STAR GATE [Mass Market Paperback]

Star Gate (1958) is a standalone SF novel. Almost five centuries past, Terrans had landed their ships on Gorth. The Terrans were a long-lived breed, some having lived from before the first coming. But the Terrans produced few offsprings. Even when they bred with the Gorthians, few children were born.

Now the Terrans have determined that their presence was not good for the natives and decided to depart Gorth. The summons had gone out to all Terrans and their offspring to gather at the ships. But some did not want to venture into space, so they devised a way to cross timelines.

In this novel, Kincar s'Rud is Daughter's Son and heir by blood to Styr's Holding. Yet his uncle Jord s'Wurd opposed Kincar's inheritance of the lands. With the departure of the Terran Star Lords, Wurd conceived of another destiny for his daughter's son that would not result in kin war within the Holding.

Wurd bestows upon Kincar a scale shirt, sword and surcoat of finest make, but he also directs the boy to leave the Holding before he takes his last breath. He has Regen -- his guardsman -- dress Kincar in the finery and take him down to the courtyard where his mount is ready for travel. Kincar seats himself on Cim -- the pick of the Holding's larngs -- and whistles for his mord Vorken, then leaves for the pass to the northeast with Vorken flying overhead.

At his first stop, Kincar takes inventory of his possessions. Regen has provided all the equipment and supplies necessary for his journey. Yet he has also packed a surprise: a Tie. This gem is dedicated to the Three and holds great powers. Jord might gain the Holding, but Kincar has Wurd's full trust.

In his journey, Kincar comes upon a camp with six travelers. Three are women, which is very unusual in this wasteland. As he is observing the camp, Vorken gives a startling scream and the sound of a hand drum blares forth. A seventh traveler dashes up and the others mount their larngs. The women ride onward, with one man as guardian, and the other men wait for the returning rider.

When ragged outlaws attack the travelers, Kincar dashes down the slope with his sword ready. Vorken gets the first strike, sending one outlaw down clutching his head. Kincar takes down another outlaw and then loses himself in the battle.

After the outlaws flee, Kincar learns that the large man dressed in silver is Dillan and the other two are Jonathal s'Kinston and Vulth s'Marc. Kincar suspects that Dillan is a Star Lord, but the man is hidden behind his travel mask and encompassing clothes. Dillan asks Kincar's name and repeats "s'Rud" with a strange intonation.

In this story, Kincar follows the other seven through the wasteland to a deep valley. There they find more travelers and mounts, as well as a couple of blue pillars with a shimmering web suspended between them. He observes a Star Lord and a Gorthian lead strings of larng between the pillars and disappear in a surround of rainbow lines. Then comes his turn.

Kincar finds himself is a dead vale, with another set of blue pillars standing about a half mile ahead. After all the party pass through the first gate, the Star Lords destroy the shimmering web. Then all ride to the next set of pillars and go through to a living, but cold world.

Kincar experiences pain from the Tie when he enters the first valley and then each time he passes through a gate. He rides in a daze to a deserted fortress in the mountains. After unloading, grooming and feeding Cim, Kincar feeds Vorken, lies down by his mount and falls asleep.

This story tells of the experiences of the refugees in a new version of Gorth. Obviously this world has been inhabited by a native species, so they decide to try again for an unoccupied world. But the Terrans discover that copies of themselves have taken this Gorth by force and Have enslaved most of the population. Now none of the Terrans will leave until they free the natives from their oppressors.

This tale is an early work by the author, but includes the typical mix of action and mystery that invests her stories. This work is science fiction, but has many similarities to her later Witch World stories. Enjoy!

Highly recommended for Norton fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of far planets, alien cultures, and high adventure.

-Arthur W. Jordin

"Star Gate" is a fairly early example of Andre Norton's science fiction (1958), and its brevity shows the demands of the "juvenile" label under which it was originally published. The use of what was originally a pseudonym of Alice Mary Norton was another example of such demands; a publisher wanted a "masculine" name for adventure stories. The author obliged, but later changed legally changed her name; and always omitted the diacritical mark that indicated that "Andre" was French, and masculine.

