The Solar Queen (Hardcover)

Andre Norton today is best known for her fantasy novels, but she started out in space opera, and I personally prefer these to her work in fantasy; and the "Solar Queen" books contain some of her best work in the science-fiction field. Science fiction fans shouldn't miss this opportunity to read these great adventures. The storytelling here is pure, the adventures straightforward but fantastically constructed. Like Robert Heinlein's novels of the same period, Norton's books never talk down to her intended audience of teenagers, and adults enjoy her books as much as the younger readers. You're guaranteed to get lost in the wonder and excitement of the voyages of the intrepid Solar Queen and its crew of rugged individualist in their quest to get the best trade deals the galaxy can offer. Although the novels can be read independent of each other, the first book directly sets-up the next, so you can read both together as one novel.

The first novel, SARGASSO OF SPACE (1955) introduces our hero, Dane Thorsen, as he receives his first trading assignment as an apprentice cargo master on an independent trading ship, the Solar Queen. The ship obtains the exploration and trading rights to the barren planet of Limbo, which turns out to be a perilous place where a mysterious force has pulled other ships to its surface and destroyed them. The Solar Queen cannot lift off, and hidden enemy forces want to destroy her. The action and mystery never stop in this fast, headfirst thriller.

But the second novel, PLAGUE SHIP (1956) is even better, and one of Norton's finest works. After a slow start on the planet Sargol, where the Solar Queen competes with corporate traders for the rights to trade perfumed jewels with the feline natives, the book slams into warp speed when a bizarre illness infects the ship. The few unaffected crewmembers must resort to one desperate measure after another to not only trace down the source of the infection, but also find a way not to be declared a 'plague ship' and get blasted out of the sky by the Patrol. The novel jumps from tense scene to tense scene, with constantly changing locales, new dangers in every chapter, and characters taking one huge gamble after another right up to the nail-biter of a conclusion. Space adventure doesn't get much better than this.

Andre Norton knows how to tell a tale, and she lets story speak for itself; they really don't write them like this anymore. All science fiction fans should get a hold of this great volume, and if you've got a young teen son, daughter, niece, or nephew who's showing an interest in science fiction, giving this to them as a gift will hook them for sure.

And there's more to come. The end of PLAGUE SHIP sets up the sequel, POSTMARKED THE STARS, and it will soon appear in another volume from Tor of the Solar Queen's further adventures, along with the fourth novel, VOODOO PLANET. Keep a look out!

Dane Thorson is an apprentice cargomaster on the independent trader Solar Queen. His fellow crewmembers include Captain Jellico, Cargomaster Van Rycke, Astrogator Steen Wilcox, Chief Engineer Johan Stotz, Medic Craig Tau, Comtech Tang Ya, Cook-Steward Frank Mura, Jetmen Karl Kosti and Jasper Weeks, and Apprentices Rip Shannon and Ali Kamal. The ancillary crew of the Solar Queen consist of Sinbad, the ship's cat, and Queex the Hoobat.

In Sargasso of Space, the Solar Queen wins trade rights to the D-class planet Limbo, which happens to contain some powerful forerunner technology and a nest of pirates.

In Plague Ship, the Solar Queen has negotiated a change of trade rights, swapping their claims on Limbo for access to the new spices and gems on Sargol, the homeworld of the feline Saliriki. All goes well on the planet, but the crew members start to fall into a deep sleep one by one as they travel back to Terra.

These stories were originally published under the pseudonym of Andrew North. They were the beginning of a series of adventures that have introduced many people to the SF genre in the five decades since their publication. These tales demonstrate the author's skills as a story teller and show why the author has attracted so many dedicated fans over the decades.

Highly recommended for Norton fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of a future filled with strange adventures and exotic cultures.

This book contains the above two Solar Queen adventures and excludes her further travels in "Postmarked the Stars" and the novella, "Voodoo Planet." Norton's four-book series about the crew of the Solar Queen ended in 1969 with "Postmarked the Stars" but beware! Lesser authors have butted into the series, presumably with Norton's permission since this remarkable Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and Nebula Grand Master is still writing (her first novel was published in 1934, her latest fantasy in 2002).

One Solar Queen rip-off to avoid at all costs is "Redline: the Stars."

Norton's Solar Queen stories are told from the viewpoint of Dane Thorson, an apprentice-Cargo Master who is introduced as a "lanky, very young man in an ill-fitting Trader's tunic." Most of this author's heroes and heroines are young, uncertain of themselves, shy, with a tendency to trip over their own enthusiasms and load themselves up with guilt at the slightest opportunity. They are very likeable and their adventures are narrated in remarkably lean prose with just the right touch of description.

After ten years of schooling, orphan Dane Thorson is assigned via a computer analysis of his psychological profile--not to a safe berth on a sleek Company-run starship that his classmates were vying for--but to a battered tramp of a Free Trader. To say that the 'Solar Queen' "lacked a great many refinements and luxurious fittings which the Company ships boasted" was an understatement. But she was a tightly-run ship and what she lacked in refinement, she made up for in adventure. Dane soon settles in under Cargo Master Van Rycke and learns "to his dismay what large gaps unfortunately existed in his training."

Sometimes I just want to give Dane a big hug.

The crew of the 'Solar Queen' risk their meager capital in a gamble at a Survey auction, and win trading rights to a barely explored planet with the unlucky name of Limbo. When they view a microfilm (okay, the technology is a bit dated in these books) of their new prize, it appears as though they have purchased ten years of trading rights to a planet that was burned to cinder during the heyday of the mysterious Forerunners, who predated humans in space.

Just when the Queen's fortune seems to be at its lowest ebb, a tough-looking archeologist shows up who is supposedly an expert on Forerunner artifacts, and charters her for a voyage to Limbo.

It might have been better for the free traders if her captain had kept his ship planeted and declared bankruptcy after the disastrous Survey auction.

"Plague Ship" takes the crew of the 'Solar Queen' to Sargol, where the enigmatic feline natives seem very reluctant to trade away their fabulous scented gemstones. When Dane Thorson discovers an herb that the Salariki are willing to swap for their gems, he fears that his eagerness to make a trade breakthrough might have poisoned a native child. That becomes the least of his worries when the 'Solar Queen' blasts off from Sargol with an invisible, undetectable stowaway that would brand the free traders anathema to all inhabited worlds.

Both of these Solar Queen novels are prime representatives of Norton's lean action-packed brand of story-telling. If you haven't read them since you were a teen-ager, I urge you to try them again. For a few pleasant hours, you will be immersed in the adventures of a likeable, feisty band of free traders on exotic, carefully-drawn alien worlds.