The Book of Andre Norton

I really enjoy reading this book again and again. Really shows insight into her writing. Of course this book was written many years ago, so does not have things about her in her later years. But it is still interesting to read about her earlier books and the thoughts about them. Interesting reading

The Book Of Andre Norton (aka The Many worlds of Andre Norton) First I want to thank Arthur W. Jordin for telling me about this book. I consider him the most knowledgeable person on all things Norton that I know. This book contains: An Introduction by Donald A. Wolheim, and the following short stories written by Andre Norton: The Toads of Grimmerdale London Bridge On Writing Fantasy Mousetrap All Cats Are Gray The Long Night Waiting The Gifts of Asti Long Live Lord Kor! Andre Norton: Loss of Faith And a Norton Bibliography by Helen-Jo Jakusz Hewitt (prepared as of 1974), there are more current bibliographies available on the official Norton website, listed in chorological order at: http://www.andre-norton.org/books/date.html If you love Andre Norton as much as I do you need this book. Highly recommended for fans Andre Norton. Gunner June, 2008

The Book Of Andre Norton (aka The Many worlds of Andre Norton) First I want to thank Arthur W. Jordin for telling me about this book. I consider him the most knowledgeable person on all things Norton that I know. This book contains: An Introduction by Donald A. Wolheim, and the following short stories written by Andre Norton: The Toads of Grimmerdale London Bridge On Writing Fantasy Mousetrap All Cats Are Gray The Long Night Waiting The Gifts of Asti Long Live Lord Kor! Andre Norton: Loss of Faith And a Norton Bibliography by Helen-Jo Jakusz Hewitt (prepared as of 1974), there are more current bibliographies available on the official Norton website, listed in chronological order [...] If you love Andre Norton as much as I do you need this book. Highly recommended for fans Andre Norton. Gunner June, 2008

I'm reviewing the stories in order of publication, rather than their order within this book (a.k.a. _The Many Worlds of Andre Norton_, incidentally). Note - the bibliography at the end of the book is comprehensive up to 1974, which may sound as though it must be short, but Norton's career began in 1934, so it takes 11 pages.The Gifts of Asti (1948) - Varta, the last priestess of Asti, lives alone with Lur, a telepath of the lizardfolk, in Asti's isolated mountain retreat. Decadent Memphir has long since drifted away from the austere paths of Asti, and now the barbarians of Klem are sacking the city, and the smoke of its burning drifts up to the temple. Asti's followers, however, foresaw that this day would come to Memphir, as Varta has learned from her study of the ancient chronicles...All Cats Are Gray (1953) - "Steena of the Spaceways - that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads." Steena is a computer programmer who spends her life in the background, a woman in plain gray clothing who speaks little - but her knowledge of odd bits of spacer's lore has saved lives and made fortunes...Mousetrap (1954) - The "sand monsters" of Mars are mysterious statues in the desert, that have withstood time, storm, and extreme heat and cold - but they crumble into dust at a touch. The tourist bureaus (and the Space Marines) now have the surviving statues protected from everyone trying out his personal version of superglue (since the museums and scientists have gigantic standing rewards for anyone who can get one to Earth). Any would-be hero will have to find an undiscovered sand monster to get a chance at the reward...Long Live Lord Kor! (1970) - Survey discovered the world of Vallek, burned to a cinder by atomic war. Useless? Not at all - enter the Bureau of Time Exploration and Manipulation, with their machines that can send agents' minds back in time to influence critical points in history by taking over the bodies of people in the past...The Toads of Grimmerdale (1973) - The only Witch World story to appear in this volume; also to be found in _Lore of the Witch World_. In the chronology of the Witch World, the Invaders' War ended during the Year of the Hornet. Hertha, the sister of the lord of Horla's Hold in Trewsdale, had been sent for safety to the abbey in Lethendale in the last months of the war, but never reached it. A band of enemy raiders ambushed her escort on the road, only to be caught in turn by a band of renegade Dalesmen, so that Hertha suffered rape not at the hands of the enemy, but of those who should have rescued her. Three months later, on the last day of the Year of the Hornet, the last straw is that her brother expects her to quietly have an abortion and be grateful in his 'generosity' in continuing to keep her in his household. Hertha is now making her way to Gunnora's shrine to ask two boons - that the child to be born in the Year of the Unicorn take nothing from the one who will not stand as its father, a