Key out of Time

Time Traders/Ross Murdock #4

by Andre Norton

Time Agents Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe, aided by a beautiful Polynesian girl and her team of telepathic dolphins, probe the mystery of the sea-planet men have named Hawaika. Its cities and civilizations have vanished, but our agents are snatched back through a Time Gate and marooned in the midst of the struggle for power that must have destroyed the planet.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Time Travel, Science Fiction Fantasy, Adventure, Speculative Fiction

188 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 1963

About the author

Andre Norton, born Alice Mary Norton, was a pioneering American author of science fiction and fantasy, widely regarded as the Grande Dame of those genres. She also wrote historical and contemporary fiction, publishing under the pen names Andre Alice Norton, Andrew North, and Allen Weston. She launched her career in 1934 with The Prince Commands, adopting the name “Andre” to appeal to a male readership. After working for the Cleveland Library System and the Library of Congress, she began publishing science fiction under “Andrew North” and fantasy under her own name. She became a full-time writer in 1958 and was known for her prolific output, including Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. and Witch World, the latter spawning a long-running series and shared universe. Norton was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America and authored Quag Keep, the first novel based on the Dungeons & Dragons game. She influenced generations of writers, including Lois McMaster Bujold and Mercedes Lackey. Among her many honors were being the first woman named Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master. In her later years, she established the High Hallack Library to support research in genre fiction. Her legacy continues with the Andre Norton Award for young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Reviews

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third of the Time Traders series (although I have seen references to Galactic Derelict which I haven't been able to locate ... and that actually may be the second in the series). (Update - I found Galactic Derelict for the Kindle and it was good and explains Ross's and Ashe's desire to make this expedition count after a previous mission they consider failed.)

This one I remember as being a continual favorite in my high school years and it is a pleasure to find that I am enjoying it again, having forgotten just enough to make the story seem fairly new.

Investigating the mysteriously abandoned Hawaika, Ross Murdoch and his team are inadvertently swept through the underwater time gate they set up during a storm, only to find it destroyed behind them. Plunged into a past with two warring societies, they must not only make sense of what is going on but also find a way to help them understand that they are being influenced by the evil aliens who have been encountered so many times before. Great fun, especially with the addition of this being a world with witches and adding in the two Earth dolphin members of the team ...

[Jenne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my god this was boring. It was like a kid playing with action figures. "ok this guy and this guy are on the palm tree planet! And Aqua Girl is here! Splash! With her dolphin friends! And they go back in time! Zoom! And the bad guys take them prisoner! But then he fights the one bad guy and they like him! And then BWOMM the aliens come! And they fight the aliens and the aliens all die!!"

[B. Zedan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty meh about dolphins, but they do a nice job of being the telepath-link animals used in this entry of Norton's galaxy-colonising, timetravelly, trying not to be noticed by angry aliens we stole tech from sorta series.

Also, there are witches and whoopsie-doo we done went back in time, shit about the history just tryin' to survive.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trapped when the time portal breaks, Ross and Murdoch help a world fight the blue aliens.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

so... The third of the Time Traders series which would have been good to know, but this era book did not give any hints on the cover. Consequently, the beginning starts with a fair bit of exposition about the previous experiences of 'time travellers' Ross and Ashe. Being a later novel in the series also I suspect, means that Norton had previously done the world building and character development and so didn't invest much in it here. As a consequence, Ross was the most developed character but still a bit basic. Ashe was two dimensional at best.

Our time travellers have arrived on a colony ship to a planet the colonists are calling Hawaika. This rather idyllic ocean/island world was marked on maps from a previous book as being inhabited but is now deserted. Ross Murdoch and Ashe have only a few days until the ship leaves to set up time probes and find out more about the civilisation that used to live there.

A lot of this exploration is in the ocean, which I loved. I covet the underwater breathing gear that Norton has invented for our time travellers so much...

Well, the probe returns ambiguous results leading to a 'time gate' being set up. Unexpected interference washes Ross, Ashe a woman colonist and a couple of helper dolphins through the gate which is smashed in the process, leaving them marooned back in time.

Here they must contend with warring societies, both low tech and high tech (or is it magic?).
They must with the evil aliens who they (but not I) know from previous adventures.

It is a fun adventure, SFF of it's time, I loved the oceanic connection and for lovers of Andre Norton's work we have a little of the mysticism and witchery that is common in her writing, but with a science explanation.

