I had an odd reaction to this entry in the Norton canon. It starts off with a fridging—killing off the protagonist’s mom to get the plot in gear—and then, to make things just plain weird, he turns into the Green Goblin. But then I started to kind of like Naill Renfro, and when Ashla showed up, I realized I was enjoying the ride. By the time I got to the end, I was eager to move on to the sequel (and next time I will).
The broad outlines of the plot are very familiar by now. War refugee living in the slums of pleasure world loses maternal figure and ships out to frontier planet that turns out to be full of ancient alien artifacts. There’s a lot here that reminds me of the Forerunner series, particularly the Simsa books, but Judgment was published much earlier, in 1963. This means male protagonist and heavily male-dominated culture, but there are definite cracks in the facade. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Witch World books began to appear at just about this time. Norton was moving on past boys’ adventure to something much more, dare I say, it feminist.
In this particular iteration, baby Free Trader Naill Renfro’s ship was caught in the perpetual war that torments this universe, his father killed, and he and his mother dumped as refugees in the Dipple (where the displaced people go) in Korwar. His mother is dying. He wants to give her a merciful death, which means expensive drugs, and the only way to get them is to sell himself.
This being Norton, that doesn’t mean what it might mean in another story. He signs on as a slave laborer, and ends up on Janus, a forest world which has been colonized by a fanatical religious sect. The sect is all about sin and repression, and about eradicating the forest. The forest fights back by infecting some of the colonists with the “Green Sick.” There are also, Naill learns in short order, treasure troves of alien artifacts which turn up around the settlements, and which are destroyed with great ceremony and ferocious thoroughness.
As soon as Naill learns about this, he finds a trove, and is irresistibly drawn to the items in it, especially a kind of shiny tube. He tries to hide it when the treasure is destroyed, but is caught. And then he becomes sick.
The artifacts are the cause of the infection. And, Naill discovers when he comes to, the disease transforms its victims into aliens with alien memories. He is now a hairless green goblin with huge pointed ears and eyes that can’t tolerate sunlight, and he has the memories of an ancient alien warrior named Ayyar. He also discovers that he physically cannot tolerate humans. Even the sight of them causes visceral revulsion. This feeling is mutual: humans run screaming from the green monster.
Drawn by his fragmentary alien memories and driven by human hunters with hounds, Naill makes his way to the now ruined tree-city from which his alien alter ego came, where he discovers recent evidence of others like him. But they’re gone, and he sets out to find them, acquiring a sentient alien bird companion along the way. He just misses catching up with them as they set sail on the sea, and backtracks to the city.
In the process he passes by a human garth, and spies on a young woman named Ashla, who like him stumbles on an alien trove and fixates on one of its artifacts—in her case, a green necklace. Ashla becomes ill and is transformed as Naill was; Naill helps her escape pursuit and guides her back to the city. Along the way he learns that she carries the memory of a kind of sorceress named Illylle, and helps her deal with the transition from human to alien.
Ashla/Illylle is a dominant female, with much more and deeper knowledge than Naill/Ayyar. She turns out to be a key to the mystery of Janus, especially once they’re captured by an eerie animated spacesuit and imprisoned in a crystal maze.
The suit and the maze are controlled by the ancient enemy of the green people, referred to most often as It (but it’s neither a clown nor a power of Kamazotz). This creature or force manifests as hard daylight and burning sun, versus the nocturnal good guys, and its powers are contained in lifeless rock rather than living things. The good guys have been fighting it for millennia, and lost the last war, to the point of extermination.
But they have managed somehow (the details remain a mystery in this volume) to manufacture the treasures and plant them where humans will find them. In this way they create “changelings” who carry fragmented alien memories and are deliberately designed to be repelled by their original species. The intention is to repopulate the planet and restore their civilization.
All of this becomes much clearer when Naill and Ashla find a group of fellow captives who have also been transformed, and who have been on this planet for a very long time. One of them in fact is the First-In Scout who discovered the planet. So it seems they’re immortal, more or less. They sort out who they all are and band together to break out of prison and defeat the enemy—the latter aided by Naill’s avian ally and a flock of its fellows.
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And so It is beaten (though not permanently) and our band of heroes heads back to the ancient city, which they plan to rebuild. Considering that the next volume is titled Victory on Janus, I can guess how that will turn out.
Norton has a great deal to say here. She speaks firmly and unequivocally against religious intolerance and for freedom of thought and belief. She depicts aliens who look dramatically different from humans but whose emotions and motivations are ultimately very human. And her token female major character is not only dominant, she helps unravel the mystery of the planet. Ashla comes from a horribly repressive society, but it’s clear she had a mind of her own even before she transformed into Illylle. She easily takes the lead in the adventure, and has no problem telling the men what to do. Nor do the men contest her right to do so.
In that she’s the spiritual sister of Maelen and Jaelithe and the rest of Norton’s powerful women. Actual human women are still nearly invisible, but this is a start. Later in her career, of course, Norton edged away from the all-male human universe to one with more gender parity.
She’s pretty hardline about various forms of human governance, too. Her universe here is relentlessly capitalist, controlled by guilds and cartels, corporations and companies. It’s all about profit. But it’s also about colonialism, and about the rights of native peoples.
As we’ve seen in other novels set in this universe, if a planet is inhabited by intelligent beings, that planet is off limits to colonization. If and when Naill and company succeed in rebuilding the culture of Janus, the horrible religious fanatics will have to leave, and by law Janus will belong to its native inhabitants—though the way in which they’ve been recreated might add complications. I’m looking forward to the next volume, and to seeing how the changelings and their children (who do not inherit ancient memories) manage to reclaim Janus.
