My first experience with post-apocalyptic fiction, I think. Great story. ( )

Just finished reading this old favorite to the boys. They loved it and begged for me to read at nights which is not always the case with books we choose to read out loud. This is a coming of age story as the majority of Andre Norton's are. It is post apocalyptic. This is a strong anti war sermon at its heart. There are themes of friendship, perseverance and tolerance also. A good read for the tween set if they are good with language as AN's prose can be poetic and a bit convoluted at times. Fun story to share out loud. ( )

Daybreak 2250AD by Andre Norton

Daybreak 2250AD was originally published as Starman's Son in 1952, and was one of the early published works that launched Norton’s career lasting half a century.
This is a seminal example of a story set some time after a nuclear holocaust, and is a solid and well-written piece of pulp fiction.
At the time, the Cold War terrified people with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, so the subject of this novel would certainly have been something that was on the minds of the American public.
Humans have reverted to non-technical tribal societies, and while they are hostile to each other, they also have a common enemy in the mutant Beast Things which inhabit the ruined cities.
The hero, Fors, also has certain strange physical traits and abilities (explained as the effects of radiation), and since he is not truly accepted by his own mountain people, he decides to leave for the wild world outside where he intends to fulfill his late father's ambition to find an as-yet undiscovered ruined city. Fors is fascinated by the technology which the ancestors possessed and hopes to learn more about it from the artifacts he may uncover. Like other works by Norton, the main character has a telepathic link to a feline companion.
Norton was ahead of her time in using her science fiction to address racial issues in an age before the American civil rights movement got fully underway, as well as to examine what it means to be 'normal'. The protagonist encounters a man from a dark-skinned tribe who shows himself to be at least the equal of Fors in both strength and intelligence.
Although this is in many ways a traditional tale of adventure in which many highly unlikely coincidences occur in order to keep the heroes alive, this may be part of what makes it a compelling read. The story ends on an optimistic but predictable note.



( )

This one was written before I was born, so you will have to forgive me, as I did not learn to read until some years after it was published. It was one of the first Andre Norton books I remember reading, though by no means the last. It would be several years later when I learned for certain that "Andre" was actually a woman. Martin Harry Greenberg told me that actually, when he was a professor in one of my college courses. I guess I had always assumed she was female... something about her writing style... and in 1960's era Green Bay, WI, the name "Andre" was unfamiliar enough to me that I didn't automatically assign a sex to it. Also, it just never occurred to me to wonder about such things as Andre Norton was not someone I was ever likely to meet socially so her sex simply did not matter. She wrote some of the best science-fiction of the era and all of her accolades are well-deserved.

The plot of Star Man's Son very much follows (in spirit) the lyrics of Sonny Curtis' The Strait Life. The protagonist is a young man with a choice of having a simple, unadventurous "straight" life, or defying convention and authority to go out on his own into a post-apocalyptic world loaded with dangers at every turn. Much of my life was spent like this. Freedom has a cost, though, and lone wolves sometimes have to pay it.

Martin and Andre/Alice have both passed on now and I am not far behind. I would hope that the next time I meet Professor Greenberg, he will offer me a beverage and introduce me to his friends Andre Norton, Robert Silverberg and Isaac Asimov.

As to the story itself, it is a classic "coming of age" story, but, as mentioned previously, in a blasted post-apocalyptic world filled with mutants, toxins, blasted abandoned cities and societies trying to rebuild. I would highly recommend it to children of all ages. If you have become an adult and "grown up", you have apparently gone with the straight life and no longer have an imagination, but read it anyway. Maybe it will rekindle something. ( )

Written in 1952, this post nuclear holocaust book is a genre that has been imitated but Norton was one of the initiators. I would call this a classic. ( )