Timeline
and Recommended Reading Order
for Andre Norton’s
FORERUNNERS UNIVERSE pt. 5
by Geert Cuypers © 2018
Last updated on January 15, 2019
Recreated on this website in case this link ever fails.
Reformatted and edited for this site by Jay Watts ~ Jan. 2019
Contents of pt.1
Introduction
Recommended Reading Order
Story Review
Documentation and argumentation available in the following sections:
Appendex A ~ pt.2
Time references and conflict warnings.
Footnotes used to compile the timeline.
Appendex B ~ pt.3
Creating the timeline.
The difficult road to ordering a chaotic Universe.
Appendex C ~ pt.4
Arguments.
Why did I include / exclude stories?
Appendex D ~ pt.5
Word Searches, Quotes, etc.
Leftovers from the word-searches I used to figure out what & where books belong in this collection.
The essential references from these searches have been moved to the previous pages by cutting & pasting.
These are the 'leftovers' and the remaining references in this page are redundant.
I included this page for completeness, and as an optional reference FYI.
* * * * * * *
Source Credits and Acknowledgements:
This timeline is based on several sources, including but not limited to:
- About 1 year of dedicated reading and research in Andre Norton’s books;
- My thanks and appreciation to Jay Watts, webmaster of andre-norton.com for maintaining this website for all these years. Jay Watts has access to most of Andre Norton's estate documents and confirmed that the author did not leave any notes relating to a timeline of the Forerunners Universe.
- Maureen O’Brien’s 'Multi-verse' timeline ties many of Norton’s pre-1995 works into a single timeline. This listing is very different in purpose, content and presentation. I did adopt the ("story title") notation and some relevant quotes from those pages — courtesy of webmaster Jay Watts, — as no current contact information for Maureen O'Brien is available.
* * * * * * *
Request for Assistance:
Reading Andre Norton is a good pastime but it still takes time; even more so when trying to find specific information. Sometimes, just a few words in an off-hand comment can provide important clues. I'm sure I missed some.
If you can assist with refining this timeline, please do let me know. Mail geert @ avemariasongs . org [no spaces] with “Forerunners Universe” in the subject line if you don't want it to end up in my junk folder.
Geert Cuypers
SF&F-fan on isfdb.org
Appendix D: WORD SEARCHES + QUOTES:
(Leftovers from the word-searches I used to figure out what & where books belong in this collection.
The essential references from these searches have been moved to the previous pages by cutting & pasting.
These are the 'leftovers' and the remaining references in this page are redundant.
I included this page for completeness, and as an optional reference FYI.)
Word-search in a text-processor allows to list all occurrences of specific words and word combinations. This is a great help to determine where in the timeline a book belongs.
Not all occurrences of the keywords are included.
One per book is enough to show that belongs in the collection (unless reasons for exclusion, e.g. time travel.)
The numbers used are in reality my personal ebook page numbers. In some books chapter numbers might be off by 1 or 2 if there is an epigraph, introduction and/or prologue preceding the chapters.
WARNING: This file is presented without clean-up editing. Not everything is well ordered or organized, things may be duplicated, mixed together, or have been pasted where they don't really belong. The paragraphs in italics (usually) are quotes from Norton's books. Buzz-words in those quotes are often highlighted.
REFERENCES TO: "FORERUNNER(s)"
Forerunners are mentioned in these books.
Solar Queen x7
Forerunners x5
Beast Master x5
Moonsinger x4
Star Stones x2
Ice Crown
X-Factor
Dark Piper
Voorloper
Brother to Shadows
Dread Companion
Star Hunter
Android at Arms
Dread Companion
Voorloper:
Forerunner! We are late comers into space, even though we have been for centuries now star voyagers. Still there had been those who had sought the star lanes, mapped and held them, long before our first crude rocket had lifted from Terra and man had eyed the stars with a covetous desire. Galactic empires had risen and fallen and of them we knew so little. .../... There were many [races of] Forerunners, yes, and at different times, on different worlds, or in different sectors.
