Summer Reading List No. 8-Secret of the Lost Race by Andre Norton

I began reading Secret of the Lost Race by Andre Norton (1959; Ace Books, 1972) late in summer and finished it the day after the equinox. It was originally published as half of an Ace Double with a great cover by Ed Valigursky (1926-2009). The cover artist for my edition is unknown. That's unfortunate, because it's a great and evocative image: colorful, mysterious, inviting to the reader, a depiction of a truly alien landscape. The artist should have received credit, just as every artist should. I'm an artist and so may be biased, but artists have very often given us better, more evocative, more fully realized science-fictional worlds than have authors. We often read science fiction and fantasy based on cover art and illustration versus anything else. Sometimes the story is a disappointment by comparison. Maybe that's more common with visually oriented people versus those who are verbally oriented.

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Andre Norton (1912-2005) can always be counted on to set up a good and intriguing situation. She was also good with sequences of action and adventure. Secret of the Lost Race starts out well by thrusting a young city-dweller into a precarious life on a harsh and distant planet. After a while, though, the story gets bogged down in talk and politics. There is also the introduction of complex physical environments, which can be a problem in any story. I remember a Travis McGee novel in which the story hinges on action taking place within such an environment. I became nearly lost, and because of that, the story was nearly lost to me. I guess a piece of advice for any writer is not to force your story into situations like that. Let it unfold easily instead of with too much complexity. Your readers may not be able to follow you very well through the folds of your own brain.

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The title Secret of the Lost Race may seem a little misleading, but maybe only because we think we already know what is a lost race: lost races are found in lost cities or villages or hamlets situated in lost valleys or lost lands or on lost islands or lost continents. They aren't out there in the great galaxy. Andre Norton didn't commit any literary offense by placing her lost race among the stars, nor by invoking any preconceived notions the reader may have of what is a lost race. I don't feel cheated or misled by her title. I enjoyed Secret of the Lost Race.

Andre's hero is a young man with special, secret, latent powers. He's like Luke Skywalker who doesn't know that he's the son of a Jedi (in one version of the Star Wars story anyway) and can control the Force. But her hero is also like the Superior Man of science fiction tradition (or cliché). He's not ordinary. He's not human. He's a member of a powerful lost race. (Judging from their language, I think they're Welsh.) Only in the end does he find this out. So again we have the Superior Man plot, this time combined with the Lost Race/Lost Worlds plot. Andre Norton wrote for young people. Maybe the Superior Man plot appeals to young people, especially the socially awkward, bookish, or lonely among them: maybe someday their great and special and secret powers will out and the world will recognize them for what they truly are.

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Speaking of Star Wars, there are interesting and innovative weapons in Secret of the Lost Race. They are blades of pure energy, and I think they emerge from a solid handle or haft. There's a force axe and a force blade--a knife, I think. I recognized them right away as light sabers. Maybe the next weapon in the Star Wars galaxy should be a light axe.

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I wanted to write about this book because it steers me back towards my previous series on Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost Worlds, and Utopia. Those terms--Lost Worlds and Lost Race--can mean more than one thing. Andre Norton showed as much in her book. I have at least six meanings.

A Lost World or Lost Race can be:

1. Lost as in secret; not easily discoverable nor re-found after first being found. Brigadoon might be an example. This type of world is lost because somebody wants it that way.
2. Lost, stranded, or frozen in time, i.e., in the past or in a historical phase through which the rest of the world has passed, leaving the Lost World behind. Dian of the Lost Land by Edison Marshall (1935) is an example. Geographic isolation is usually the explanation for this type of Lost World.
3. Lost as in invoking feelings of longing or nostalgia for something that was greater, happier, and more pleasant than what we have today but has since become lost, i.e., Eden or Paradise or a lost Golden Age. (The lost Golden Age may be the author's own youth, as I suggested in my previous entries on Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein.)
4. Lost as in previously unknown; newly discovered, as in Utopia by Thomas More (1516).
5. Lost as in once known but then lost to the outside world, only to be rediscovered later, like the real-life Viking colonies on Greenland, if they had in fact survived rather than perished, if they had continued developing naturally, and if they had been rediscovered after a couple of centuries of isolation. This kind of Lost World might be lost only accidentally.
6. Lost as in bewildered, whether it be in time or space, or philosophically, spiritually, psychologically, existentially, etc. The TV show Lost is a good example.

It's important to remember that Lost Worlds can exist not only in space but also in time: a Lost World can be of the future--a future Earth--newly discovered by the Time Traveler, who can be a character but who might also be the author or the reader. Through science fiction and fantasy, we as readers may make our extraordinary voyages and encounter these new and perhaps previously Lost Worlds, all in the comfort of our own rooms. Other planets can be Lost Worlds, too, equivalent to the previously undiscovered lands of the still geographically open earth of our historical past. Lost Worlds can exist in the past, too. Robert E. Howard's stories of Conan and his Hyborian Age are good examples of that. Remember that those stories first appeared in Weird Tales, and so Utopia, by way of the Lost Worlds story, found its way into the pages of "The Unique Magazine." And so I give away half of my thesis in this series.

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If my taxonomy of Lost Worlds is accurate, then maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars--the Barsoom of John Carter--falls into the third and/or fourth categories, with elements of the second category, too. The idea put forth is that Barsoom is a conservative Utopia, just as Lost Worlds that came before it in literature--worlds created by H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling for example--were conservative. The conservative Utopia, then, is imperfect. Men must struggle against each other and against the elements and the forces of nature. They must be tested and they must prove themselves. The conservative Utopia of Lost Worlds allows the author and the reader to put himself or herself in the shoes of the protagonist, and so he or she is tested and proves himself or herself. Lost Worlds is wish-fulfillment. That seems pretty plain to me. It seems pretty plain to me, too, that the sixth category of Lost Worlds described above is unlikely to appear in the conservative Utopia, for the Conservative is by definition not a modern man, nor is he tormented by the dilemmas of modernity. (A questioning, seeking, self-aware protagonist in a Lost Worlds setting might make for a good story, though.)

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I'm not saying that I agree with that interpretation exactly, that the Lost Worlds story is the conservative version of Utopia. I would like to read more about it first. Unfortunately, more than one paper on the subject is locked up behind a paywall. (I thought walls were bad.) Anyway, the progressive Utopia is, in contrast, perfect. There is no struggle, only peace. All needs and desires are met by the State, which is coterminous in the progressive imagination with Society. At long last, here is Utopia: a perfect gray sludge of a thoroughly homogenized and dehumanized humanity, living together in perfect happiness, peace, material comfort--and stasis. (You might be able to detect my bias here.) The progressive Utopia is a fantasy, too, not only on the part of the author (Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy [1888] is an example) but also of the reader. The problem with the progressive Utopia is that as a literary work, it's usually pretty dull (just like its subjects, their minds, and their lives). The place for the progressive Utopia is actually in the real world; the real-life Progressive prefers to bring his or her fantasy of Utopia to real life. And as we all know, that involves a lot of death. And I mean a lot of death.

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As I've said before, every Utopia is also a Dystopia, because the subjects of Utopia must always be stripped of their humanity. We are not perfect, but in order for Utopia to be brought about, we must be harried into perfection. We are by our very nature free, but in order for there to be Utopia, we must submit to slavery. This is Dystopia, and this is the progressive goal.

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I have three books (or four, depending on how you count) remaining in this series on my summer reading. Next comes Edgar Rice Burroughs and his own description of Dystopia.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley