There have been few days in my life where sadness overwhelmed me. March 17, 2005 was one of those rare days. I had long been expecting it but when the moment came and a close friend told me that Andre Norton was gone, I just wanted to rip everything off the Web and put up Andre Norton memorials. She was the first science fiction and fantasy author to stir real passion in my heart as a reader. Her stories, often said to be written for young adults, touched me when I was a young teenager but I could not stop reading them when I reached my twenties and thirties. Her craft was that good, that I could return to the same stories over and over again.