REFERENCES TO: CENTRAL CONTROL / C.C.
Star Guard + Star Rangers + Android at Arms + Brother to Shadows
Star Guard
The first starships from Earth have burst out into the universe…only to run straight into the restraining grasp of the stagnant alien federation known as Central Control.
All mankind’s festering resentment against Central Control lay behind that outburst.
It had been a long time since Terrans had first reached toward other worlds. Three hundred years since the first recorded pioneer flight into the Galaxy. And even before that there were legends of other ships fleeing the nuclear wars and the ages of political and social confusion which followed. They must have been either very desperate or very brave, those first explorers—sending their ships out into the unknown while they were wrapped in cold sleep with one chance in perhaps a thousand of waking as their craft approached another planet. With the use of Galactic overdrive such drastic chances were no longer necessary. But had his kind paid too high a price for their swifter passage from star to star? …/… ut what if Central Control had not existed? Would the Agents’ repeated argument have proved true? Would the Terrans, unchecked, have pulled planet after planet into a ruthless struggle for power? Kana was sure that was a lie. But now if a Terran wanted the stars, if the desire for new and strange knowledge burned in him—he could buy it only by putting on the Combatant’s sword.
Mankind had come late into space, and had been pushed to one side of the game Central Control managed. But there were many worlds where native life had never reached intelligence. What if man had been allowed to spread to those—to colonize? What if the very ancient legends of his race were true and there had been earlier trips into deep space from which the voyagers had never returned? Were there worlds where once Terran colonies had taken root? Where he could find his own distant kin free of the Central Control yoke, men who had won the stars by their own efforts?
“Use hot stuff?” Kana’s horrified amazement was genuine. He could accept the enmity of the Mechs, even the struggle for power backed in some mysterious way by Central Control Agents, but the thought of turning to nuclear weapons against—! Terra had learned too bitter a lesson in the Big Blow-up and the wars which followed. Those had occurred a thousand years ago but they had scarred the memories of his species for all time. He could not conceive of a Terran using nukes—it was so unnatural that it made his head reel.
This mess on Fronn is going to bring the latent danger of our position home—to even the most hidebound of the Big Brass. Once they see that Terran can be turned against Terran with the approval of Central Control, that Mech can be used to hunt down Arch—they will listen to what we have to say.”
“In reality Terra for at least two hundred and fifty years has been a double world—though that fact is known to a relatively small number of her inhabitants. One Terra and one Prime was fitted quickly and neatly into the pattern Central Control demanded and is a law-abiding member of their lesser confederacy, content with the role of third-class citizenship.
“But in the past hundred years one troop transport in every twenty which lifted from this planet was no troop transport at all, but a pioneer carrier. Men and women selected for certain qualities of mind and body—survivor types—went out in deep sleep to settle on planets our mercenaries had explored. On some of those worlds the native races had dwindled and retrogressed until civilization had faded almost to extinction, others were bare of intelligent life, or had dominant races, young, vigorous and humanoid with whom we could interbreed. There is even reason to believe that the latter may be descendents of the passengers of those legendary starships which left this world during the nuclear wars—though the people have long since forgotten their origin.
So Terrans have been planted secretly on almost a thousand worlds now. On thirty our colonies could not take root, native diseases, adverse climatic changes, malignant life forms blotted them out. On six more they are still fighting a war for survival. On the rest they flourish and spread.
We are leaving Terra for the stars just as we planned from our first Galactic flight. And now that Central Control suspects that, she is going to move against us. But she will discover that she is perhaps ten generations too late. One cannot move against colonies on almost a thousand different worlds, not and keep up the fiction of justice to all which must be maintained to preserve their carefully guarded balance of power.
