Tales from High Hallack: The Collected Short Stories of Andre Norton Volume:1

Norton was a prolific speculative fiction author whose career spanned eight decades, one of the few high profile women working in the field of science fiction and from the award's inception to 2003, the sole female recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. Contrary to the usual pattern for her era, she focused more on novels than on short stories; despite that, she did have a substantial body of short works. With an introduction by Jody Lynn Nye, this volume collects 18 pieces, drawn from across her career, fantasy and science fiction. Her famous Witch World is featured but is not the sole setting. In these stories, witches are paid with calumny for serving the greater good, toy makers contend against evil usurpers, boys outwit greedy trolls and space travelers risk death deep within long lost ships. Norton's prose is straightforward and clear; her stories might appear to be simple at first glance but on closer examination often reveal greater depths, an embrace of themes other speculative fiction authors eschewed. A promising beginning to its series, this work demonstrates why Norton, like C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, must be counted as one of the significant authors of speculative fiction. (Jan.)