The Game of Stars and Comets

By Andre Norton

Book Overview

1. Praised as "a superb talent" by The New York Times, Andre Norton was a legend in science fiction, and is renowned as one of our greatest storytellers. 2. Norton's huge audience has kept her books... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439133727
• ISBN13: 9781439133729
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Baen Books
• Length: 712 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.9"
• Age Range: 16 years and up

Customer Reviews

Exemplars of Young Adult Science Fiction

I read these stories in the original ACE paperbacks many years ago and found them to instill the sense of wonder that was so critical to founding a lifelong interest in Science Fiction. The stories are full of optimism and focus on isolated individuals overcoming steep odds in alien settings. Characterization and plotting are tight and riveting. Highly recommended.

Four Novels of Sweeping Vistas and Personal Journeys that Showcase this SFWA Grand Master's Exceptio

In this collection of four novels set in the same universe by a SFWA Grand Master, the author repeatedly reflects on the great clash of civilizations and personal identity. In //The Sioux Spaceman//, Kade Whitehawk must bring his knowledge of plains culture into the far reaches of space to a subjugated race of aliens that need to remove their shackles. //Eye of the Monster// forces Rees Naper to run hard and fast in a race to save others from a native race of aliens suddenly turned hostile. Diskan Fentress must use his mutant powers to stop space pirates from destroying a culture they cannot understand in //The X Factor//. Voor is afflicted by a plague called the Shadow Death in //Voorloper// and it is up to three survivors to solve the crisis. In each of these narratives Norton creates grand worlds of strange delights and bizarre civilizations. At the individual level, each protagonist must work within the strangeness of the world to find who he or she is as a human. Norton makes the tales of this collection both sweepingly epic and extremely personal, providing the reader with wonderfully grand visions and significant emotional connections to people not so very different from us, even across the vastness of space and time. Reviewed by John Ottinger III

Good Andre Norton

I'd never read these stories before, even though I've been reading Norton's fiction since high school. I enjoyed them all, although some stories felt a little incomplete since they are some of her earlier works. I was left curious as to the big picture in one case. But over all a very pleasant read.

Minor Works By the Grand Mistress

The Game of Stars and Comets (2009) is an omnibus edition of four short SF novels, including The X Factor, Voorloper, The Eye of the Monster, and The Sioux Spaceman. These novels are set in similar universes, but at different times and locales. Each is a standalone novel. Although The Sioux Spaceman is the last story in the book, it is actually the earliest story by the internal chronology. The other stories could have occurred at any time during the centuries of human expansion through the galaxy. The X-Factor (1965) is probably set within the Council/Confederation sequence. The Survey Service allowed their space personnel leave to marry and to produce children. After several years, the marriage was break-bonded and the couple went their own ways. Any children from the marriage were raised in a Service creche. In this novel, Diskan Fentress was raised in the Service creche on Nyborg. Unlike his fellows, Diskan was oversized and clumsy. Under direct or hostile supervision, he was even more clumsy. His superiors deemed him suitable only for the most degrading forms of manual labor. Then Renfry Fentress returns from presumed death to find his son. His ship had been holed by a meteor and left drifting. Another scout from an unknown spacefaring species had rescued Renfry and took him back to Vaanchard. There he had married a Vaan woman and became stepfather of her two children, Rika and Drustans. Since they could not have children of their own, Renfry searched for his children from previous service marriages and found Diskan. Before his long absence, Renfry had earned an impressive reputation as a First-In Scout. Obviously Diskan was not going to follow in his father's footsteps, so Renfry took him to a new home on Vaanchard. The Vaans are a refined and sensitive culture. They do not issue rude remarks as had some of his crechemates. But they do consider him crude and inept. Diskan just doesn't fit in here anymore than he did at the creche. One day Diskan finds himself in his father's study and decides to flee the planet. He takes a trip tape from a rack and heads for the spaceport. There he steals a smaller ship, inserts the tape, and goes into stasis for the remainder of the trip. However, the ship awakens him for an emergency landing. Voorloper (1980) is set in the Forerunner sequence. It takes place on Voor, an agricultural world with a history of mysterious deaths. After fifty years of settlement, a hamlet in the north was wiped out by something since called Shadows. A couple of years later, another town was attacked. Then people in other villages disappeared until all northern hamlets were abandoned and everyone moved south. Only a very few survived the malicious incursions. In one town, only a five year old boy remained alive, but without any memories of his past. In another town, a four year old girl, two infants and a brain damaged women survived the mysterious attack. No other survivors were ever found.