Dragaera

Andre Norton, RIP

Fri Mar 18 10:38:24 PST 2005

>Would someone be kind enough to post recommended reading?

The Witch World books are what I mainly remember her for. Ms. Norton's books
introduced me to heroic fantasy and led me straight into such other
mainstays of fantasy such as Conan, Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, and Elric of
Melnibone. 

I have to admit that I haven't read any of her books since I was an early
teen, and that seems to be a common thread in many of the testimonials I've
read here and elsewhere. Much of her work appealed to young readers and that
should be taken into account when judging it if you're reading her for the
first time as an adult. Even so, looking back I can see where the ideas that
intrigued me in the Witch World back then are what led me (and probably
influenced those later authors) to genre-crossover stories like Christopher
Stasheff's "The Warlock in Spite of Himself", the Thomas Covenent books and
perhaps even the Vladiad as an adult. Interesting that I've never really
examined my childhood reading very much in relation to my adult reading.

In any case, I'd recommend _The Witch World_, _Web of the Witch World_, and
_Three Against the Witch World_ for starters. I'm not sure that I've ever
read any of her straight science fiction so I can't make any recommendations
in that regard.

It's interesting where you find old sci-fi/fantasy readers. The City of
Heroes forums has a testimonial thread about Ms. Norton in which many people
say the sorts of things that are being said here. Aside from a bunch of
comic book genre folks talking about a fantasy/sci-fi author, the most
interesting thing about that thread was the the original poster came "out of
the closet" and revealed herself as Mercedes Lackey. She wanted to make a
heartfelt testimonial of her own and felt that information was neccesary to
explain why she felt the way she did about Ms. Norton and her passing. Just
goes to show that you never really know who might be your virtual
"next-door-neighbor".

Hmmm... what kind of computer does Steve have? Maybe all us CoH players on
the list should pony up to buy him a year's membership and form that
Brustian supergroup we kicked around for five minutes ages ago. Of course,
if we want Dzur any time soon then the last thing we probably want is to get
Steve hooked on the psychological addiction of an MMO. :-P