This limit on length did nothing to limit the author's imagination, however, and the book is crammed with themes which another writer might have scattered among a dozen books. Whatever the original Harcourt Brace hardcover jacket said, the Ace, and, later, Ballantine (Del Rey), paperback editions were both targeted as much at adults as children and teenagers. A reader of any age can probably find things to enjoy over the course of several readings. I must have read it for the first time in the early 1960s, and have returned to it with pleasure at intervals of ten or fifteen years.

In the midst of a crackling good adventure story, the narrative touches on issues ranging from "benign" colonialism ("The White Man's Burden") to racist imperialism to inter-species (read: inter-racial) sex, to religion, all distanced from 1950s censorship by the strange planet Gorth and alternate timelines. As a bonus, the naive hero sometimes compares his own adventures to those in old songs -- for which we often can fill in the cliches of pulp fiction, and juvenile novels likely to have been found on the same shelf as the original hardcover.

The choice of a young and ignorant point of view character allows Norton to explain some things to the reader through answers to the hero, such as the brief presentation of a basic quantum mechanics theory of the equal reality of alternate states. Meanwhile, the reader is more subtly informed about a new and alien society through the same character's expectations about the world. This may seem a common enough technical device, but Norton was using it with precision when many adult as well as juvenile titles tended to belabor things. Not only are two versions of Gorth explored through these two devices, but we learn about the "Star Lords" from Earth mainly through indirection and arguments. (One remembers, in contrast, Heinlein tossing in a Margaret Mead imitation to give an anthropology lecture in "Citizen of the Galaxy".)

Although Norton has not returned to the Gorth setting (in any of its time lines), she did introduce alternate-world versions of other planets, most notably in "Android at Arms" (with a similarly rich mix of themes) and "Perilous Dreams." What appear to be mutually exclusive alternate time-lines are launched in some of the later volumes of the (original) "Time Traders" series. Some readers also enjoy the alternate Earths of the two "Crosstime" books, although I personally consider these "minor Norton".

For some reason, Norton titles seem to be picked up for movies and television, but only titles: Neither "Beastmaster" nor "Stargate" had anything much to do with the Norton novels of the same name, although the former made a few glances in the direction of her story, and, if one squints one can see the idea of "Gods from the Stars" in the latter. "Stargate SG-1" has made a few uses of alternate worlds, but any Norton influence on that seems unlikely.

(Reposted from my "anonymous" review of September 5, 2003)

If you're expecting something in Devlin & Emmerich's universe, this may not be what you had in mind. Yes, there are long-lived aliens with many wonders from a dying world, who sought out a new home when their own world lay dying - but their lost homeworld was *Earth*. Yes, they found a primitive people struggling to survive - but they offered learning, not tyranny. Unfortunately, both the Star Lords and their now-resentful protegees feel it was a mistake - the Terrans don't want to lead the people of Gorth into their own old mistakes, and some of the Gorth leaders feel that the Star Lords have deliberately withheld their last secrets: their seemingly eternal lives and strange weapons. Now the ships at Terranna are preparing to space once more, this time seeking an empty world.

Kincar s'Rud, like so many of Norton's star characters, has lost everything - in his case, on the night of his grandfather's death. As the son of his grandfather's eldest daughter, he is the rightful heir - but the "s'Rud" branding him as the son of Rud, one of the aliens of the mysterious city of Terranna, turned his mother's people against him. Both his parents died years ago, and his mother's kin have cast him out, so he seeks Terranna, hoping to reach it before the last ships leave.

But as it happens, some of the Star Lords can't bear to leave their adopted home, so they came up with an alternate solution - a Star Gate, which travels not through space or back in time, but crosstime - to an alternate version of Gorth's history. (Combining the notions of crosstime travel and space travel is relatively rare in SF, oddly enough.) Those seeking the Gate include some of Rud's kin - his brother, for one - so Kincar s'Rud is welcome to join their search for a Gorth where intelligent life never arose, which they can settle with a clear conscience.

Their first attempt, while unsuccessful, brings them to a history they can't pass by - a world where the Star Lords came indeed, but to a Gorth with a far more advanced civilization - and to which they deliberately brought enslavement and misery. The feel of the story reminds me of Norton's later collaborations with Mercedes Lackey in creating THE ELVENBANE and its sequels.

Can one group of Star Lords undo the evil done by another - especially when Gorth's people have good reason to distrust all of them? And if they can intervene, do they have the right to try?