[Cory Schramel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up on a whim at a thrift store as I was intrigued about telepathic dolphins and time traveling. Overall the book keeps a nice pace but seems to lack any big arc that would make it a great book. Some parts were hard to follow but I was still engaged to find out more about the story. Was a decent read for classic Sci-Fi.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good classic Science fiction

She rarely fails to provide an Interesting story line, with the usual mix of archaic technology mixing with the futuristic technology. Worth reading!

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4 stars

Now this is what I'm talking about! After two successive duds in Galactic Derelict and The Defiant Agents, Andre Norton is back on form. Key Out of Time, the fourth book in the Time Traders series includes actual time travel this time! Wooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

While it was more sensical, I suppose, than its predecessor, there is still a bit of what I am calling "wacko science" in Key Out of Time. (I think it's left over from the The Defiant Agents which infamously had the ooga-booga-making machine.) There are intelligent dolphins in this book... and humans talk to them... so it's a bit strange. Personally, the smart dolphins remind me of only one thing - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but that obviously couldn't have been Norton’s inspiration because Hitchhiker's was published over ten years after Key Out of Time. Given that Norton's series is based around time travel, this is all truly ironic.

Back to the dolphins. I should also mention that they communicate with the humans via brain... stuff. Perhaps not completely realistic. But Norton never seems to be going for any kind of hard science fiction with this series anyway. So with the telepathic dolphins from this water planet, they help these people fight off the alien guys from the previous books and end up stuck in the past (due to the aforementioned time travel) with some magic ladies... or are they?

I was excited when I saw that this new planet our characters were visiting seemed to be based on Hawaii and was populated by Polynesian-esque peoples. I live in New Zealand (the largest country in Polynesia) so it is always awesome to see any kind of representation of our country's indigenous heritage. I was a bit disappointed, however, when Murdock and co. left them to do the timey whimey stuff. But it is timey whimey stuff after all, so I wasn't that bummed.

The time travel did bring about this awesome quote from Ross Murdock:

" 'And this is so--behold!'
It was the oldest trick in the world, perhaps on any planet. But because it was so old maybe it had been forgotten by the aliens. For, as Ross pointed, those heads did turn for an instant."

Did he really...? Yes, he actually tried the "what's that?!" tactic on these hyper-intelligent aliens. It still makes me chuckle. I mean, Star Trek: Enterprise's Lieutenant Reed said it best: "Well, it may be an old trick where we come from, but maybe they haven't heard of it here."

So I am closing this review optimistic once again about the future of the Time Traders series. Maybe books two and three were just outliers and on the whole the series is just as good as I had hoped it would be after finishing book one.

[astaliegurec · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to rate Andre Norton's "Key Out of Time" at a Not Very Good 2 stars out of 5. I'm assuming that since this is the 4th book in her Time Traders series, you've already read the first three and are familiar with her writing. For the most part, the writing here is similar, though Ross is more angry, and there are actual mis-steps in the writing (a gun that miraculously appears and then disappears again, ocean dolphins swimming up a river). Slightly bigger problems than that exist in the how and why of things: 1) somehow, at the start, they're sucked through a time gate (including part of the gate, itself) and that's not really explained, and 2) the "Baldies" are attacking a planet, yet they do it at a tactical level instead of either just ignoring or dropping an asteroid on the Bronze Age natives. What I thought would be the biggest problem with the book is that Norton folds magic into this 4th book of the series even though it's all been high-tech (for the 50s and 60s anyway) science fiction until now. I'm not happy with that. But, I could have kept a 3 star rating with it since Norton has a whole series (Witch World) in a similar vein. But, the issue that pushed my rating over the edge into Not Very Good territory is that the ending is just not satisfying and is incomplete (I can't explain that since it would be a spoiler). This is especially bad since this book is the last of the pure Norton "Time Traders" books. The next one ("Firehand") is a shared writing one and didn't come out until 1994 ("Key Out of Time" was written in 1963). So, 2 stars it is.

The books in Andre Norton's "Time Trader" series are:

1 and 2: Time Traders: The Time Traders & Galactic Derelict
3: The Defiant Agents
4: Key Out of Time

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Time Traders set down on a planet that hosted a civilization that's extinct. The team sets up a time machine to investigate and an unexpected storm throws them into the past. They found the planet being manipulated by the Baldies, the race that left wrecks on planet Earth, that the US and Russia use to develop and perfect star travel. A combination of the Time Traders and the remainders of a mystic race come together to expel the Baldies using some magical force and brains. I think Norton has done this better in some of her other books, like the Warlock books.

