Andre Norton Forum

Re: The Andre Norton Influence

: I feel that Ms Norton's contribution in terms of influence and : mimicry has more to do with the state of Science Fiction and : Fantasy then with the mechanics of worlds and settings. I can : remember when she was one of the few female writers in genre's : dominated by men. : I feel her success and audacity has encouraged a whole new : generation of writers....and we are the beneficiaries.

Oh, that's true enough. She has had (in my opinion as well) a BROAD and far-reaching impact on modern SF. But I think there are possibly authors out there who may have been strongly influenced by Andre without actually having been cultivated by her.

I read one book years ago (I may still have it somewhere) called SWORD OF WINTER. I think the author was Marta Randall, but I'm not sure. I bought it through Doubleday's book club (as I bought so many other great books). The lead character was a woman warrior. I was reminded of Andre's lead characters, who while not warrior women (well, in most cases) are nonetheless often strong females. And the world had a nice Nortonish feel to it, IMO, as well.

And then there are the Adept books. I haven't actually read them (although 1 or 2 are in my rainy day stack). Anything with "Adept" in the title makes me wonder if the author wasn't as fascinated with Andre's adepts as I was.

The spacefaring civilization seems (to me) to be peculiar to Andre, however. I really cannot recall anything like it in all the science fiction books I've read. There have been plenty of "Mankind went to the stars" type of books, even where they forget where they came from (such as Asimov's FOUNDATION books), but none that I know of where the galactic civilization -- dominated by humans and peopled with strange alien races beside them -- was preceded by yet ANOTHER, far more ancient galactic civilization that somehow died out.

Maybe BABYLON-5 borrowed something from Andre with its "Old Ones" theme, although they were still around (or some of them were). :)