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=                          The_Time_Traders                          =
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                            Introduction
======================================================================
'The Time Traders' is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre
Norton, the first in 'The Time Traders' series. 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 premise: a confrontation between
Western heroes and the "Reds", AKA the Soviets, plus the "Baldies", 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.


                              Premise
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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 it is not possible to discover
the secrets, we get them from someone who did.


                                Plot
======================================================================
The outline below follows the 1958 version; afterward, the changes in
the 2000 edition are described.

At the end of the twentieth century, petty criminal Ross Murdock is
given the choice of facing a new psychiatric 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., Ross and Ashe (as
Rossa and Assha) find that their outpost has been bombed. According to
two of the natives, it was destroyed by the wrath of Lurgha, the local
storm god. Discovering the direction whence the bomber came and other
clues pointing to the general area occupied by a 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.

When he regains consciousness, Ross discovers that all of his wounds
are healed, he is no longer hungry or thirsty, and his Beaker-folk
clothing is gone. A mechanism offers him a skin-tight suit made of an
iridescent dark-blue fabric that covers all but his head and his
hands. He explores what is clearly some kind of ship and is recaptured
by the Reds, but not before he activates the ship’s communication
system and comes face to face with a hostile-looking humanoid with a
large bald head.

The Reds' interrogation of Ross is interrupted by explosions that rock
the base. Ross is reunited with Ashe and McNeil and the three men
escape to the time transporter, pausing only to steal some recording
tapes. Back in the Soviet Bronze-Age base, the men leave the
time-travel building and escape from the village just as the alien
Baldies attack. The men then make their way to the river that will
take them to the Baltic Sea to be picked up by their submarine
(disguised as a whale).

Ross is again separated from Ashe and McNeil when he falls off their
hastily built and uncontrollable raft. He discovers that the Baldies
are hunting him when he is captured by warriors from a barbarian
tribe. Again he escapes and continues down the river, reaching the sea
and the camp occupied by Ashe and/or McNeil only hours after the sub
took them away. Two of the Baldies attempt to capture him with
telepathic hypnosis, but they flee when Kelgarries and his men arrive.
Leaving the alien skinsuit on the beach so that the Baldies can't
trace the Americans to their base, the men take Ross to the sub and
home. There, Ashe tells him that the tapes he stole indicate other
alien spaceships abandoned on Earth, at least three of them in the
Americas. Operation Retrograde is about to become much more
interesting and Ross still wants to be part of the action.


Changes in the 2000 edition
=============================
The 2000 version Norton modified the 1958 version by making three
changes in the text:
* She reset the story in the first quarter of the Twenty-First Century
instead of in the last quarter of the Twentieth, shifting the action
future-ward by a full generation.
* The “Reds” have become the Russians and Greater Russia has replaced
the Soviet Union.
* Space travel has not gone beyond the first lunar landings instead of
having not gotten beyond the first attempts to put satellites into
orbit. Instead of being ridiculed as impossible, space travel is
publicly ridiculed as infeasible.


                             Reception
======================================================================
Floyd C. Gale wrote that "'Traders' gets Miss Norton back solidly and
admirably on her track of excellence", and was one of her
"topnotchers".

In the 'Saturday Review' for 1958 Nov 01, the reviewer, identified by
the initials A. O’B. M., wrote:


In 'Kirkus Reviews' for 1958 Oct 01 an unidentified reviewer wrote:


                        Novels in the series
======================================================================
* 'The Time Traders' (1958)
* 'Galactic Derelict' (1959)
* 'The Defiant Agents' (1962)
* 'Key Out of Time' (1963)
* 'Firehand' (1994) (with Pauline M Griffin)
* 'Echoes in Time' (1999) (with Sherwood Smith)
* 'Atlantis Endgame' (2002) (with Sherwood Smith)


                              Sources
======================================================================
*Clute, John. "Norton, Andre." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight.
Gollancz, 12 June 2014. Web. 23 Aug. 2014. .
*Schlobin, Irene R., and Harrison, Roger C., 'Andre Norton: a primary
and secondary bibliography', NESFA Press (P.O. Box 809, Framingham,
MA, 01701-0809), 1998, pg. 5, .
*Tuck, Donald H. (1974). 'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and
Fantasy'. Chicago: Advent. pg. 332. .


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