This trouble on Fronn—the bald design of crediting a massacre of Patrolmen to an outlawed Horde, the betrayal of Yorke and his officers—is a blow back at us and may bring the whole scheme into the open. If so, we don’t really care too much, we’ve been preparing lately for such an eventuality and we have our case far better organized for a general hearing than they suspect.
Space Rangers
In 8054 A.D. history repeated itself—as it always does. The First Galactic Empire was breaking up. Dictators, Emperors, Consolidators wrested the rulership of their own or kindred solar systems from Central Control. Space pirates raised flags and recruited fleets to gorge on spoil plundered from this wreckage.
Notable among these last-ditch fighters who refused to throw aside their belief in the impartial rule of Central Control were the remnants of the Stellar Patrol, a law enforcement body whose authority had existed unchallenged for almost a thousand years.
The benefits of Central Control civilization, yes. Kartr blinked as that struck home. His own planet, Ylene, had been burnt off five years ago—during the Two-Sector Rebellion.
“What has been happening to Central Control—to us?” asked Kartr slowly. “Why don’t we have proper equipment—supplies—new recruits?” “Breakdown,” replied Fylh crisply. “Maybe Central Control is too big, covers too many worlds, spreads its authority too thin and too far. Or perhaps it is too old so that it loses hold. Look at the sector wars, the pull for power between sector chiefs. Don’t you think that Central Control would stop that—if it could?”
“What will happen to Central Control?” Kartr wondered “The galactic empire—this galactic empire is falling apart. Within five years we’ve lost touch with as many sectors, haven’t we? C.C. is just a name now as far as its power runs. We’ve had a long run—about three thousand years—and the seams are beginning to gap. Sector wars now—the result—chaos. We’ll slip back fast—probably far back, maybe even into planet-tied barbarianism with space flight forgotten. Then we’ll start all over again—”
`The Patrol is the guardian of the law under Central Control.
“What caught us napping was that [the pirates] came in under false colors and we accepted them as friendly until too late. They were Central Control ships! Either some section of the Fleet has mutinied or—or something terrible has happened to the whole empire. They acted as if the Patrol had been outlawed—their attack was vicious. And because they had come in with all the proper signals we weren’t expecting it. It was as if they were the law—”
REFERENCES TO: CENTRAL SERVICES
Plague Ship (Solar Queen)
REFERENCES TO: “COUNCIL”
Solar Queen + Get out of my Dreams + Nightmare + Catseye + X-Factor + Brother to Shadows + Zero Stone + Moonsinger + Eye of the Monster
Star Guard
Ch.11: Hansu – Our inner Council
Ch.16: C.C.( = Central Control) Council / Grand Council
Star Hunter
Ch.1: Patrol Council
Plague Ship (SOLAR QUEEN cycle)
Ch.18: “There is no plague aboard. I am willing to certify that before the Council.”
Postmarked to the Stars
Ch.4: authorized project by Council permission
Ch.8: “Is Xecho worth a beam-out with the Council?”
Ch.12: “The Council is supposed to know, but my own department-we felt-”
Ch13: And this, this kind of experiment, it can’t be known by the Council.”
Ch.14: “But, the Council-someone must have realized what was happening!”
Get Out of my Dreams
“there is a need for a new treaty over the output of the mines, a Council affair much pressed by time.”
“This is a Council affair,” [Itlothis] replied briskly.”
“You must warn the Council! Wake us.”
unlimited credit…/… accepted on any planet where the Council had an Embassy.
Nightmare
Ch.5: Burr shook his head. “But a man can be dreamed to death “If that is his recorded desire. And it must be recorded and certified by the Lords in Council, also the First Person of his name clan.
Catseye
Ch.1: But a fringe of frontier worlds had passed into the grasp of one or the other of the major powers—the Confederation or the Council. As a result, the citizens of several small nations suddenly found themselves homeless. …/… It had been that same morning that the Council ships had cut out of the sky
Ch.3: His customer nodded. “Yes. Well, trade makes ties to defeat war. And if you can get the Terrans well tied up, you’ll have the smiles of the Council, Kyger.”
