Ranger Sergeant Kartr and Zinga. It is the absolute best of “and it was Earth” style books. FAR FAR FAR better than a certain story about talking Chimps. That last scene can still bring tears to my eyes.
I was Kartr in my Andre Norton Fan Club when I was a kid… I always wanted to try to capture that striped, wavy hair. This was my most recent attempt (High School) at drawing him: http://janefancher.com/htmfiles/boxes/ArtBox/GLGs3.htm (You have to scroll to the bottom…I didn’t put in a bookmark) Also includes a funny story about “being ready to read” a certain book.
Wow…this thread is getting me all nostalgic. I have tons of character sketches of Andre Norton’s characters.
I owe Andre a lot. I wrote to her when I was nine and her kind response set a notion in my head that my “heroes” could be accessible. Thanks to her, years later I wrote to a certain idol…a Ms Cherryh, I believe her name was. The rest, as they say, is history! 😀
Lucky Starr was actually written by Uncle Ike, aka Isaac Asimov, who wrote an amazing number of books in his career.
I am wondering if your mystery-book wasn’t by Andre Norton. I’m asking Jane.
Andre Norton, Manly Wade Wellman (who also wrote a wonderful Civil War series I wish I could get my hands on), Alan E. Nourse, Hugh Walters, Marion Zimmer Bradley…Wow…so many wonderful authors, so hard to find now.
I’ve got my own brain freeze. A fabulous book called The Beyond. I can’t remember who wrote it. I know he wrote a bunch else that I read and enjoyed, but The Beyond is the one that sticks with me. Persecution of those who had the gift of teleportation (the Beyonds) and the underground attempts to save them and change laws, and the young Beyond caught in the middle. It was another book with a great “gotcha” ending. I know I have it…found it used several years ago…but darned if I could find it in our “library” (in quotes because “library” implies organization. 😀 😀 :D) While I look for it, I know a lot more writers are going to pop out at me and say “read me!”
The one constant in the authors I love(d) are strong, multi-faceted characters and solid viewpointing. I enjoy the techno-writers, but even with Asimov, other than his cool short stories, what I loved were the Lucky Starr books. (I always wanted that table with the extendable forcefield surface that would “clean” with the touch of a button by extending the forcefield a micron.) Maybe I just got too much techno babble in my math and physics classes. 😀 Clarke was one of the few techno-writers who could hold my interest for an entire novel, and I think he did that by writing a very long short story. 😀 They were always so focused on a single, fascinating, theme.
Oh…one of my all-time favorite Norton books isn’t even SF/F. It’s the second of a two book series about the Civil War (yeah, I like CW books! :D) The first, Ride Proud Rebels, is really good, but Rebel Spurs is a treasure. Back when there were no PCs, and the book was absolutely unavailable, except as a library book, and when copies were 25 cents a pop, I checked it out and typed frantically on a manual typewriter, making myself a copy. I’ve still got the sucker somewhere, tho many years later, CJ found me a used copy, which I did see among the stacks on the shelves.
Ah…the life of a py-rat!
The Good Doctor wrote several Lucky Starr’s….I think there was supposed to be one for each of the planets…..don’t think the series was finished…pulling this up from the depths of memories of reading his autobiographies.
I’m reminded of Samuel R. Delaney describing these early SF writers as being out on the edge on the edge of space shouting back to us what they saw.
Hmmmm….I remember Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, The moon…Jupiter…and Neptune. One neat thing…they were written back when we thought Venus was covered with water. He wrote them according to our Astronomical understanding of…the 40s? 50s? and when they reissued them…I think it was as late as the 70’s, he wrote introductions explaining how our understanding had changed, but how, rather than change them accordingly, they were more interesting because of the insight into past thinking. It was really neat. And I remember, they had wonderful covers.
they were also my introduction to his laws of robotics. Remember the robot whose brain is fried on Mercury?
Auntie B, it sounds to me as if your mystery book might have been “The Star Beast” by RAH.
I found Andre Norton’s Rebel Spurs as a paperback, remembered that I loved the characterization and the two men’s trip through the desert and grabbed it! That’s another one of hers I still read fairly regularly. And now I think I am going to have to pull Star Rangers off my shelf and reread it too as I don’t remember it particularly right now and it comes so highly recommended. I (re) finished The Stars are Ours of hers a few months ago. She also did a great Ancient Egypt one I don’t think I have.
Lloyd Alexander and the The Prydain Cycle (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer and the Newbury award-winning, The High King): the first books I ever went to the bookstore and ordered for myself were those five books. They were 95 cents a piece (she types after pulling the first one off her bookcase) with the original covers. I felt extremely adult filling out the book order forms and paying all that money. I think I was eleven or so. When I was at the University of Edinburgh doing my Celtic Studies degree, I came across the Middle Welsh text, Triodd Ynys Prydain: the Triads of Island of Britain, and realized that Alexander must have found a translation someplace. HenWen the Pig, Dalben the seer, Flewddur FFlam the bard, and many others appear in these three line lists of British marvels (ex. The three famous pigs of the island of Britain are….”). The other books Alexander based his stories on are, of course, the Middle Welsh tales collected as the Mabinog. I can say that Lloyd Alexander’s works strongly influenced my moral compass and sense of right and wrong, especially with — in my opinion — his best book, Taran Wanderer.
SHADOW HAWK, and Scarface, the pirate book. Oh, man…she’s soooo good.
Do you know…I’ve never read Lloyd Alexander. I’ve got them, but it’s one of those “cursed” series, that every time I start them, I get distracted. Maybe I’ll take them on our next trip as read-aloud material. Carolyn? Whatcha think?
You’re so right about the last part of Star Rangers. I reread it a year or so ago. And that scene, not at the very end, but in the Hall of Leavetaking where the rangers start calling out the names of all the destination stars that the colonists headed for so long ago – yes, tears, and very few books do that. And it doesn’t even matter that taken literally, it makes no sense, and I would sneer at the screenwriting if it were in a movie. The feeling is there.
Oh, Jane, both the Norton “Rebel” books are on Gutenberg (which is where I believe this thread started!) I just downloaded them. Also _Ralestone Luck_, which is one of her very early non-SF ones.
I believe the ancient Egypt one is Shadow Hawk.
I found it! The Beyond by Jean and Jeff Sutton. Jeff Sutton also wrote a couple of others I remember fondly: Apollo At Go and Beyond Apollo.
Striped hair . . yes. Star Rangers sounds right. The Hall of Leavetaking? Yes, that’s it! Went immediately to World Cat only to find the nearest library that holds a copy is in Canada. Drat. Went to half.com and they had a copy! Many thanks for your help and suggestions! I have missed being able to re-read that book.
Shadow Hawk is indeed Norton’s Egyptian book, featuring the not-yet but someday pharoahs, brothers Ahmose and Kamose. But, I’ve never heard of her pirate book, Scarface! I’ll go see if I can find it.