Darkover Landfall

Darkover (Publication Order) #7

by Marion Zimmer Bradley, George Barr (Cover Art)

Book by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Paranormal, Adventure

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1972

About the author

Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series, often with a feminist outlook.

Bradley's first published novel-length work was Falcons of Narabedla, first published in the May 1957 issue of Other Worlds. When she was a child, Bradley stated that she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy authors such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, and Leigh Brackett, especially when they wrote about "the glint of strange suns on worlds that never were and never would be." Her first novel and much of her subsequent work show their influence strongly.

Early in her career, writing as Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, Marion Zimmer Bradley produced several works outside the speculative fiction genre, including some gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels. For example, I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, they were considered pornographic when published, and for a long time she refused to disclose the titles she wrote under these pseudonyms.

Her 1958 story The Planet Savers introduced the planet of Darkover, which became the setting of a popular series by Bradley and other authors. The Darkover milieu may be considered as either fantasy with science fiction overtones or as science fiction with fantasy overtones, as Darkover is a lost earth colony where psi powers developed to an unusual degree. Bradley wrote many Darkover novels by herself, but in her later years collaborated with other authors for publication; her literary collaborators have continued the series since her death.

Bradley took an active role in science-fiction and fantasy fandom, promoting interaction with professional authors and publishers and making several important contributions to the subculture.

For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.

Bradley was also the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which encouraged submissions of fantasy stories featuring original and non-traditional heroines from young and upcoming authors. Although she particularly encouraged young female authors, she was not averse to including male authors in her anthologies. Mercedes Lackey was just one of many authors who first appeared in the anthologies. She also maintained a large family of writers at her home in Berkeley. Ms Bradley was editing the final Sword and Sorceress manuscript up until the week of her death in September of 1999.

Probably her most famous single novel is The Mists of Avalon. A retelling of the Camelot legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar, it grew into a series of books; like the Darkover series, the later novels are written with or by other authors and have continued to appear after Bradley's death.

Her reputation has been posthumously marred by multiple accusations of child sexual abuse by her daughter Moira Greyland, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can we separate our feelings for a writer, for their real-world life, from who they are, from the art they produce?

I’ve lived in and around Nashville Tennessee for most of my life and we hear about lots of songwriters, singers and musicians who produce beautiful art but who are not good people.

Hollywood is filled with narcissistic, elitist, intolerant, shallow people who can get in front of a camera and move us emotionally with their ability to convey a feeling. They can inspire us on the screen or stage, while all the while be selfish and self-serving.

The philosophy of Martin Heidegger is a beacon of rationalism and provides an accessible sense of being. And, he was a Nazi.

Can a monster also produce beauty?

We are all a mixed bag of good and bad, successes and failures and likely most of us have some secrets we’d rather not see light.

After Bradley’s death, the stories about her and her husband and child molestation allegations came to the surface and depositions from the writer indicate that at least some of the charges were true.

I’m going to be candid and admit that thoughts of these claims stayed in the back of mind throughout my reading of this 1972 novel, part of her Darkover series of books.

Goodreads reports that there are over 40 of these books and stories, about a world removed from ours, one of fantasy and oblique science fiction. This one, though seventh in the publication order, is about humans’ crash landing on the planet and beginning a post-technology settlement on the harsh world.

Bradley’s writing is user-friendly, and this is a page turner, especially for a SF/F fan. She includes elements of fantasy as the world is also populated with two other sentient races, in a suggested backstory that reminded me of Ursula K. LeGuin.

Her thought provoking ideas about feminism and abortion seem dated now but were likely progressive in 1972.

Good SF, I liked it, but may have liked it more if I knew more about the Darkover stories, and if I wasn’t frequently reminded that the writer had done some ugly things.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night settled over the world of the four moons; the dark sun sank in a strange clear twilight and the rare stars appeared. One after another, the moons climbed the sky; the great violet-gleaming moon, the paler green and blue gemlike discs, the small one like a white pearl. In the clearing where the great starship, alien to this world, lay huge and strange and menacing, the men from Earth breathed the strange wind and the strange pollen borne on its breath, and curious impulses straggled and erupted in their forebrains.