Ch.5: Terra was the center of the Confederation—or had been before the war. But she had not come out well at the end of that conflict; too many of her allies had gone down to defeat. From the dominant voice she had sunk to a second-rate, even third-rate, power at the conference tables. The Council and the Octed of the Rim maneuvered for first power, while the old Confederation had fractured into at least three collections of smaller rulerships.
Ch.18 Kyger died because of a personal feud. But for that chance this attack against the Council, and against Korwar, would have succeeded. …/… “Now if the Confederation tries this weapon on another planet, well, that is the Council’s affair.
The X Factor
Back cover: At this point in Norton's Council / Confederation universe, the job of discovering and exploring new planets - that of the First-In Scouts - is pretty much a closed occupation.
Brother to Shadows
Ch.8: “As you know, only when a world is one of the Great Council can there be any examination of its internal problems. Tssek has never applied for such an inclusion.” …/… off-worlder contact is limited to the spaceport, as it is on any non-Council world
Ch.18: “And this Shagga can be depended upon to come through when the deal is properly completed?” “He is no fool. Guild bargains are kept, as he and all the stars well know. This can be done I am sure—and the extra bit of sweetening he is ready to offer will please the Council.”
Ch.20: “So, off-worlder,” she now looked to the Patrol captain, “these are now your responsibility. Let them return to their own places, we need nothing of them. The Council meets tomorrow; we shall be speaking with you again concerning regulations for off-worlders—some of those will be changed.”
The Zero Stone
Ch.2: “Faskel is master here. For he is blood and bone of me, heir to my father who was lord here before Hywel Jern came. And so will I swear before the Council.”
Ch.18: “In the name of the Council, the Four Confederacies, the Twelve Systems, the Inner and Outer Planets,” he recited formally, as he must have done many times before, it came so easily to him, “this agreement shall hold by planet law and star law.”
Moon of Three Rings
Ch.18: “But you do not know what Korburg wants here?” “This much. There have been recent changes in the Council, especially as it touches the government of some inner planets.
Eye of the Monster
Ch.1: Fifteen years of labor and aid to these jungle tribes can not be cancelled out merely because a few troops are going off-world—as they should have done long since. The Council is only coming to their collective senses at last in breaking up such autocratic bounds of control. …/… To send away the Patrol is the first step in righting the wrongs of colonialism.” …/… “Ishkur has been a part of the South Sector Empire. That means a collection of different worlds under one government. Two years ago the Council decided that frontier planets, such as this one, should be allowed to set up their own ruling states. So they ordered the Patrol to withdraw by a certain date.
REFERENCES TO: CONFEDERATION / CONFEDERACY / Confederacies:
(“The Beast Master”) & (“Lord of Thunder”) The Confederacy
which contains Terra, Sirius, and 18 other solar systems (some Inner Worlds, some worlds like Arzor)
(“Siuox Spaceman”) the Northwest Terran Confederation.
Also mentioned in:
Zero Stones + Forerunner
Ice Crown + Catseye + X-Factor +Brother to Shadows Dark Piper + Voorloper
CONFEDERATION: Siuox Spaceman + Ice Crown + Forerunner + Catseye + X-Factor +Brother to Shadows Zero Stones + Dark Piper + Voorloper
The Sioux Spaceman
Ch.1: Kade Whitehawk, Amerindian of the Northwest Terran Confederation. …/… Sure, many Armerindians were enlisted in the Service, the adventure of out-world duty was welcomed by the youth of the Federation of Tribes.
of Terra.
Ice Crown
Ch.1: Clio had been settled two, maybe three hundred years ago when the Psychocrats dominated the Confederation, before the Overturn of 1404. It was the third such experimental planet rediscovered, though there were rumors that there had been more, no one knew how many. The blasting of the Forqual Center during the revolt of the Overturn had destroyed most records.
