Andre Norton's "The Acolyte"?
How the Grand Dame of Science Fiction may have influenced Star Wars
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Will a young woman survive when her village is destroyed by an alien space fleet?
Toemeka lives with her family in an idyllic mountain village on a distant planet. The village is aware of the war that rages on their planet but the elders believe it won’t touch them. They are about to be proved wrong.
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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about the Disney+ Star Wars show “The Acolyte.” If you haven’t seen it, you may want to stop reading this article now.
Despite unnecessary online strife regarding the new Star Wars show The Acolyte, I enjoyed it. Each episode left me excited for the next one, which is all I really need from a story about laser sword-wielding space wizards.
The Acolyte also intrigues me for a quite unrelated reason. It bolsters a personal theory of mine: the space adventure novels of Andre Norton bear a significant influence on the Star Wars universe.
I’ve previously written about Andre Norton in the context of the Nebula award which carries her name. Not including books she wrote with co-authors, she published her first science fiction novel in 1952, and her last in 1993, with the bulk of her sf output falling in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s
Here’s how I suggest her fiction influenced Star Wars as a whole, and The Acolyte in particular.
George Lucas
Born in 1944, George Lucas became a teenager in 1957, the perfect time for him to discover Norton’s sf upon original publication. And the original 1977 movie involves a Nortonesque plot. A young-adult orphan (twice over, in this case) from a frontier planet, with mysterious and unexpected powers, must find his way in the galaxy.
You can discover Norton influences all over Star Wars. The default firearm is the “blaster.” Han and Chewbacca are thinly disguised versions of Norton’s Free Traders—specifically the real sketchy Free Traders who won’t turn down an illegal job that will pay the bills. The cantina is straight out of several different starport scenes in Norton novels. The Force manifests as the same sort of mystical psychic powers that fill her stories.
I can’t prove Lucas read a bunch of Norton in his youth, but the parallels are numerous, and the timing works out. Of course, many other science fiction writers used the same sort of set dressing, both before and after Norton started writing. But she had a long and influential career. By the time she finished, she had mastered these elements and made them her own.
Fast forward to present day, and The Acolyte, the story of an orphan (or two—it’s debatable) with mysterious powers, whose path leads to ruins on an uninhabited frontier planet thought to be a place of great power. And it has psychic witches.
Witches are a favorite theme for Norton. After all, she created the Witch World series, which “began as a hybrid of science fiction and sword and sorcery” very similar to what Lucas created. This character archetype also appears in Norton’s more straightforward science fiction, such as her novels Storm Over Warlock and Ordeal In Otherwhere. The witches in these books are the female members of an alien species known as the Wyverns.
Leslye Headland
Leslye Headland, creator of The Acolyte, was born in 1980 and became a teenager in 1993. Although Norton had more-or-less finished writing science fiction by this time, Headland would have been able to find her novels in the same place I discovered them—school and public libraries. The Acolyte includes many details characteristic of Norton tales, including an adorable supporting character who looks like an animal but is obviously more, the aforementioned witches, and a version (the Jedi themselves) of Norton’s Patrol, space cops who are supposed to help ordinary people but are sometimes too arrogant for their own good.
Compare and contrast these excerpts from two Norton novels and the corresponding scenes from Headland’s show:
Possession and the coven
Both the Wyverns of Warlock and the witches of Brendok organize themselves into covens and use possession to override the will and bodily control of others.
But that night Shann dreamed. No climbing of a skull-shaped mountain this time. Instead, he was again on the beach, laboring under an overwhelming compulsion, building something for an alien purpose he could not understand. And he worked as hopelessly as a beaten slave, knowing that what he made was to his own undoing. Yet he could not halt the making, because just beyond the limit of his vision there stood a dominant will which held him in bondage.
—Storm Over Warlock, from the omnibus Warlock, p. 113
Lines of Wyverns, all seated cross-legged on mats, all intent upon two in the center. Lines of Wyverns, circles of them, for the chamber was a bowl-shaped place made up of climbing ledges, circling a space.
—Ordeal In Otherwhere, from the omnibus Warlock, p. 303
Teleportation
In the two Norton novels and The Acolyte, psychic teleportation is a previously unknown and bewildering power.
"They have something else." Jagan came out of the thoughtful silence into which he had retreated. "It's a tool, a power. They travel by it." He rubbed one hand across his square chin and looked at Charis oddly as if daring her to take his words lightly. "They can vanish!"
“Vanish?" She tried to be encouraging. Every bit of information she could gain she must have.
“I saw it." His voice sank to a mumble. "She was right there—" one finger stabbed at the corner of the cabin, "and then—" He shook his head. "Just—just gone!..”
—Ordeal In Otherwhere, from the omnibus Warlock, p. 235
We already saw one example of teleportation fromThe Acolyte in the clip above.
Here’s another Norton excerpt and clip which serve as brief mirror images of one another.
“It was not just escape she wanted, it was knowledge of what was happening and why. But one could not gain that so...Then—she was there.”
—Ordeal In Otherwhere, from the omnibus Warlock, p. 303
Trapped In An Unreal World
Finally, the Wyverns and the witches share a particularly potent ability, the power to snare others in an illusion so convincing they don’t even realize it’s a dream.
The Terran had only one moment of fear and then came blackness, more absolute than the dark of any night he had ever known.
Light once more, green light with an odd shimmering quality to it. The skull-lined walls were gone; there were no walls, no building held him. Shann strode forward, and his boots sank in sand, that smooth, satin sand which had ringed the island in the cavern. But he was certain he was no longer on that island, even within that cavern, though far above him there was still a dome of roof.
The source of the green shimmer lay to his left. Somehow he found himself reluctant to turn and face it. That would commit him to action. But Shann turned.
A veil, a veil of rippling green. Material? No, rather mist or light. A veil depending from some source so far over his head that its origin was hidden in the upper gloom, a veil which was a barrier he must cross.
With every nerve protesting, Shann walked forward, unable to keep back. He flung up his arm to protect his face as he marched into that stuff. It was warm, and the gas—if gas it was—left no slick of moisture on his skin in spite of its foggy consistency. And it was no veil or curtain, for although he was already well into the murk, he saw no end to it. Blindly he trudged on, unable to sight anything but the rolling billows of green, pausing now and again to go down on one knee and pat the sand underfoot, reassured at the reality of that footing.
—Storm Over Warlock, from the omnibus Warlock, p. 138
I’m not claiming the scenes depicted here are taken directly from Norton’s work. They obviously aren’t. Nor am I criticizing either Headland or Lucas for taking ideas from Norton and incorporating them into Star Wars. On the contrary, I admire it.
Known as the Grand Dame of Science Fiction, Norton inspired generations of young creators—including me. Perhaps her influence happened directly, as I suggest in this article. Perhaps it happened indirectly, when we read novels, or watched movies, by earlier creators who were themselves influenced by Norton. Either way, I think her influence should be acknowledged and celebrated.
Thank you, Ms. Norton!
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Added quotation marks to "The Acolyte" in spoiler alert.
Capitalized "Science Fiction" in the subtitle.