For some reason Star Hunter by Andre Norton is in the public domain. This means that you can copy it and print it and someone has read the entire novel and sent the mp3 files up to the Internet Archives site. I am downloading it and I want to try and listen to it at work.

In my teens, I read about 40 Andre Norton books and I used to keep a checklist in my wallet. I remember that I liked the Forerunner based books – stories about alien archeology. I liked the two stories about the Beast Master (later a bad movie with nothing in common with the book.) I also liked the witch world books. The first Norton book that I read was Daybreak 2250 AD. I don’t like Ms. Norton’s later books and I can’t read any of the various books she co-authored toward the end of her life.

When I was 14, I spent the summer in Hawaii. My Uncle, a Lt. Colonel in the Army, was stationed in Hawaii and I spent a month over there with him. On the way back, I was stuck in the San Francisco airport for a week and bought a bunch of Norton books. When I finally got a seat back to NY, I got to sit in first class next to John W. Campbell, Jr.. Mr. Campbell saw what I was reading and I told him that I wrote stories. (I had finished The Blight Stricken and Gorgor, by then and had won a state contest with a one act play). He reached into his bag and loaded me up with a dozen more books and told me that the only way to be a writer was to read a lot. I didn’t know that he was somebody special until a few months later when I saw the name in Astounding.

I remember that I bragged about having over 500 SF books. He told me that he had put book shelves in his bathroom so he could read there whenever he was sitting down. He said that he had 5000 SF books just in the bathroom. Erica won’t let me put book shelves in our bathroom.

Whenever I read Norton, I think of Campbell. I don’t think that he approved of my Norton books and the books that he gave me were more adult, but I still like Norton.