Ordeal in Otherwhere (Forerunner cycle)
Ch.1: In the past too many frontier-world settlements had split away from the Confederation, following sometimes weird and dangerous paths of development when fanatics took control, warped education, and cut off communications with other worlds.
Ch.12: Survey drew from almost every settled planet of the Confederation. He could even be a native Terran. That he was Survey meant that he had certain basic traits of character, certain very useful skills. And that he was also wearing the gold key of an embassy above his cadet bar meant even more—that he had extra-special attributes into the bargain.
Ch.12: Yes, the Companies—they were regulated, curbed, investigated, as well as the Confederation and the Patrol could manage. But they had their own police, their extra-legal methods when they dared flaunt control. Only what would bring any one of the Companies to send a private army to Warlock? What treasure could be scooped up here before a routine Patrol visit would reveal such lawless activity?
Catseye
Ch.1: But a fringe of frontier worlds had passed into the grasp of one or the other of the major powers—the Confederation or the Council. As a result, the citizens of several small nations suddenly found themselves homeless. …/… It had been that same morning that the Council ships had cut out of the sky…/… Everyone knew that Norden had been handed over to the Confederation, that none of her former inhabitants could hope to return to her plains.
The X-Factor
Back cover: At this point in Norton's Council / Confederation universe, the job of discovering and exploring new planets - that of the First-In Scouts - is pretty much a closed occupation.
Brother to Shadows
Ch.24: “You are Confederation backed—why then do you come to me? Where is your First-In ship? I am a trader, not a searcher—”
The Zero Stone
Ch.3: Was Tanth so removed from the civilized worlds that the Confederation’s authority could be flouted?
Dark Piper
Ch.1: As a functioning unit in the Confederation scheme, Beltane had been in existence about a century at the outbreak of the Four Sectors War. That war lasted ten planet years. …/… There can rise empires of stars, and confederations, and other governments. But there comes a time when such grow too large or too old, or are rent from within. …/… “The formal was [over], yes. But it tore the Confederation to bits.
Voorloper
Ch.8: No one would ever be able to penetrate [the Tangle]—not unless one of the huge hell-burst machines, which had long ago been outlawed for war on any Confederation or League world, could be found and brought her
Ch.11: There were no armies on Voor. My kind had never had to band together against a concrete and visible foe. I had never even seen any of the Patrol, the armed might of The Federation, except when once a cruiser on a routine outer fringe world flight had landed a squad at Portcity, mainly to pick up some records a disabled Survey ship had jettisoned there.
REFERENCES TO: FEDERATION:
Solar Queen + Janus + Voorloper
Star Born
Ch.2: Had they found their new world or worlds? The end of their ventures had been debated thousands of times since those documents had been made public, after the downfall of Pax and the coming into power of the Federation of Free Men.
Sargasso of Space (SOLAR QUEEN Cycle)
Ch.6: Within the Federation machinery was now completely standardized. It had to be so that repairs from one world to the next would be simplified. Ali had recited the measurements of the three types of ground vehicles in common use on the majority of Federation planets. …/… The Federation law dealing with X-Tees was severe, as Dane well knew. Parts of the code, stripped of the legal verbiage, had to be memorized at the Pool. You could defend yourself against the attack of aliens, but on no provocation, except in defence of his life, could a Trader use a blaster or other weapon against an X-Tee.
Redline the Stars
Ch.6: Few worlds indeed among those first settled, before the advent of the Federation’s stringent pest control regulations, had been fortunate enough to escape a visit from the tough, incredibly adaptable rat, and where that colonizing species came it generally stayed.
Ch14: Specie or specie credit was always the preferred method of payment on any Federation planet, and the merchant was going to attempt to secure as much as he could.
Judgment on Janus
Ch17: You know the First Law—a world having an intelligent native population and a civilization can be given a choice: to join the Federation or warn off all contact.
