plague which strikes the ship. All this is done with only knowledge, experience, devotion
to duty (and drugs to keep him awake!).
Other noteworthy books of this genre include Alan Nourse’s Star Surgeon (1960),
which innovatively makes an alien the hero, and the book is propelled by a powerful plea
for racial equality.
Two characteristics of post-Second World War children’s SF are that, compared with
children’s fantasy, the author needs to have produced a substantial body of work to
achieve classic status; second, specialist juvenile SF writers take over from adult SF
writers. Some are forgotten, like ‘John Blaine’, author of more than twenty ‘Rick Brant
Science Adventures’ between 1947 and 1968.
However, the first woman on the scene has remained popular, and has become the
grande dame of SF. Taking an androgynous pen name, Andre Norton, Alice Mary Norton
(who has also written as ‘Andrew North’) has written prolifically. Norton’s SF novels
usually share a far-future setting where humans (Terrans) mix with alien races;
intergalactic law is enforced by the Patrol in a never-ending conflict with the Thieves’
Guild. Norton is uninterested in the nuts and bolts of engineering her faster-than-light
ships, and she has imported several fantasy motifs into her SF, especially motifs from
the sword-and-sorcery sub-genre: the quest; the magic token; enhanced mental powers
such as telepathy (which in Norton’s universe may occur between people and animals as
well as interpersonally); and archaic dialogue to suggest the lifestyle of less advanced
cultures. With her research into anthropology and archaeology, Norton gives depth to
the varied cultures in her worlds, as in The Beast Master (1959), while scenes in Android
at Arms (1971) recall Tolkien. Norton’s lengthy novels do not suit modern teenage taste,
nor does the absence of a love interest, or its delay to the last page (romance, however,
flourishes in her Witch World fantasies).
We turn now to children’s SF in Britain (and a few French titles) immediately after
- These were conventional genre-books with SF motifs added: the most popular type
was the space thriller, optimistic in mood, reflecting the feeling that now the war was
over, Britain, probably co-operating with the USA, would build on wartime rocketry
developments and start exploring the Solar System. The most well known authors of this
period were W.E.Johns, Patrick Moore, Angus MacVicar and Hugh Walters, and I should
also mention Paul Berna’s Threshold of the Stars (France 1954) and its sequel Continent
in the Sky (1955), about a space station and lunar exploration.
Johns, the creator of Biggles, wrote ten books about a traditional group of explorers:
war hero, teenage son, eccentric professor and doctor, who make contact with Martians.
Free of the Empire ethos which some have criticised in the Biggles books, the books are
‘ripping yarns’ and are also a vehicle for serious criticism of the arms race: in The Quest
for the Perfect Planet (1961) the professor searches for a place to shelter refugees if Earth
blows up.
Patrick Moore, a popular astronomer, has published over twenty children’s SF novels,
including Mission to Mars (1955); Angus MacVicar, Scottish novelist and scriptwriter,
had some of his children’s SF about the Lost Planet serialised on radio and children’s
television in the 1950s—a series which has obvious messages about the Cold War; while
Hugh Walters specialised in children’s SF writing a single series about astronaut Chris
Godfrey from 1957 to 1981. With their straightforward plots, incorruptible heroes, and
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