A Look at Andre Norton’s Witch World by Fletcher Vredenburgh Born in 1912, Alice Mary Norton worked as a teacher, a librarian, and finally a reader for Gnome Press before becoming a full-time writer in 1958. By then she’d already had a dozen books published, including such classics as Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. and Star Rangers. Based on their easy style and simpler characterizations, most of her early books would probably be classified as YA today. It was with 1963’s  Witch World that Norton first wrote a full-fledged sword-and-sorcery book steeped in pulp gloriousness. Sadly, for one of the most successful and prolific women to write fantasy and science with a career that last over fifty years, her books seem sorely neglected today. For far too many years, I avoided reading Andre Norton’s Witch World stories because the title made it seem too twee. When I finally read the novella “The Toads of Grimmerdale” in Lin Carter’s anthology, Flashing Swords! #2, I knew the series was anything but twee. Its protagonist, Hertha, appeals to dark powers to avenge her: Within the walled area were five blocks of green stone. Those glistened in the weird light as if they were carved of polished gems. Their tops had been squared off to give seating for those who awaited her. What she had expected Hertha was not sure. But what she saw was so alien to all she knew that she did not even feel fear, but rather wonder that such could exist in a world where men also walked. Now she could understand why these bore the name of toads, for that was the closest mankind could come in descriptive comparison. I found the story creepy as Hell and potent enough to make me dig out the original novels in the series — and what I found there was just as wild. If “Toads” is a perfect tale of dark sword-and-sorcery, the first two novels, Witch World (1963) and Web of the Witch World (1964) is pure pulp science fantasy with a dash of genocide on the side. The first book opens with Simon Tregarth, a disgraced ex-US Army Lieutenant Colonel and desperate black marketeer, on the run from his own associates. He’s just killed two of them, but he knows his days are numbered until he finds the mysterious Dr. Jorge Petronius. The doctor is known...