Ok, enough of the cheesy “twenty questions” stuff…
I’m trying place the title of an Andre Norton novel I read when I was a kid. What little I remember is that it’s about a human, the sole survivor on a sub-lightspeed ship to a distant planet. The crew was cryogenically preserved for the trip, but no one else awoke. He lands to find the uninhabited ruins of a civilization. As he travels across the planet (accompanied by a monkey-ish sort of native), he begins to realize that the bands of color on the ruins and along the ancient highways are some form of communication, which fills him with either hatred or dread.
I seem to recall that the book was on the same timeline as some of her other books about space travel, but was set at least a century (and possibly a millenium) before the rest of the series.
Does this ring a bell for anyone? Three people at the local bookstore knew the story but couldn’t place the title.
One person here too! I can’t wait for the answer! I was a Norton freak in my youth. Time Patrol, Galactic Derelict, Dark Piper. But I can’t place your title either.
As a kid (hell, even today) I loved Norton’s science fiction. However, I detested the fantasy or even the fantasy/sci-fi: Witchworld, etc. However, it seems that only the early Norton was good SF; the later stuff is all fantasy, and, by my lights, pretty lousy.
In fact, I’ve never really liked that book companies, bookstores, and even authors seem to lump SF and fantasy into the same category.
I think that this is the part of the Norton timeline that I’m thinking of:
But I still don’t know the name of the book. The Amazon review for The Stars Are Ours gives the impression that most of that book’s plot happens on Earth. Then again, I may only be remembering the cliffhanger ending to the novel.
Yep, I was another Norton fan back when I was in junior high. My friends and I pretty much kept that shelf in the school library empty for a few years running. I remember being convinced that we were the only people in the world who had stumbled on these great books by this obscure writer! My son is starting to get into science fiction, and it might be cool to give him a copy of what was one of my favorite books when I was his age.
I hope someone can ID this one. The description of the bands of colors which fill the protagonist with dread resonates so strongly with me. But frankly I stopped reading Norton over 30 years ago now.
I just pawed thru my old collection of her paperbacks, hoping for a clue. Nothing yet. But I’ve decided to re-read “Sargasso of Space” and “Galactic Derelict” just for the hell of it. Next I want to re-read “Star Rangers”, aka “The Last Planet”!
Both my copies of “SOS” and “GD” are Ace paperbacks, which cost a ruinous 75 cents at the time! My copy of “Star Rangers” was 60 cents, and was one of those ‘shorty’ Ace books, not so tall as a regular paperback of that era.
Hm. In “Sargasso of Space” the crew of the ship 'Solar Queen" land on the partially burnt-off planet Limbo. There they find remains of Forerunner cities, and at the end of Chapter 10 they discuss the colors of over the buildings, and how they made the crew uncomfortable. “The colors, they are wrong for us” says one character. They also complain about the lines and angles of the buildings being wrong. Dane Thorson is the protagonist in this novel, apprentice cargo-loader or somesuch.
Is it possibly Star Hunter? Many of the details don’t fit the description, but the overall story line has points in common.
Vye, an orphan in an interstellar slum, is kidnapped and his memories wiped; then he’s dumped on an uninhabited planet with “memories” of being the last survivor of a crash. (There’s a crime ring plot behind it; he’s to be “discovered” as the last heir to a fortune.) When the rigged “safari” arrives to discover him, it turns out the planet was indeed inhabited at one time; long artificial ridges are the only signs of civilization. They turn out to be a trap. An ape-like species is involved.
As I say, I’m not sure this is the story you’re thinking of; but I know how my memories shift. (I vividly remember, from the old Flash Gordon serials, a scene in which Ming the Merciless walks down a tunnel filled with mist, into a disintegration chamber. Only trouble is; when I got the tapes of the series, that scene doesn’t seem to exist…)
Another possibility would be The Defiant Agents, part of her Time Traders series; there, the survivors are part of a colony ship. But I’d bet on Star Hunter, because it’s more obscure.
i’ll just help to keep the thread alive, since i’m also an avid Norton fan.
but frankly, i can’t recall cryrogenic sleep as ever having been part of the “workings” of her universe, back in her days of ‘hard’ science fiction. of course, i’m one of those weirdos who happily followed when she went off on the “fantasy” tangent, so you can take my recollects for whatever you deem them worth.
lachesis, cryogenics (called “cold storage” or something like that in the book) played into the story since the ship was sent out before earth discovered faster than light travel. It’s sort of a precursor to the main sci-fi series from the Fifties.
Thinking back (still haven’t had time to sit down at the bookstore), a;; the mermen and other mutants, post-apocalyptic landscapes and the like probably made her writing a bit like cheap mexican food–the same stuff mixed together in different ways. Still, I think my son would like it.
It depends on which part of her time-line she was working on.
Some sort of suspended animation was used in the “Time Trader” series, in
Defiant Agents, where colony ships were sent out with the colonists in boxes. It was also used in her post-atomic-war settings; for example, in The Stars are Ours! (followed up by Star Born), refugees from an oppressive world government set off under suspended animation in an experimental sub-light starship. (As I recall, they never do figure out how long they were unconscious before arriving at a destination.)
But many of her stories are set in eras after the development of faster-than-light travel; and then cryogenic sleep doesn’t really come into play.
