So far as I know, Andre Norton was the first science fiction (or fantasy) author to delve into what is known as
portal fiction with a title based on "star" and "gate". Her 1958 novel
Star Gate postulates that a race of aliens elevated a group of humans to medieval-style civilization and then left them behind. The premise of Andre's
Star Gate was that it allowed people to pass through a portal to an alternate reality (an alternate version of the world Gorth).
Andre revisited the portal theme in 1963's
Witch World, and she experimented with different types of gates as she wrote more stories in the ensuing decades.
Canadian author Pauline Gedge wrote an award-winning book in 1982 called
Stargate. Her story is about ancient gods or demigods who have fallen into corruption. The gates they had used to travel through the cosmos are sealed. The story is about a war between these gods and their creator (I have not read the book, so I may have summarized it incorrectly).
Some people on the Internet believe that the 1994 Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich movie
Stargate was based on Gedge's book; however, Omar Zuhdi submitted a manuscript titled "Egyptscape" to MGM in 1984. It described events and characters very similar to those in the movie. After
Stargate was released Zuhdi sued MGM and Devlin/Emmerich for plagiarism. The case was settled in his favor.
He eventually published a book based on that story in 2013.
There was a novelization based on the movie. I'm not sure that counts for much with most fans. But, of course, MGM launched the popular and successful TV franchise around
Stargate SG-1, which spun off
Stargate: Atlantis and
Stargate: Universe. There was also the Web series
Stargate: Origins, which eventually was concatenated into a movie.
I think Amazon now owns the Stargate franchise since it acquired MGM.
Star Gate page at Andre-Norton.Com
https://andre-norton.com/works-of-a-mast...-star-gate
Pauline Gedge's official page about her
Stargate novel
https://paulinegedge.com/novels/stargate/
1996 news story about Omar Zuhdi lawsuit
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/199...348077007/
CNN Story: Amazon closes MGM acquisition (March 2022)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/17/media/ama...index.html
If anyone knows of any other books or movies about "star gates" similar to those above, I'd be interested in hearing about them. I know that the sub-genre of
portal fiction is huge. And it's probably spawned a few sub-sub-genres of its own by now. So I'm not looking for an exhaustive list of portal fiction stories, but feel free to mention anything you think is interesting.