My life in books

Star of Danger (pub. 1965) is one of the earliest written of the Darkover books, but in terms of the internal chronology of the series, it falls well after the time of first contact. Lorill Hastur, who is well advanced in years in this novel, was a boy of 15 or so when the Terrans came to Alderan. Valdir Alton, who was a child when the Forbidden Tower was formed, is now the father of two sons, the younger of whom is 16. And the third generation of Montrays comes home to Darkover. There are inconsistencies between this early novel and many of the ones that follow, but as with The Bloody Sun and The Planet Savers, certain key elements of Darkovan history were already well formed in the author's mind when the book was written.

In Star of Danger, Wade Montray returns to Darkover with his teenage son Larry after spending more than a decade on Earth. Larry, a curious young man with a desire to explore this new world, ventures into the Trade City and makes friends with Kennard Alton, son of Valdir, cadet guardsman. But when Larry is invited to spend the summer with Kennard at Armida, disaster strikes - Larry is kidnapped by bandits who mistake him for Kennard. Feeling personally responsible for Larry's fate, and knowing that if harm comes to Larry, his father will be caught up in a major diplomatic incident, Kennard sets out to rescue him.

The rescue succeeds, but in evading pursuit, Kennard and Larry are lost and must find their way through the rugged terrain of Darkover - forests inhabited by the non-human trailmen and mountains harbouring dangerous predators - to reach safe territory. During their difficult journey, Larry's latent telepathy is awakened and he and Kennard bond more deeply - although the harmony of that bond is often threatened by cultural issues. Eventually the two find ways to work together, relying on both Kennard's psi training and Darkovan survival skills, and Larry's scientific knowledge, to survive in the wilds.

As they near the territories of the Hastur domain, they encounter a lone chieri, who takes them in, offers them hospitality, tells them of the true history of humans on Darkover, and then teleports them to safety, just in time to ward off the brewing diplomatic firestorm. Larry's father explains that his late wife - Karry's mother - had in fact been a Darkovan woman, kin to the Alderan clan, who had followed him to Earth, and that Larry's laran comes from her. There is great hope that the friendship Larry and Kennard have formed will help to improve relations between Terrans and Darkovans.

As a "boy's adventure" story with no female characters at all, there is little to comment on in terms of portrayals of gender and sexuality in this novel. One thing that does strike me, though, is the odd history of Terran knowledge of and attitudes toward the Comyn and their use of laran. All through the series (at least up to the time of the waking of Sharra at Alderan, which is still to come at this point) the Terrans are portrayed as knowing very little about these issues, and by turns disbelieving, or desperately curious, about them. Even in this story, where one of the main characters is the product of a marriage between a Terran man who spent his youth on Darkover and a Darkovan of the ruling classes and a telepath in her own right, the Terrans see Larry's invitation to Armida as a chance to learn something about the Comyn and their abilities. One would think by this time the Terrans would have more clues than they appear to. But perhaps Darkovans have been more successful at keeping quiet, even when they marry Terrans, than one would think possible.

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.

The Alton Gift, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross

During her lifetime, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels attracted a large and faithful fandom, one extensive enough that there continues to be a market for posthumous collaborations nine years after her passing. Working from notes and discussions with MZB conducted before her death, Deborah J. Ross produced a trilogy of novels set in the historical period known as the era of The Hundred Kingdoms, between the original founding of the human colony on Darkover and the rediscovery of the colony.

Prior to her death, MZB had collaborated with Adrienne Martine-Barnes to complete the story of Lew Alton and Regis Hastur, introducing a new generation of Comyn leadership in Lew’s daughter Marguerite and Regis’ nephew Mikhail, and ending the period of Terran involvement in Darkovan affairs due to the outbreak of civil war in the Terran empire. Ross has now taken over the story of modern Darkover.

In this, the first novel of a planned trilogy, Mikhail, Marguerite and their son Domenic as they deal with the consequences of the Terran withdrawal and attempt to renew Darkovan society. The major threats to Darkover as a while are a resurgence of trailman’s fever (last heard of in The Planet Savers) and serious problems with economic depression and massive relocation of refugees from outlying areas of the Domains, brought on by the lingering effects of the attempt to destroy Darkover’s natural ecology and kill of the Comyn whose psychic powers once served the planet in place of technology (detailed in The World Wreckers). Meanwhile, there’s political unrest and a challenger to the leadership of the Comyn, Marguerite and her foster daughter Alanna, both gifted with variations on the gift of foresight, are having premonitions of danger, and the populace, hungry and desperate, are nearing a state of rebellion against the Comyn who appear to be continuing to live their traditional lives of wealth and isolation while the people are driven from their lands by wildfires, bandits and soil exhaustion. And Lew and Marguerite must face the consequences of their use of the Alton gift of forced rapport in saving the remnants of the Comyn from a last ditch attempt to take over the planet just before the Terran exodus (detailed in The Traitor’s Sun).

Ross has written a serviceable novel that begins to bring to a close the story of the last major character from the Age of Rediscovery – Lew Alton – and sets the next generations firmly on their way to coping with a planet and a society almost destroyed by several generations of Terran involvement. However, my overall feeling as I read this novel was a strong sense of déjà vu. There are a great many direct references to previous incidents in both the recent and the distant history of Darkover, and just as many repetitions of themes from earlier works in the Darkover corpus. We’ve seen the heir to the Hasturs setting out on his own before. We’ve seen treacherous Comyn – a good many of them Ridenow – before. We’ve seen potential Keepers psychically neutered before. We’ve seen troubled Comyn lords seeking peace with the Christoforos before. We’ve seen a leader calling for all telepaths to come to the aid of Darkover before. And so it goes.

I’m hoping that Ross has brought all of these tropes together to build a solid platform that will take us into new situations, new arrangements of danger and opportunity, new places and approaches for Darkover and its people, a changing culture that evolves with the changing needs and circumstances of its people. Certainly there’s a hint of that in the references to Domenic’s unusual sense of the planet as a whole.

It was a pleasant read, and I’ll be reading the next books as well, and hoping for that evolution Darkover needs so badly. If I’m lucky, maybe there will be something about the most interesting loose end from Darkovan history – the secret city of women deep in the mountains in the Wall Around the World. Maybe there’s even one or two chieri still living in the heights, as well.