Judith Tarr’s first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Her short novel, Dragons in the Earth, a contemporary fantasy set in Arizona, was published recently by Book View Cafe. In between, she’s written historicals and historical fantasies and epic fantasies and space operas, some of which have been published as ebooks from Book View Café. She has won the Crawford Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, a blue-eyed dog, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.
Thanks for reviewing this. This and “Night of Masks” were my favorite books when I began to discover science fiction.
@1 You’re welcome! These are very interesting books, for sure. Norton did a lot of subversive things, in very subtle ways, while telling good old-fashioned adventure stories.
I could’ve sworn I saw an episode of Star Trek like this, but with a more dismal ending.
It’s interesting that what would normally be hardcore, evil alien invader behavior–infecting human hosts with alien memories and physically changing them into aliens–is liberating in this novel. In this case, however the change works in a literal sense, for the characters, it’s more about being able to reject the limited roles their society has given them in favor of new, more fulfilling ones.
I understand the Dipple was based on post-World War II refugee camps. People selling themselves into indentured servitude or some form of debt slavery, unfortunately, was not an idea Norton invented, nor were masters who ignored the legal protections and rights their servants were supposed to have.
@3 a NEXT GEN episode where Picard relives a man’s life whose planet is dying because of its sun.
The religious group in JANUS is right. The artifacts are dangerous. It’s been a while since I read this, but I don’t believe the humans were given a choice about the change happening. Morally, it’s no better than the Borg or the Cybermen assimilating people. So, wrong on both sides of the equation. The assimilated were just lucky this time that their lives improved.
@5 No choice. Although the artifacts seem to attract humans who are already disaffected, or whose lives need changing. Also we’re supposed to see the religious fanatics as evil, so anything that gets people away from them gets defined as at least a qualified good.
It’s a complicated ethical situation, for sure.
I found the idea of being transformed into an alien being fascinating when I was young, especially since the life of the alien being sounded so much more interesting and rewarding than the life of slavery to religious fanatics that the protagonist left behind. And, like many Norton novels, there is the obligatory animal companion. And new friends to bond with. And the whole “mysterious ruins left by ancient aliens” thing. There is also an ecological message here; if you try to destroy nature, nature fights back. There is a lot going on in this one, but it stuck in my memory as one of my favorites.
@@.-@ Heinlein also postulated a future corporate colonization model based on a form of indentured servitude in his novella “Logic of Empire.”
@8 The protagonist starts out as a slave in Citizen of the Galaxy also.
Interesting how Andre criticizes fundamentalist religious sects in this book and Ordeal in Otherwhere (which were published within a year of each other, ’63 & ’64).
@10 Something must have happened to alert her to the dangers of this. Heinlein presented it as a potential destroyer of US democracy around about this time, too, didn’t he?
@11 Heinlein postulated that the latter part of the 20th Century would be the “Crazy Years,” with election of a television evangelist leading to the collapse of US democracy. He was wrong about the dates, and I hope he was wrong about the collapse of democracy. But it sure feels like “The Crazy Years” lately…
Oddly, the Janus books are my least favorite of Norton’s books. I remember being put off by the people being changed into aliens. Not that the humans were anything to save. The rest of the story was interesting in the usual Norton way, but I was really put off by people becoming aliens. I wonder why that bothered me so much then?
I haven’t read them in a long time. I should probably re-read to see if I have the same reaction.
@12 It truly does. Nehemiah Scudder is alive and well.
@13 That kind of freaked me out, too (uncanny valley widened to a canyon, plus the lack of consent), but once they’re transformed, they’re pretty good characters and the adventure is engaging.
Judith,
I first read this book 50 years ago, when I was all of 12 or 13 years old. I still have the original paperback. It was years later before I was able to find the sequel. I grew up in rural East Texas and the choice of reading materials was very limited. As with most Norton books, this one spoke to me and my concerns as a young boy and I made an immediate connection with Naill/Ayyar. But, I do think that you do an injustice to Norton when you talk of a “token” female character. Frankly, you should be giving her credit for the courage to have such a character in such a novel. 50 years ago, the main audience and buying public for science fiction and fantasy were young teenage boys. During my youth, I never encountered anyone but males who showed any interest in this kind of fiction. Of course, females were neither encouraged or expected to read such stories. I’m not say that was fair or appropriate. It’s just how it was. It is to Norton’s credit that she included a female as a major character in this story. I have reread these books many times and have just started yet another reading of them now. Her depiction of fundamentalist religions was important to me as well; as it taught me to start taking a closer look at the religion I was then being taught. Even at 63, I find these books very special. Best wishes and happy reading.
Mark Lee
I think Ms. Tarr is a bit preoccupied with feminism and has missed what I think is the basic revelation this novel by Andre Norton and several other novels of hers. The initial view of Janus was a world occupied by devils being subjected to the march of human civilization.
But right away it seemed all about destruction of the environment and fear of nature. The story matured into the revelation that the “devils” were aligned with nature, and human civilization, which didn’t seem much different from historical enemies of the Iftin who they called the Larsh, was the real evil.
I read that book when I was about 12 years old. It and another sci fi novel I read earlier called Revolt on Alpha C, helped to set me on a path of protest against the war in Viet Nam and all of the destruction of the environment I could see all around me. I am a man, by the way, and back then I really related to her vision of the kind of adventure a boy should aspire to.
I read all of her novels from that era and they had a huge impact on my world view.