Book Review: Star Born by Andre Norton

Star Born by Andre Norton
Dorchester Publishing Company, Inc.
238 Pages
Copyright 1957 (this edition, 2007)

For those of you not familiar with Andre Norton, a bit of an introduction to one of my very first favorite authors; Ms Norton was born Alice Mary Norton in 1912. She would later officially change her name to Andre Norton to increase her marketability in what was once considered to be a boy’s genre. She published her first novel in 1934, and was the first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society in 1977, and won the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the SFWA in 1983. She passed away in 2005.

Star Born is the story of Dalgard, the descendent of a group of Terrans that fled Earth during a period of oppression and tyranny centuries earlier. Dalgard’s best friend is Sssuri, a merman covered with ‘rainbow tipped gray fur’. They communicate telepathically.

It is also the story of the planet Astra, a world that has seen a devastating war between its native inhabitants, like the mer-people, and an invading force of aliens, know as The Others, who wantonly butchered the native animals and enslaved the mer-people. All that survives of these invaders are their deserted cities and a diminishing number of the aliens themselves.

It is to this world that the Earth mission, RS 10, arrives. Raf Kurbi, a ‘skitter’ pilot, the mission’s captain, and two other crew members encounter the alien beings, who immediately go to great lengths to befriend the humans. Through sign language and an interpretation device, the aliens convince the humans to help them retrieve supplies left behind in an abandoned city. They will, they say, share their technology with the humans.

Kurbi has doubts about the aliens when, while en route to the abandoned city, the aliens go out of their way to slaughter a colony of the mer-people. His misgivings grow when he witnesses the aliens capture someone who looks surprisingly human. Kurbi sets out to discover exactly what’s going on, even at the risk of his own life.

Norton, as I’ve said, is one of my all-time favorite authors. Her Witch World series is still a favorite. She had the ability to craft alien worlds in a very real way. Her themes usually revolve around the same themes you’ll find in this book – post-war societies with peaceful segments at odds with the not-so-peaceful segments. And for me, despite the fact that most of her works are decades old, they still ring true in spite of now seeming simplistic.

She was also very good at crafting a setting, whether on a planet or on a ship. For example, the following passage describes Kurbi’s feelings about being locked inside the spaceship for months. Everyone is bored, his roommate complaining endlessly about everything:

Raf breathed shallowly. The air was stale, he could almost taste it. It was difficult now to remember being in the open air under a sky, with fresh winds blowing about one. He tried to picture on the dull strip of metal overhead a stretch of green grass, a tree, even the blue sky and floating white clouds. But the patch remained stubbornly gray, the murmur of Wonstead went on and on, a drone in his aching ears, the throb of the ship’s life beat through his own body.

Recommendation: If you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy and have never read Norton, I can heartily recommend almost any of her books. This one, a new read for me, is a fine example of a her masterful work.