Voorloper
Ch.8: No one would ever be able to penetrate [the Tangle]—not unless one of the huge hell-burst machines, which had long ago been outlawed for war on any Confederation or League world, could be found and brought her
Ch.11: There were no armies on Voor. My kind had never had to band together against a concrete and visible foe. I had never even seen any of the Patrol, the armed might of The Federation, except when once a cruiser on a routine outer fringe world flight had landed a squad at Portcity, mainly to pick up some records a disabled Survey ship had jettisoned there.
REFERENCES TO: “CONFEDERATION” AND “FEDERATION” :
Only VOORLOPER uses both terms in the same novel.
REFERENCES TO: COMBINE / COMPANIES / (LEAGUE OF) FREE TRADERS (as a Trade / Political union:)
Sioux Spaceman + Forerunner + Moonsinger + Voorloper
Solar Queen + Moonsinger + Zero Stones
The ‘League’ mentioned in Moonsinger cycle appears to refer to the ‘League of Free Traders,’ as a trade or political organization.
Sargasso of Space I-S = Inter-Solar (Solar Queen)
Ch1. The Companies had regular runs from one system to another. Their employees were always sure of a steady berth. They had the cream of Trade - Inter-Solar, The Combine, Deneb-Galactic, Falworth-Ignesti- …/…The Combine was big, big enough to offer a challenge to Inter-Solar these past two years. They had copped a Federation mail contract from under I-S’s nose and pounded through at least one monopolistic concession on an inner system’s route.
Moon of Three Rings (Moonsinger)
Ch.1: Those who do venture ever into the unknown—the First-in Scouts of Survey, the explorers, and not the least, the Free Traders who pluck a living from the fringes of the galaxy—to these it is a commonplace thing to discover that the legends and fantasies of one planet may be lightsome or grim truth on another world. For each new planet-fall brings its own mysteries and discoveries. Which is perhaps too much of a pseudo-philosophic beginning for this account—save I know of no better, not being used to making more than trade reports for that repository of some very strange facts—the League of Free Traders. When a man tries to deal with the unbelievable, he finds it a fumbling business, in need of some introduction.
Ch.2: Usually Free Traders and Combine men do not mix. There was too much trouble in the past history we share, though nowadays things are better policed than they used to be. The League has a weighty hand and the Combine leaders no longer try to elbow out a Trader who can call upon such support. In the old days a one-ship Trader had no hope of fighting back.
Exiles of the Stars
Ch.1: And while a Free Trader may make an unpaying voyage once, a second such can put the ship in debt to the League. …/… the Lydis, being a Free Trader, could be trusted. For such was the Traders’ reputation that all knew, once under contract, we held by our word. To void such a bond was unthinkable. The few, very few times it had happened, the League itself had meted out such punishment as we did not care to remember.
Uncharted Stars
Ch4: Nowadays, since the Free Men have had their own confederation, combines can’t pull such tricks.
The Sioux Spaceman
Ch.1: Kade thought about the Styor as he sorted gear in his quarters, trying to be objective, not influenced by his personal dislike for the aliens. …/… The Styor had built their star empire long ago. Now it was beginning to crack a little at the seams. However, they still had galactic armadas able to reduce an enemy planet to a cinder, and they dominated two-thirds of the inhabited and inhabitable worlds. So far their might could not be challenged by the League. Thus there was an uneasy truce, the Policy, and trade.
Traders went where the Patrol of the League could not diplomatically venture. In the beginning of Terran galactic expansion some Styor lords had attempted to profit by that fact. Traders had died in slave pens, been killed in other various unpleasant ways. But the response of the Service had been swift and effective. Trade with the offending lord, planet or system had been cut off. And the Styor found themselves without luxuries and products which had become necessities.
