Can You Help Answer This Question?
Q) Sue wrote, As a child, in the 70s or 80s (Sorry I can’t remember the definite decade), I read a book about a group of individuals who after seeing and picking up a glowing crystal, awoke to find themselves on a different planet. They were supplied with equipment to survive including identification cards of the creatures on the planet.
The book followed their survival.
Can anybody tell what the book was called?
A) Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything relating to this. Maybe it’s a children’s fantasy book? Or an old episode of some program, lost in the dim depths of the past? (You know how tv programs and books can get mixed up!).
Do you have any ideas? Let us know via a comment, thanks!
January 16th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
was it ‘Iftin Kind’ - i think by poul andersen?
January 16th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
sorry
it was andre norton
judgement on janus
see below
Notes to both novels follow the reviews below.
JUDGEMENT ON JANUS, Fawcett, 1979 (1963) and VICTORY ON JANUS, Ace,
1966.
Naill Renfro chooses the first of the routes out of the Dipple, that
slum created by dumping those displaced by the war. In order to get the necessary cash to pay for his dying mother to have drugs easing
her exit from the poor existence in the Dipple, Naill signs on for offworld labour. He awakes from cold sleep to find he’s a lobourer
on a forested world which forms the homeland of a fanatical cult. No appreciation is shown by these believers to the great trees, seen only as obstacles to be cut down and burned out, so as to permit the homesteads of the believers to take their appropriate place.
Naill who seems to have been born a free trader lacks the fanatics’
insensitivity. He responds to the beauty of the forest and more, to
a curious treasure which seems to call to him. The artefact is, not
surprisingly, deemed a devilish temptation by the believers to be
smashed to bits, along with all such finds. And, of course, when
Naill the sinner comes down with the Green Sick, it’s his just
punishment for yielding to the evil one. Naill is taken out and
left in the woods to die. And so begins a very captivating tale.
He doesn’t die. Instead there’s a transformation, an awakening, a
blending, as Ayyar, a warrior of a long forgotten age, indeed, of a
vanished race finds himself with Naill occupying the one body, a
body changed by the ability, or the magic, of Ayyar’s people, the
Iften, to resemble them. So, Naill/Ayyar is green with altered
features. And there is much more. Ayyar remembers the ways of the
forest and even the way to a great citadel of trees, a city of his
kind, who abode within the great trees and lived very much in
harmony with them. They also fared as companions to some of the
wild life in the woods.
Ayyar meets others of his kind, other humans who have found such
treasures containing the essences, or at least some memories of
the people who used to be the denizens of the great forest. One of
these is the woman who was, or who recalls, the priestess Illylle.
And, there is more, the central struggle of the two books. For a
large part of the later history of the Iften they had struggled
with others known as Larsh. Great heroism is shown in this book
as Ayyar faces That Which Abides, a supernatural support of the
Larsh and one which awakens to front the renaissance of Iften
folk in the forest. Using its compelling mental might, That pulls
the humans of homesteads and of port to oppose the Iften. Magic as
called by Illylle and the courage of Ayyar and of others at last
break the mighty hold of the greatest enemy.
The sad historical fact is learned that the Larsh are the de-evolved
offspring of colonists whose ship came to an unpromising planet and
That Which Abides is but the computer of that ship, seeking to turn
the unsatisfactory planet into one more in keeping with the purpose
of the colonizers. These themes of nature against computers and of
de-evolution are not unique to this story. Andre Norton resonates
with the natural world and is uneasy with advanced technology. She
also is much more comfortable with the magical capacity of such a
character as the priestess Illylle, as not only a number of other
science-fiction books testify, but her many fantasy Witch World
stories.
For me, this look at Iften sympathetic connection with the Forest was
very resonating. I was pulled in the same way Andre Norton so well
attracted me to the depiction of the Beaker People in her THE TIME
TRADERS that it was like waking up from a very pleasing dream to move
on from such captivating portrayals to actually resume following the
story’s plot. I like this one a lot.
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