A starship headed for the Coronis colony crash lands on a mysterious planet in unknown space. Deprived of all transportation and communication, the ship’s crewmates and colonists begin exploring the surrounding lands, and through a series of discoveries and harrowing events, they suddenly find themselves in grave peril…

Darkover Landfall was pretty amazing. It’s definitely your classic Robinsonesque ‘stranded in a strange place’ story, but it’s wonderfully told. The descriptions of the alien setting, the tensions between the crew members and the inclusion of several wonderfully intriguing twists made this one of the best novels I’ve read this year.

I have no idea if this was the right place to start, but MZB herself repeatedly stated that you could read the books in whichever order you wanted, so I’m going to trust her on that. It definitely required no prior knowledge of anything, so so far, so good.

The writing is as good as it gets. It’s not particularly eloquent, but it’s good. The characters are only mildly interesting, but it’s hard to expect more than that from a book that’s only supposed to introduce the world and the story. The only real negative part is that you learn very little about said world, but then again the book is not even two hundred pages long.

And yet there is one thing that will be a huge detriment to many people considering this book: Why do so many incredibly skilled artists have to be despicable people? If you’re a person who does not read books written by people whose opinions and/or actions are worthy of the utmost contempt, don’t even touch this.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is one of my favourite authors. Ever. The Avalon books were some of my first adventures into the field of SF/F, alongside other favourites like LotR and Dune, so she was always a writer I respected. Unfortunately, even your favourite author can be among your least favourite people. MZB and I have never shared any opinions that I know of. Much of her political and social thinking is outrageous from my point of view. But I could always live with that. I read books written by people I disagree with on important issues, just like I have friends I disagree with on important issues. But I cannot respect someone who did what MZB allegedly did. For those of you not aware of the case, I won’t elaborate here, but simply googling her name should tell you everything.

I have never had any problems separating the work of an author from the opinions and actions of that author, but I know many people do, so I thought it best to mention it.

Conclusively, diverting the focus back from the author to the book, this is the best sci-fi novel I’ve read in a long, long time.

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is very difficult to read this in 2011. One of the characters assures himself he's "no male chauvinist!" while thumping around, whinging about how he has to include female scientists on his survey team and telling them to zip up their parkas because their t-shirts are indecently clingy. I get that this was published in 1972, when MZB had no idea what gender equality would look like in a more ideal form, but... this ain't it. A hysterical woman has already been slapped into sense, by the way. And I'm only on page 43.

...aaaand now I've finished. Oy. This was painful. I'd hoped that by going back to the spaceship part of the Darkover saga, I'd get something with men and women on equal footing - you know, sort of like the same era in Pern? Hell no! The first third of the book is relentlessly sexist, the second is some sort of psychadelic drug trip involving orgies, and then the last third? Babies. It's allll about babies. Specifically, about how every woman in the colony will have to have many children, and how they'll not be able to do any real work while breeding, and they'll enjoy it.

I do not react well to any exchange where a man is laying down the law in a "look, missy!" sort of way. And that happens constantly in this wretched book, even on topics where the male character has no authority to speak of. Do I remotely think that women who signed up for working on a colony ship would be oblivious to the implications if they were to be stuck on a colony? No, I do not. It's just so bizarre, this endless litany of women behaving like spoilt children by following careers (at least, this is how it's written) and then refusing to recognize the biological imperative of childbirth and having to be set straight by men. What the hell. There's an actual argument put forth about how modernization and career-mindedness has unnaturally bred maternal instinct out of women. Was this a leading gender studies theory in the 60s-70s?!

Gender idiocy aside, this was just a boring book. MZB isn't particularly good at intrigue or politics or... anything, really. Having inexplicably read through almost the entire pile of books my friend loaned me (reading anything at hand is a terrible compulsion), I'm ready to say MZB's a mediocre sci fi writer. They're all surface, no depth to them, she's incredibly inconsistent not just between books but within a single manuscript, her characters are boring, and if you're going to use telepathy in a book, then probably best to not also put the character's non-audible thoughts in italics as well. In almost every book, I had the feeling that something interesting might be happening in Darkover.... just somewhere other than where MZB was writing.

Having wasted a massive amount of time on Darkover, all I can say is get out now, save yourself. It's rubbish.

