{"id":176,"date":"2010-02-17T12:14:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T17:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=176"},"modified":"2019-12-01T14:44:25","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T22:44:25","slug":"the-andre-norton-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"The Andre Norton project"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started reading science fiction in the fifth grade, when I came across a book called Space Cadet<\/em>, by someone I thought of for years as “Roberta Heinlein.” (I was a fast but often rather careless reader.)<\/p>\n

It wasn’t long before I discovered Andre Norton. My school had some kind of book club. You could buy books from a catalog, and a week or so later they would be delivered at school, an occasion for much distraction and excitement. I think I acquired my ancient Ace paperbacks of Daybreak-2250 A.D.<\/em> and Catseye<\/em> in that fashion, although they had been published years earlier.<\/p>\n

At any rate, I soon read as much Norton as I could get my hands on, and throughout junior high and high school acquired some of her books in paperback. I’ve read a few of them since then–a couple of the Witch World books, and a while back I found Star Guard<\/em> at a used-book store.<\/p>\n

A couple of months ago I looked into one of many boxes of my books that have been packed away for years–at least since I moved to Oregon in 1993–because I have never had enough shelf space for all the books. I was thinking about rotating some books from the storage boxes in the garage onto my shelves, and vice versa. I came across ten very old, yellowed Andre Nortons and have just started rereading them.<\/p>\n

Yesterday it was Catseye<\/em>, originally published in 1961. Today it’s Sargasso of Space<\/em> (1955). It’s great fun.<\/p>\n

I’m struck by how familiar these stories, which I loved as a young person and read over and over, feel to me now. At the same time, I’m seeing\u00a0 elements to which I was utterly oblivious back then.<\/p>\n

And I’m reminded on every page of Norton’s predilection for dashes. Perhaps her dash-intensive style influenced me. Various editors, over the years, have pointed out that my mss. are liberally–perhaps too liberally?–besprinkled with the things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started reading science fiction in the fifth grade, when I came across a book called Space Cadet, by someone I thought of for years as “Roberta Heinlein.” (I was a fast but often rather careless reader.) It wasn’t long before I discovered Andre Norton. My school had some kind of book club. You could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12],"tags":[42,45],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-specfic","tag-reading","tag-specfic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}