Over the weekend I bought 6 paperbacks at a garage sale for a quarter each. A kid was reading every bit of trash he could find  and he was selling off the books that he didn’t want to read again. Well, his trash is my treasure and I found, out of the hundreds, a few that I might read or reread. The rest were the ubiquitous dragon/wizard/magic fantasy series books that I would rather avoid.

I started reading Forerunner Foray with the expectation that I would recognize the plot immediately. I was surprised to find that it was totally new to me. Published in 1973, the book must have been out just as I was married and I started working full time, when my life suddenly had no place for the very solitary act of reading.

Andre Norton is one of a handful of female Science Fiction writers in a field where male voices dominate. She even legally changed her name to Andre Norton from Alice Mary Norton. She wrote largely young adult novels and a very few short stories. Towards the end of her career she teamed up with several of woman writers, but I think little of the actually text was hers. I much prefer her early novels. I do not enjoy novels with feminist themes or ones that center on sexual politics. Though Norton was a pioneering feminist, her stories are for boys and girls and the lessons to be learned do not have the brute force of more modern writers. She teaches by example rather than condemnation and I have always felt comfortable reading her books.

Andre Norton has several overlapping universes where she sets her stories. Cats Eye and related stories are set in a world where young protagonists escape from The Dipple. The Dipple is a galactic slum consisting of worlds where the refugees from the ruined human civilizations live on poverty and crime (I think this is a wonderful sciencefictional setting). Another reoccurring element is the alien Forerunners. The Forerunners lived millions, perhaps billions of years in the past, but their artifacts are occasionally found and are often dangerous. Sometimes the Forerunners break through the barriers of time and threaten the the contemporary world. These are huge themes and they support many of her books.

Andre Norton tales are never complete without cats and a hint of magical powers. Often the power is telepathy or an empathy with animals.

Forerunner Foray has all of these elements. The protagonist is a young woman, marking a change in Norton’s books. Prior to this many of her characters were young men. After the success of the Witch World stories, she discovered she could write books that young women could enjoy as well as young men. Probably, libraries of the 1950s and 60s classified Science Fiction as boy’s stories and were hesitant to buy Young Adult Science Fiction with a female protagonist. Around 1970, this changed.

Forerunner Foray is less of an adolescent book than some of her others. The story is complex and even a little difficult to follow at times. I felt the writing in first few chapters was a little strained, as though Norton was working through a section that she was not entirely comfortable with. She eventually pulls out of it and the main character has as close to a romantic relationship as Norton ever has in her novels. The ending seems contrived with much explanation and filling-in of details. It seems like the ending was tacked on after Norton had finished enough words. (Books around 1970 began to get fatter after Tolkien and Herbert proved that readers would pay for longer books.)

Norton wrote other books in the worlds of Forerunner Foray. I read the first, Storm over Warlock and possibly the second, Ordeal in Otherwhere in the San Francisco Airport while stranded during a week long airline strike on my way back from visiting my Uncle. Both of these were written in the Early 1960s. I’ll have to keep an eye out for these so I can reread them.

Forerunner Foray is engrossing, but I did not feel much sympathy with the characters and the writing seemed a little forced in places. It had some good moments and I enjoyed rediscovering some classic Norton themes, although I would not classify it as one of her best efforts.