Sargasso of Space

Sargasso of Space is a science fiction novel by the American writer Andre Norton, published in 1955 under the name Andrew North in an edition of four thousand copies from Gnome Press.

The book is a working story about a small ship's crew, which was unusual for its period: the Solar Queen is an interstellar tramp freighter, the crew's fortunes depend on a single successful bid, and Norton is precise about the hierarchy of a trading vessel, the apprentices' jobs and the relations between a captain and the people who sail with him. Her crew is also one of the more convincing small-ship casts of the decade, made up of a captain with a temper, a doctor, an engineer and two apprentices who have just discovered how little their training covers. Limbo turns out to have been surveyed badly, and the planet's former owners left things behind, which is where the adventure begins and where the novel's title earns itself. It began a series about the same ship and crew that Norton continued over four decades, with Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet, Postmarked the Stars and later collaborations with other writers, and it is one of the books that established her as a leading writer of the period's space adventure.