The Time Traders
First edition
|
|
| Author | Andre Norton |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Virgil Finlay |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Time Traders |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | World Publishing Co. |
|
Publication date
|
1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, paperback, and electronic) |
| Pages | 219 |
| Followed by | Galactic Derelict |
The Time Traders is the first novel in The Time Traders series by Andre Norton. It was first published in 1958, and has been printed in several editions. It was updated by Norton in 2000 to account for real world changes. It is part of Norton's Forerunner universe.
The Time Traders introduces the series' premise, a confrontation between Western heroes, and the "Reds", and a mysterious alien race that has used time travel to alter Earth. This novel alternates among the present day, a trading tribal society in Britain, 2000 B.C., and a glacial outpost in the last ice age.
In her Time Trader novels Norton tacitly assumes that the physics of time travel differs so significantly from the physics of space travel, especially hyperdrive-propelled interstellar flight, that a civilization that discovers the technology of one simply will not discover the technology of the other. Earth’s physicists have discovered the secret of time travel, but the engineers and scientists who built and use the time transporters have devised a clever way to obtain the secrets of space travel: if we can’t discover the secrets for ourselves, we will get them from someone who did.
The 1958 version: At the end of the Twentieth Century petty crook Ross Murdock is given the choice of facing a new medical procedure called Rehabilitation or volunteering to join a secret government project. Hoping for a chance to escape, Ross volunteers to join Operation Retrograde and is taken by Major John Kelgarries to a base built under the ice near the North Pole. Teamed with archaeologist Gordon Ashe, he is trained to mimic a trader of the Beaker culture of Bronze-Age Europe.
Sent back to southern Britain around 2000 B.C.E., Ross and Ashe (as Rossa and Assha) find that their outpost has been bombed, destroyed by the wrath of Lurgha, the local storm god, according to two of the natives. Discovering the direction whence the bomber came and other clues pointing to the general area occupied by the Soviet base, Ross, Ashe, and McNeil, the lone survivor of the bombing, go to that area.
Somewhere near the Baltic Sea, Ross, Ashe, and McNeil begin building a Beaker trading post and learn from the locals that to their southeast lies a land populated by ghosts, a land whither no man of good sense would go. Ross gets separated from Ashe and McNeil in a night attack and must go into the taboo area alone in an effort to find them. Far inside the ghostland he finds the Soviet base and is captured by the Reds.
In an effort to escape Ross steps onto the base’s transporter plate and is transferred to a Soviet base even further back in time. The Reds recapture him and take him outside the base, abandoning him on a glacier to freeze to death. He climbs out of the crevice into which he was shoved and follows the trail leading away from the Soviet base, coming to a giant globe half buried in the ice. Half dead from the abuse he has received, he enters the globe and then falls through a panel and into a tub full of transparent-red gel.
...
Wikipedia