[Karl]

DAW Collectors #36

Cover Artist: George Barr

Name: Bradley, Marion Eleanor Zimmer (3 June 1930 - 25 September 1999)

Alternate Names: Astra, Astara Zimmer Bradley, Marion Z. Bradley, Marion Bradley, Lee Chapman, John Dexter, Miriam Gardner, Morgan Ives, Marlene Longman, Astra of the Spheres, Marion Zimmer, Marion E. Zimmer, Marion Eleanor Zimmer, Marion 'Astra' Zimmer, Marion Eleanor 'Astra' Add-a-Pearl Zimmer, 'Astra' Zimmer, Marion Zimmer-Bradley
Note: Sister, and sometime collaborator, of Paul Edwin Zimmer. Mother of Moira Greyland and Mark Greyland.

Darkover Landfall (1972) is a somewhat routine adventure (with a good dose of social commentary) which, according to internal chronology, is the beginning of the vast Darkover series.

Sometime near the end of the 21st century a colony ship is thrown off course due to a gravitational storm and crashes on an unknown planet. The original destination was an already established colony. However, the new planet they find themselves stranded on, Cottman IV, has yet to be even surveyed and contains inhospitable mountains, mysterious natives, frequent forest fires, strange clouds of mind-altering pollens, and few useful or easily accessible metals. Over the course of the novel, both the crew and the colonists are forced to reconcile themselves to a difficult new life where rescue is virtually impossible. However, this new life will be a much more primitive one due to the lack of natural resources.

There is also a running commentary on the effects of overpopulation on Earth and how the social positions that were created by it have to be abandoned in the new colony.

Women have children only when they want to. However, on alien planets, according to Bradley’s biological extrapolations, the fertility of women is lower and this choice has to be addressed.

the novel is concerned with pointing out the hypocrisy of sexist men,

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two thirds into this book and I'm setting it down for good. While it begins an interesting enough crash-landing and survival story, there is too much relentlessly sexist material here for me to sit by and endure. Perhaps I was expecting something different from a woman author who has at times flirted with feminism, but this is ridiculous. A woman is denied an abortion because apparently the colonists will need all the babies they can get. This is frustrating enough. But then a man explains to this woman that her unwillingness to bear a child is a mental illness! He explains,


... "this is biological. Even back in the 20th century, they did experiments on rats and ghetto populations and things, and found that one of the first results of crucial social overcrowding was the failure of maternal behavior. It's a pathology. Man is a rationalizing animal, so sociologists called it "Women's Liberation" and things like that, but what it amounted to was a pathological reaction to overpopulation and overcrowding. Women who couldn't be allowed to have children, had to be given some other work, for the sake of their mental health. But it wears off. ... most of them, once they're out of the crowding of Earth, recover their mental and emotional health, and the average Colony family is four children--which is about right, psychologically speaking. By the time the baby comes, you'll probably have normal hormones too, and make a good mother. If not, well, it will at least have your genes, and we'll give it to some sterile woman to bring up for you. Trust me.."


If you think you can stand this sort of tripe, be my guest. As for me, this one goes in the dustbin.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley, but my affection for her rests not on the Avalon books, which I didn't care for, but her Darkover series. Darkover is a "lost colony" of Earth that falls back into a medieval society. Ruled by a psychically gifted aristocracy, after centuries it's rediscovered by a star-spanning high-tech human federation, giving the series a feel of both science fiction and fantasy. The Darkover series as a whole features strong female characters, but it has enough swashbuckling adventure to draw the male of the species, and indeed this series was recommended to me by a guy (when we were in high school!)

Although some books are loosely connected, having characters in common, they were written to be read independently and were written out of sequence. This makes it difficult without a guide to know what story to start with. Darkover Landfall comes first chronologically in terms of the timeline of the events of the series, but it isn't where I'd recommend you start. First, it comes relatively early in MZB's career, when she was just coming into her own as a writer, and there are much stronger books in the series. Second, I think you get more pleasure out of this origins book if you first enjoy other books in the series, so as to get the most enjoyment out of seeing how it all started. I'd suggest the (1979 version) of The Bloody Sun or The Spell Sword and its sequel The Forbidden Tower or The Shattered Chain (my own introduction) or Heritage of Hastur as better starting places and books that should be read first before tackling this one.