A decent read.

[Wilson E. Stevens Sr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The basic plot description is good enough with out me adding any thing to it. Read it when it first came out as I am a big fan of Andre Norton, and purchased and read everything that she wrote when it came out. Now that they are in eBook format, I am reading them again. Purchased from Amazon as part of twelve books for $1.99. Well worth the money.

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't the best scifi I've ever read, but it's also far from the worst. Keeping in mind that it was written a long time ago, I rather liked the author's ideas of what kind of technology we might have discovered by the 1990s. Which of course we still haven't figured out... The characters were surprisingly multicultural given when it was written, too.

[Suzanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I downloaded a few free Kindle books by Andre Norton, and while I enjoyed the first Time Traders book as a quick read, I found this one tedious. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for man-of-action SF right now.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time Traders transitions to Witch World...

A couple of the original time traders go to a new Hawaii with new friends and modified Dolphins and end up attempting to alter the past against old foes with new and mysterious witchey friends.

[Angela L Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old. Classic

Reminds of the fifties when I first started to read science fiction. Still a very good read for young people. Well written with a strong plot and development of characters.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, Great series. Each book takes place in a completely different time and planet. She also introduces new cultures and characters while keeping a few for continuity.

[Jeff R Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping

Once again, I have been unable to put this book down when I should be sleeping!
Norton's sense for story telling is superb.

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is technically the 4th book in the Time Traders series and the last solely written by Andre. Why do I say technically? The 3rd book written, The Defiant Agents, is set in the Time Traders universe, but doesn’t feature Ross Murdock, and the series is sometimes called the Ross Murdock series. But this book puts Ross front and centre again. There are another 3 books co-authored with other people in the series and written 30+ years after this book. Not sure what’s going to happen in those books. The ending of this book is pretty final.

The story is a planetary adventure invoking Clarke’s Law or a portal fantasy with overtones of technology, depending on your point of view. The Foanna are more fantasy than tech, but the Baldies are more tech than fantasy. The Time Portal is tech, but the telepathic dolphins are fantasy.

The first chapter is basically a recap of the first 3 books to provide context to the main characters and a link to the series. It’s not overbearing or over-detailed. If you hadn’t read the other books it’s useful, and if you have, like me, it’s not tedious repetition. There are some other very small monologues scattered through out the book referring to events in previous books. Again these are to provide context to the current story, without being onerous to readers of those. This book can be read standalone, or in sequence.

The story is reasonably complicated with 4 sets of competing powers into which Ross and his compatriots are dropped, to sink or swim (physically and metaphorically). Some of the plot elements resolve themselves a little too conveniently, but others are subtly foreshadowed. On balance the potting doesn’t feel like a magic wand is being waved every 2 pages.

The book doesn’t feel dated as the majority of story takes place in a pseudo-renaissance society. There’s a couple of scenes in the flight deck of the Baldies space-ship that feel a little too Apollo command module, but it’s only a couple of minor scenes

The dialogue has an unusual cadence. I think this is deliberate to separate it from standard English as Ross is meant to be speaking the local lingo having had it translated and then learnt through hypnosis. Learning the local language gets significant time devoted to it rather than simply glossing over that the all aliens speak perfect English as happens in so much SF.

As with every Andre Norton book I’ve read, it’s not high brow literature, but it’s not illiterate like so much fiction published now. It’s solid imaginative entertainment.

[Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Early Bird Books Deal | This was less enjoyable than the rest, for reasons of both character and plot. | I cannot for the life of me figure out why Norton decided to make Ross such a dick in this book. He made all his decisions based on random, unsupported prejudices or the jealousy those prejudices sparked in him, and came off pretty misogynistic, too. Add the breakdown in logic--nice that the Time Agents could communicate so completely and make complicated plans after spending part of one day figuring out the 'bare rudiments' of the language--and the leap into unexplained phenomena, and it just wasn't much fun to read. Since this is now four books in a row without the author making even the slightest attempt to explain the antagonists' motives, background, or anything else about them, the series now comes across as nothing more than writing exercises, meant to provide settings for "alien" versions of various earth cultures.

[blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Struggled through this one and I'm thinking because it's book #4 in the series. I often praise books from this paperback era for their ability to tell epic stories where you can pick up any of the books at random—Zelazny's "Amber" is a master class in this—but this one relied heavily on previous entries. Partly for context—I was 20 pages out from the end of the book when a thing is mentioned that never came up before, and it's just a word, not a single clue as to what it is—but more significantly for dramatic impact.

I guess by book #4, you're supposed to get how tired they are, how this all fits in to their overarching quest, etc., and since I didn't, it didn't at all feel like a self-contained unit, but chapters in the middle of another book.

I might rescore it if I go back and read the others.

[Tom Britz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andre Norton is hands down a top notch writer of 1950 -60's science fiction. Key out of Time finishes off her original Time Trader series. She would later return to it 31 years later with a couple of different co-authors for three more.
This installment deals with Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe as they explore a Hawaiian like planet they have found using the alien technology that they found in the ancient crashed spaceship. Here they come upon what looks like a tribal war, but upon looking further they discover the "Baldies", the ancient alien race that crashed in ancient times on Earth, are kindling this war.

[Kris Sellgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This science fiction novel is an extension of Norton’s Time Trader series. Ross Murdock, his partner Gordon Ashe, and a Polynesian woman who telepathically communicates with a pair of intelligent dolphins travel to the past of a planet that humans plan to settle. The Baldies, aliens who have been interfering with human history in many times and places, must be defeated in the past to keep the human colony viable. Another great science fiction novel from Andre Norton, with the telepathic connection between human and animal that is so often found in her writing. Her collaborator makes an effort to keep Norton’s style. I really enjoyed this.

[Debbie J · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There was a shading of rose in the pearl arch of sky, deepening at the horizon meeting of sea and air in a rainbow tint of cloud. The lazy swells of the ocean held the same soft color, darkened with crimson veins where spirals of weed drifted. A rose world bathed in soft sunlight, knowing only gentle winds, peace, and--sloth."

Beautiful writing for what’s basically a standard science fiction story about adventures on an alien planet.

Andre Norton’s previous Time Traders novel involved Native Americans trained to work as amateur astronauts. This time it's civilians of Samoan and Hawaiian descent. I continue to admire Norton for envisioning space and time exploration as including POC, given that non-White cultures were some of Earth’s earliest. Who knows: maybe their ancestors arrived here from parts non-terrestrial?

In one key scene, veteran time trader Ross Murdock deploys what resembles the phaser gun later used on the Star Trek TV series. He even decides whether to set it to kill or stun. Let’s see: Key Out of Time, published 1963. Star Trek, debuted 1966. Hmm.

Ultimately, Ross and his mentor Gordon Ashe find themselves stuck in yet another perilous time and place. They must ensure their new home’s survival because at the moment they have no way to get back to Earth. I’m eager to read the next book and learn their fate.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining fantasy reading 📚

Another will written Sci-Fi fantasy thriller novella in the Time Traders Series. The characters are interesting and will developed. The story line is complicated fast moving with lots of twist and turns leading to the conclusion. I would recommend this series to anyone who reads fantasy. Enjoy reading 🔰2021 👝😉

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

With its age, this reads today as a young adult novel. Pretty decent story with an imaginative world setting and attempt to mix science and sorcery. Norton describes well and doesn't lose herself in the specifics of technology. I do take complaint with the amazing linguistic abilities of her characters.

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good entry into an old series ('63) with telepathic dolphins, a Polynesian girl, witch-like creatures and baldies. Oh, and two time traders, Ross & Gordon. Lots of fun with a good imagination at work. Ends with a slight cliff hanger. Recommended to sci-fi fans.

[William]

Andre Norton was my favorite author back in the 70s. Has it really been that long?
Ross and his team are investigating some ruins when they get pulled into the past and must join an ancient battle against an enemy of the future.

[Mike Sternad · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Andre Norton book in 60 years

Andre Norton made me a believer in science fiction and the power to broaden my worldview. Enough twists in the plot line to keep me wanting more, and wonderful imagery to make me a part of that place.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

The continuing adventures of Ross Murdoch and Gordon Ashe. A new planet, and the same old Villans, The story goes along at a good pace and is fresh and entertaining. For lovers of early SF and Andre Norton it is well worth the read.

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this almost 35 years after the last time I was surprised that this book strands Ross back in time! Now that is what I call good writing.