Forerunner
Ch.7: “After all, it would be to their advantage to help a Histor-Techneer of the League. If they feared that we were such as to steal ancient treasure, they had our bonds and the assurance of the League itself that we were nothing of the kind.” “This League of yours,” Simsa had given Zass a full half of her share of cake, having heard no hunting calls from the two who had taken to the sky overhead—“where is its city?” “City? There is no one city. The League is a union of worlds, many worlds, like your union of Guild Masters in Kuxortal.”
Ch.12: My brother was no common man and the League and the Patrol keep their watch on all of us, especially when we come to hunt out Forerunner remains—or things X-Arth. …/… “There is one world in our League where all such finds are gathered to be studied. The race who live there—who are so long-lived a species that to them our oldest known are but infants—study these finds, try to learn.
Flight to Yiktor (Moonsinger)
Ch.4: Beyond was a small Patrol skimmer, a messenger vessel which had landed only two days earlier with information for the local League council. …/… Yiktor is no major base, even now when the League plays more a role in her current history.
Voorloper
Ch.1: Colonists are a tough lot and people who are crowded off one of the League’s Chain Worlds do not have much choice, after all. There were two whole years after the Grove strike when there was no trouble at all. …/…
Then there was history—of the League, and of several different worlds. Later I began to see what they did have in common—Astra, and Arzor, and Kerdam, Slotgoth—they had all begun as Ag worlds—just like Voor. Only it turned out later that they had a lot of Forerunner remains on them—and some queer things had happened there as a result.
Ch.7: Voor had been the First-In Scout who had mapped this planet for the League and because he had been close to retirement, on his last out-range of exploration, it had been given his name.
Ch.8: No one would ever be able to penetrate [the Tangle]—not unless one of the huge hell-burst machines, which had long ago been outlawed for war on any Confederation or League world, could be found and brought her
REFERENCES TO: FIRST-IN SCOUT
Android + Janus + X-Factor + Voorloper
FIRST-IN SCOUT Android + Janus + X-Factor + Voorloper
Android at Arms
Ch.3: why would Naul or Inyanga be stored at all unless they were both within easy cruising distance? Only a First-In Scout or a Patrol cruiser carried tapes on long voyages.
Storm over Warlock
Ch.7: Lorry was the First-In Scout who charted Warlock.
Judgment on Janus
Ch16+17. “I am Pate Sissions—First-In Scout of Survey. …/… “But if Pate Sissions was the First-In Scout of Survey, then he must have landed here—” “About a hundred and twenty planet years ago?” Torry nodded. “Yes.”
The X-Factor
Back cover: At this point in Norton's Council / Confederation universe, the job of discovering and exploring new planets - that of the First-In Scouts - is pretty much a closed occupation.
Voorloper
Ch.7: Voor had been the First-In Scout who had mapped this planet for the League and because he had been close to retirement, on his last out-range of exploration, it had been given his name.
REFERENCES TO: JACKS & GUILD OF THIEVES / THIEVES' GUILD
Solar Queen + Forerunner + X-Factor + Brother + Zero Stones + Moonsingers
Postmarked for the Stars / Redline for the Stars (Solar Queen)
Ch8: “There’s nothing here to attract any poachers, jacks, or smugglers-or is there?”
Android at Arms
Ch.4: Normally the Jacks were the “peasants” of the crime confederation. They raided frontier worlds, selling the best of their loot to Guild fences. Now and then they were used by some Veep of the Guild for a project in which he needed easily discarded help.
Ordeal in Otherwhere / Forerunner Foray (Forerunner)
There might still be time to summon the Patrol to handle the Jacks and prove to the Wyverns that all off-worlders were not alike.
Now [Waystar] was a meeting place for Jacks, those outlaws who raided sparsely settled planets and installations, and for the Guildmen, who bought the loot from such raids, or hired Jacks at times to carry out some ship plan of their own.
X-Factor
Saw party of three coming in—watched them from town lookout. The High One believes them to be Jacks.
Brother to Shadows
There are rumors of Jacks operating in the Alaban system.
