Plot
On the hot, humid ocean world of Xecho Dane Thorson has just finished his part in preparing the Free Trader (i.e. tramp freighter) Solar Queen to begin her run on an interstellar mail route. While waiting for the ship they are to relieve on the route, Dane, Captain Jellico, and Medic Craig Tau are invited to visit Xecho’s sister planet, Khatka, by Chief Ranger Kort Asaki. A jungle world originally settled thousands of years before by native-African refugees from one of Earth’s atomic wars, Khatka is a safari world, essentially a giant hunting ground where big-game hunters come to try their skill against large, dangerous animals.
On Khatka the three starmen discover that Ranger Asaki is being undermined by a witch doctor named Lumbrilo. During a ceremony in which Lumbrilo has disguised himself as the local version of a lion, Medic Tau, who has studied magic on many worlds, conjures the image of an elephant, thereby earning Lumbrilo’s enmity.
On a visit to see Zoboru, a new, no-kill preserve, the three starmen, Ranger Asaki, and the flitter pilot are stranded in the jungle when their flitter crashes. The men must walk back to their base while avoiding encounters with Khatka’s dangerous fauna. One such encounter tells them that they are being tracked and herded by Lumbrilo.
In a deadly swamp the men come to a camp occupied by a small team of poachers. There Tau confronts Lumbrilo, turns his magic back on him, and sends him screaming into the jungle, thereby solving Ranger Asaki’s problem. Captain Jellico and his men then return to the Solar Queen for what they hope will be a nice quiet mail run.
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the predominant genre depicting Mars was utopian fiction. Contemporaneously, the mistaken belief that there are canals on Mars emerged and made its way into fiction. The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells' story of an alien invasion of Earth by sinister Martians, was published in 1897 and went on to have a large influence on the science fiction genre.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars".
Andre Alice Norton was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical and contemporary fiction. She wrote primarily under the pen name Andre Norton, but also under Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, to be SFWA Grand Master, and to be inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Cordelia Caroline Sherman, known professionally as Delia Sherman, is an American fantasy writer and editor. Her novel The Porcelain Dove won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.
Michael Greatrex Coney was a British science fiction writer, best known for his novel Hello Summer, Goodbye.
Fictional depictions of Mercury, the innermost planet of the Solar System, have gone through three distinct phases. Before much was known about the planet, it received scant attention. Later, when it was incorrectly believed that it was tidally locked with the Sun creating a permanent dayside and nightside, stories mainly focused on the conditions of the two sides and the narrow region of permanent twilight between. Since that misconception was dispelled in 1965, the planet has again received less attention from fiction writers, and stories have largely concentrated on the harsh environmental conditions that come from the planet's proximity to the Sun.
Trillium is a series of five fantasy novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Julian May, and Andre Norton, each with the word "trillium" in the title. They take place in a post-holocaust world that is hinted to be a colony of earth on another planet where magic works.
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel Micromégas by Voltaire. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. The planet is occasionally visited by humans and its rings are sometimes mined for resources. The moons of Saturn have been depicted in a large number of stories, especially Titan with its Earth-like environment suggesting the possibility of colonization by humans and alien lifeforms living there.
The planetary systems of stars other than the Sun and the Solar System are a staple element in many works of the science fiction genre.
These works were written or edited by the American fiction writer Andre Norton. Before 1960 she used the pen name Andrew North several times and, jointly with Grace Allen Hogarth, Allen Weston once.
Clare Bell is a British author in the United States best known for her Ratha series of young adult fantasy novels about prehistoric big cats. These books, also called the Named series, are about intelligent self-aware large cats who have puma, cheetah and lion characteristics, and are based on fossil creatures who are ancestors of the saber-tooth cat.
Sargasso of Space is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton, written under the alternate pseudonym "Andrew North". It was published in 1955 by Gnome Press in an edition of 4,000 copies.
Plague Ship is a science fiction novel by Andre Norton under the pseudonym Andrew North. It was published in 1956 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000 copies. The book is the second volume of the author's Solar Queen series.
Conjure Wife (1943) is a supernatural horror novel by American writer Fritz Leiber. Its premise is that witchcraft flourishes as an open secret among women. The story is told from the point of view of a small-town college professor who discovers that his wife is a witch.
Galactic Derelict is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton, the second in her Time Traders series. It was first published in 1959, and as of 2012, had been reprinted in eight editions. It is part of Norton's Forerunner universe.
Star Born is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton, first published in 1957 by World Publishing Company of Cleveland. This is the sequel to The Stars Are Ours! and continues that adventure three generations on.
Star Rangers, also known as The Last Planet, is a science fiction novel by the American author Andre Norton. The novel was published on August 20, 1953, by Harcourt, Brace & Company. This is one of Norton's Central Control books, which lay out the history of a galactic empire through events suggested by Norton's understanding of Terran history.
Postmarked the Stars is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton, first published in the United States in 1969 by Harcourt, Brace & World. It is part of the series about the adventures of the interstellar tramp freighter Solar Queen and her crew.
The Flame of Iridar is a science fantasy novella by American writer Lin Carter set on an ancient, inhabited Mars. It was first published in paperback by Belmont Books in May 1967 together with the unrelated Kris Neville novella Peril of the Starmen as the "Belmont Double" anthology, The Flame of Iridar/Peril of the Starmen. The anthology was reissued in trade paperback by Wildside Press in August 2018. A chapbook of the Carter work alone, constituting its first stand-alone edition, was published by Sabre Press in 2019. The first British edition was issued in ebook by Gateway/Orion in January 2020.
Pauline Margaret Griffin, who wrote as P. M. Griffin, was an American author of speculative fiction. She was predominately known for her Star Commandos military science fiction series (1986–2004), described as "untaxing" in her Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry, as well as her contributions to various Andre Norton series, such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, and Witch World.
