50 Nortons in 50 Weeks 9: Plague Ship by Andre Norton

[james_davis_nicoll]

Plague Ship by Andre Norton

Comments

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Re the end: When your author leans into the narrative to editorialize about your future, you know you're in trouble.

I didn't realize Norton was still writing as North by this time. I guess I've only seen paperback reissues.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, each new Solar Queen book begins where the previous one left off, and they never actually managed to deliver on any on their contracts.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Things have to keep getting worse so there will be a new plot for each book 8-)

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Frantically scribbling notes for the Traveller Free Trader campaign I'm never going to run...

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

It was clearly one of the primary inspirations.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Someone was doing that when Traveller was being written 8-)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

" But Cargo-master Van Rycke, in spite of knowing the Solar Queen and the temper of her crew, was exceedingly over-optimistic when he made that emphatic statement."

Of course he was. He should have known what kind of universe he was trying to operate in, even if he couldn't know whose it was.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

He was probably doing better before the author decided to focus her attention on him. :)

[julesjones]

Loved that book when I was a child. And when I read it a few years ago I found that it had stood the test of time fairly well, although the march of present day technology left me wondering exactly how a high tech space-faring culture paranoid enough to burn plague ships could not notice the arrival of and then find a plague ship hiding where the Solar Queen hides.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Hm. That cover is strikingly similar to

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Sentient Siamese cats with a perfume fetish.

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

"Once again, there’s really not much evidence to suggest that the humans of this era do not reproduce by asexual budding. There are no women of note in this novel."

You won't see a woman as a major character until Witch World (1963) and the first female main character happens in Year of the Unicorn (1965). In Norton's essay On Writing Fantasy, she says that the heroine of the latter was met by women with "open arms, while many male readers hotly resented her."

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I must have read this book, but the plot summary isn't ringing any bells. Odd.