Uncharted Stars (Zero Stones)
There was no use searching the wreckage. It was very plain that the raiders had found what they came for. But the wanton smashing was something I did not understand—unless Jacks were a different breed of thief from the calmly efficient Guild.
Exiles of the Stars (Moonsingers)
The Thieves’ Guild was powerful, as everyone knew. But they did not operate on the far rim of the galaxy. Theirs was not the speculation of possible gains from raiding on frontier planets. Those small pickings were left to the jacks. The Guild planned bigger deals based on inner planets where wealth gathered, drawn in from those speculative ventures on the worlds the jacks plundered. If jacks had dealings with the Guild it was only when they fenced their take with the more powerful criminals. But they were very small operators compared with the members of that spider web which was, on some worlds, more powerful than the law. The Guild literally owned planets.
X-Factor
Fur-brothers = sentient animal, companions of Forerunners.
Zacathan + human, exploring Xcothal Forerunner city on planet Mimir, ambushed by Jacks who want to loot their find.
Star Rangers: 8050 A.D.
So many unrealistic assumptions; completely incompatible with the other stories.
1. Why would they keep sending ships if none ever returned?
2. Colonization #s could not ever be large enough to drain a planet of billions (as if the stay-behinds would stop breeding …)
3. Why would colonization cause the stay-behinds to become primitive jungle dwellers?
4. a roll call as had not sounded in that chamber for four thousand years or more.
Star Guard ended ca. 4000 A.D.
Starfire left on her last trip 8050 A.D. and crashed on Earth where they find only abandoned cities and a few primitive nomadic tribes. They find the Hall of Leave-Taking where– according to legend - everyone who left Earth received their last instructions before take-off. Because no one ever returned, Earthy was drained of its adventurous people until only ‘unfit’ were left At the end the remaining humans and X-tees leave to ‘live in the wild’ to’ repopulate’ Earth.
This system is far off our maps—very far removed from all the benefits of our civilization!” The benefits of Central Control civilization, yes. Kartr blinked as that struck home. His own planet, Ylene, had been burnt off five years ago—during the Two-Sector Rebellion.
We fly here and there in ships which fall to pieces under us because there are no longer those with the knowledge and skill to repair them properly.
“Deneb, Sirius, Rigel, Capella, Procyon.” He did not realize it, but his voice was rising to a shout as if he were calling a roll—calling such a roll as had not sounded in that chamber for four thousand years or more. “Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, Pollux—” “Terra of Sol—man’s beginning!”
the Hall of Leave-Taking. That was just a legend—”
“Was it?” asked Kartr. “But legends are not always fables.”
“And out there”—Dalgre pointed toward the doorway without turning his head from the dais—“is the Field of Flight!”
the waiting ships and blasted off into the unknown—never to return.
How long had it gone on, that gathering, that leave-taking? With no return. Long enough to drain Terra’s veins of life—until only those were left who were temperamentally unfitted to try for the stars? Was that the answer to the riddle of this half-and-half world?
“No return—” Rolth had picked that out of his thoughts somehow. “No return. So the cities died and even the memory of why this exists is gone. Terra!”
A long abandoned technological civilization on a green planet Earth with only nomadic primitive tribes, merely 4000 years after Star Guards = completely incompatible with other books that have Earth as the center of the Confederation planets until the 2-sector war.
Either: Star guard + star rangers are an independent ‘Central Control’ series;
Or: Star Guard fits, but Star Rangers does not.
Besides Star Guards & Star Rangers, Central Control is also in Council/Federation books:
Android at Arms (Ch.2)
Brother to Shadows (Ch.6+14+25)
Ordeal in Otherwhere (Ch.1) = Forerunner #2
Beast Master: a deadly blue, radioactive cinder.
Recreated on this website in case this link ever fails.
Reformatted and edited for this site by Jay Watts ~ Jan. 2019
