Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Planet Savers

It felt like time for another re-read of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels - or at least some of them. This desire to re-read the Darkover novels Is a craving that grabs onto me every once in a while. I grew up reading this series. I wrote endless fanfic that no one else has ever seen based on these books. They inspired me.

I don't remember which was the first Darkover book that I read. It was probably either The Bloody Sun, or Star of Danger, or maybe The Planet Savers. Of course, some are more close to me than others - the Free Amazon trilogy and The Forbidden Tower are probably the ones that are my favourites.

This time I decided to skip the pre-Contact novels (except for Darkover Landfall, of course) and just do the ones that deal with Darkover in its various stages of relationship with the Terran Empire. After reading the first couple of books, I began to notice that even in some of the earliest books, gender roles, assumptions and politics were major issues, and thus was formed my specific focus for this re-reading - gender and sexuality. The order in which I re-read the novels was based on internal chronology, but I'll be making my comments based on publication order.

The Planet Savers (pub. 1958, repub. 1962) was the very first of the Darkover novels written, but it is set relatively late in the post-recontact sequence. It introduces many of the standard elements of Darkovan life - from the presence of non-human sentient life (in this case, the trailmen) to the legendary status of the Hasturs (in the person of the young Regis Hastur). There's a "free Amazon," Kyra, Jason Allison, a Terran raised on Darkover among the trailmen (especially in the books written early on, MZB often includes one or more of these transcultural people - Darkovan-born Terrans, Darkovans raised partly on Earth), Rafe Scott (a name we will hear again) and assorted other characters, both Terran and Darkovan.

What brings them together is a threatened outbreak of the 48-year fever (something MZB seems to have dropped later on) - a disease common and relatively minor among trailmen, which breaks out into the human population every 48 years, decimating them. As we are told in the largely expository first chapter, “We Terrans have a Trade compact on Darkover for a hundred and fifty-two years. The first outbreak of this 48-year fever killed all but a dozen men out of three hundred. The Darkovans were worse off than we were. The last outbreak wasn't as bad, but it was bad enough, I've heard. It had an eighty-seven percent mortality— for humans, that is. I understand the Trailmen don't die of it.”

In an attempt to stave off the next outbreak, due in five months, the Hasturs have asked the Terrans for help in finding a cure for the fever, on return for training Terran telepaths in their matrix sciences. Together, the Terrans and Darkovans have decided to mount an expedition into the territory of the trailmen, hoping to persuade them to provide blood samples that will help the Terrans synthesise a vaccine.

Unfortunately, the best person on paper to lead the expedition - Dr. Jason (Jay) Allison, displays all the signs of being a latent multiple personality. As a child, Jason was lost in the Hellers when the plane he and his father were in crashed. His father died but he was taken in by trailmen and raised among them until he was 15, when they brought him out of the Hellers to return to his own kind. Jason worked as a mountain guide for some years, then began to study medicine. At some point, the open, gregarious, risk-taking Jason began to metamorphise into Jay, a rigid, logical, scientist who no longer remembered his life among the trailmen. Persuaded that, as the only human known to have lived among the trailmen, and the only human to have survived the fever, his repressed memories are vital to the mission, Jay agrees to undergo treatment to bring out his younger self so Jason can lead the expedition.

There are difficulties of course - the Hellers are hard to traverse, they are attacked by a band of female trailmen living outside of the Nests, and there is reluctance on the part of the leader of the Nest Jason was raised in to allow volunteers among his people to risk their lives in the lowlands for the sake of humans. But Jason and Regis together persuade him, and everything ends well - for Regis, as a telepath, has figured out Jason's secret, that he is a repressed fragment of Jay Allison's personality, and he has the skill to integrate the two fragments into one person in balance.

In this, the earliest of the Darkovan novels, we see little of the exploration of gender roles and sexuality that will become so significant a focus in later novels. Indeed, there is only one woman in the main cast of characters, and while she's independent and competent and plucky and assures Jason that she's trained as a free Amazon not to stir up trouble in a team that's all-male except for her, there is sone element of competition for her between Jason and Rafe. And of course she ends up as the hero's ladyprize, despite her feistyness.

We also learn that among the trailmen, unattached women are not permitted in Nests. When a woman of the trailfolk becomes adult, she is exiled from her home and must not enter a Nest until some male tracks her down and claims her. Because there are more female trailfolk than male, some trailmen have multiple mates, and some trailwomen live their entire lives in the forests, unclaimed by males. Some of these aspects of Trailfolk sexual culture will be seen later to have analogues among the humans of Darkover.

Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Bloody Sun

Continuing with the great MZB re-read project, the next available novel is The Bloody Sun (pub. 1964, rewritten and repub. 1979). MZB did write a Darkover novel between The Planet Savers and The Bloody Sun - Sword of Aldones - but she later withdrew it from publication, including an extensive revision of the material in the later book, Sharra's exile. Sword of Aldones has been out of print for a very long time, and while I'd love to re-read it (having little memory of the original, which I read almost 50 years ago), it's been impossible to find. So... on to The Bloody Sun, which was itself revised from the original 1964 edition, but I've read both versions and the revision retains most of the character of the original.

In The Bloody Sun, Jeff Kerwin Jr, born on Darkover, returns to the planet of his birth to uncover the mystery of his parentage. He learns that he is the son of a former Keeper of Arilinn, Dorilys Aillard, who challenged ancient traditions about the use of laran (psi abilities) and was murdered for it. One of the traditions she challenged was the belief that a Keeper must be an asexual being, virgin in body and untouched by sexual feeling in order to keep her psychic "channels" free of energies that might make her unable to focus the power of a circle of working telepaths through her own mind and body, which is required of a Keeper. Her own background as a child of the "forbidden tower" - a community of polyamorous telepaths, including both high-born Comyn and commoners with laran - had taught her that anyone with sufficient ability, man or woman, could be a Keeper and keep their channels clear with various mental disciplines - rendering the ritual virginity of a Keeper unnecessary. When Kerwin is found to have inherited his mother's laran, he is invited to join one of the few remaining Keeper's circles, at Arilinn, where he falls afoul of all the sexual mores of the Tower community.

Keepers in Darkovan society at the time of Contact are heightened examples of the Madonna/whore split. A Keeper is a totally de-sexed being, presented as pure in mind and body, trained to have no sexual awareness or response. While a Keeper can "give back her oath" and retire from the Towers into an "honourable marriage" with one of her peers, any Keeper who becomes sexually involved outside of such a formal retreat, and especially one who continues to use her laran after asserting her sexuality is seen as a whore, a focal point of lust and depravity, a threat to society. It is interesting that it is only the Keeper - the most powerful of laran-gifted women - must live so completely constrained, either as virgin or as wife, under patriarchal control. Aside from the Keeper, other telepaths in the Towers, men and women, share sexual contact as freely as they do any other gesture of affection.

Taniquel, a powerful empath, offers comfort and healing freely to any of the other telepaths at Arilinn (we only see her interacting sexually with the men, however). When Kerwin joins the Tower circle, he is insecure, in culture shock, and finds that some of the other telepaths, Auster in particular, are hostile to him, Taniquel initiates emotional and sexual connection in an attempt to help integrate him into the community and make him feel better. He interprets this as a love affair and responds with jealousy and anger when she later offers comfort to Auster. From her reaction, and that of the other telepaths, to his slutshaming, it is clear that Tower women who are not Keepers are seen to have full sexual autonomy. Unlike the Keepers, they are free to have sex when and with whoever they choose, and Nyrissa confirms that Tower women are free to bear children by whoever they choose within the Tower community - attitudes at odds with the role of women outside of the Towers, where marriage or concubinage are the cultural norm for women, and where men control the lives, finances, fertilty and sexuality of their wives (with one strange exception, the Comyn-caste Ailliard family, where women hold political power).

We also see something of gender politics among the Terrans in The Bloody Sun, in the regulations regarding marriage between Imperial citizens and "native" women. This passage seems to sum things up:

The Empire Civil Service consists largely of single men; few Terran women care to accompany their men halfway across the Galaxy. This means that on every planet liaisons with native women, both formal and informal, are taken for granted. To avoid endless complications with various planetary governments, the Empire makes a very clear distinction. An Empire citizen may marry any woman, on any planet, by the laws of her own world and her own customs; it is a matter between the individual Terran, the woman, her family, and the laws under which she lives. The Empire has no part in it. Whether the marriage is formal or informal, temporary or permanent, or no marriage at all, is a matter for the private ethical and moral standards of the parties involved. And that man is carried as single on the Records of the Empire, making such provision for his wife as he privately chooses; although he may, if he wishes, file for citizenship for any child of the marriage, and obtain certain privileges for him.... But if he chooses to register the marriage through Terran records, or signs any Empire document speaking of any native woman on any world, legally, as his wife, she is so in fact.

It appears MZB's conceptualisation of the gender roles in the Terran Empire at this point is of a society where men do things and "their women" follow them - consistent with real life in Western society in the early 60s. While she has been able to imagine a particular subculture in which women (at least, women from the Comyn families with laran who choose the life of the Towers) are viewed as autonomous individuals with useful skills who own their bodies and their sexuality (as long as the virgin Keeper gives up hers completely), she cannot at this stage in her writing create a human society in which women are free and equal.