How I Came to Science Fiction

Recently my son Gabe gave me back a book of mine he found on his shelf: Andre Norton's Star Rangers. This was quite a cool "reunion" for me because not only was this the first book by Andre Norton that I read — I've been a huge fan of hers for over half a century and have read most of her many, many works! — Star Rangers was the very first book of science fiction I read. I remember distinctly that it was my first SF book (not counting comic books . . . a "book book," in other words) because I recall very clearly how I came to read it. During 5th grade at St. Agnes School in San Francisco (that would have been 1963-1964) we kids had been reading the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. This was not part of our schoolwork; it was like we were a book group before we knew book groups were a thing. We just all read the Oz books together for fun. After we got through the Oz books — 14 by Baum — we moved on to read The Borrowers series by Mary Norton. We ran out of Borrower books pretty quickly; there were only 5 novels. I then discovered that right next to the Borrower books in our school library was a novel by another Norton: Andre's Star Rangers. I remember being captivated by the cover image, a spaceman poised on a rock spur points to our right, silhouetted against a bright orange and scarlet sky. Here's that entrancing cover. Well, my 11-year-old self found the story pretty entrancing too: a crew of military spacemen crashland on a planet far off their star charts and must learn to survive there. I was a tenderfoot Boy Scout and so living off the land was probably something much on my mind at that time. My father, a U.S. Army soldier during WWII, a member of the elite Philippine Scouts, had told me Army stories since I was quite a young child, so the military themes of duty and honor in Star Rangers must have been attractive to me as well. After devouring Star Rangers, I began to seek out other SF writers in our school library as well as in our neighborhood public library and also in the library at the Presidio of San Francisco (my father was a retired Army officer and so I could borrow books from that library). It was a heady time, discovering H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, and many others. You'll notice that all of the authors named here are men; the SF field was dominated by men at that time and women often had to publish under male pseudonyms. In fact, Andre Norton is the pen name of Alice Mary Norton, who was eventually the first woman to be inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Reading Star Rangers again now, what strikes me, given the US's current political climate vis-à-vis ethnicity and immigration, is the novel's central theme of racism and its ills: in this case, humans vs. "Bemmys" (i.e., nonhuman aliens). The phrase "Bemmy lover" even comes up in the story, a thinly disguised allusion to the phrase "n----r lover" that was current during the time I was reading Star Rangers, using the n-word to disparage European Americans who felt the oppression of African Americans was wrong and unjust. ("Bemmy" is a fascinating coinage, an acronym based on the contemporary phrase "Bug-Eyed Monster.") When I first read Star Rangers as an 11-year-old, I'm fairly sure I didn't catch on to this theme. I hadn't yet personally encountered racism and discrimination as I would soon enough, in later years. However, I was certainly well aware of the presence of racial prejudice as something that came up in current events and was alluded to in my parents' dinner conversations, so the novel may well have piqued my interest in that regard somewhat. In any case, Star Rangers is an interesting read now, highlighting how in the 65 years since its 1953 publication our country has been unable to shed racism. "Make America Great Again," indeed. Reading Andre Norton's Star Rangers at the age of 11 changed my life. I have loved science fiction ever since, in all its lovely and incandescent forms. That I am now the editor of Star*Line, the print journal of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, comes directly from that moment. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