[Malum · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book that is so close to being pretty great. There were two problems for me, though:

It feels like an extended prologue to the series (even though it wasn't the first book written in the series, it is the first chronologically). The plot is pretty thin, and the purpose of the book seems to be to explore this world that Bradley created rather than have anything deep happen there.

I find Bradley's stance on women here a little odd. In Bradley's world, a woman's purpose is as a baby-making machine, and a "hysterical" woman just needs a good slap to straighten her out. I know that in real life Bradley was a disgusting piece of shit, but I just find it odd that a woman, no matter how awful they may be, would think that this would be a great message to put into their work (unless motivated by religious fundamentalism, perhaps, but Bradley wouldn't abandon paganism for Christianity until the 90s).

[Cera · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Darkover books in terms of internal chronology, showing the emergency landing of a Terran colony ship on the remote planet, and the subsequent struggle to create and maintain a viable society on an alien world without high technology. It doesn't feel anything like the main books of the series, which are high science fantasy with psychic powers, but I enjoy it anyway. It works perfectly for me as an unabashed fantasy about exploration and colonisation. MZB tries to depict the danger of an alien landscape, where apparently harmless flora & fauna can kill, and she also tries to show how much intense manual labour is going to be necessary for even a bare chance of survival, but that's not the part of the book that's emotionally real to me. What comes through instead is a romanticised joy of exploration, in which each hill climbed reveals a beautiful valley filled with animals which can both be appreciated aesthetically & exploited for human gain -- and without any of the real-world horrors of cultural & environmental destruction that accompanied historical exploration in the real world. Hand-in-hand with this is a fantasy of escape... escape from computers, escape from technology, escape from the complexity of modern society. The people who are shown as the happiest are a group of Celtic back-to-nature colonists, who eagerly embrace lives as farmers and potters, and their community is depicted in heavily romantic terms.

As to the sexism... I can never decide if it's a reflection of MZB's own beliefs about women at the time of writing. It shows up both within male POV characters who insist on their own lack of 'male chauvanism' while believing that women should only perform tasks if there's no man who can do it better, and in the narrative assertion that women who don't want to have children have been 'brainwashed' by society, and that women's liberation is actually just a safety valve created by population pressure. The character sexism is well within the realm of satire, but the narrative itself seems to support the idea that all that inconvenient female talk about equal rights will vanish if the women can just have enough babies. Is this dystopian horror hidden behind the happy glow of Darkover science fantasy? Or is this just MZB's best guesses at evolutionary biology from the very early 70s? Either way, it's creepy as heck, and turns the book from the perfect comfort read into something more disturbing, which is perhaps all for the best.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know I have a lot of reviews that have become "backed up" but I must admit I have been righting a few outstanding wrongs - like the story of Darkover.

I first came across the series in the early days of my getting in to reading what I wanted to read (as compared to what school told me to read). It was during the early days of book hunting where I would rummage through any old box of books I would stumble across at the charity stores or car boot sales (sorry English thing). Now it did mean my literary vocabulary was rather limited but it did bring some real gems to light even if I didn't realise it at the time.

Marion Zimmer Bradley - or as the book covers would put it MZB and her Darkover series was one such find. Now at the time I sort of recognised the name as being linked to an epic world building saga (which it is but so much more) but I didn't really know much else, so for a few pounds - one of the joys of such hunting was the price you paid - I walked away with a lot of books.

And so I started to explore the world of Darkover, its inhabitants and their strange relationships. Now some years later I learn that to the true aficionado this is more science fantasy than science fiction, dont worry I am not going to poke that one but it does explain something.

Anyway I digress as I usually do. I finally found the first book in the series something that I think I should have looked for long ago as even thought this is a short book it does explain what is going on and how the foundations were set for what would then develop in to the series (and the books I read) which I enjoyed reading so many years ago. So if you want to read the story that set up the world in a modern classic this is a fascinating read but one thing I do realise now, one that does not affect the other books, its is more curiosity rather than required reading.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

AHAHAHA 1970s. My favourite part: the bit where the male lead goes 'I'm not a chauvinist, but HERE ARE SOME TOTALLY SEXIST OPINIONS EVEN FOR THE 70s.' (I paraphrase.) I wish there was more detail about everyday survival stuff. It feels more like a sketch to explain some backstory than a novel.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm well aware of the scandal that's emerged since Marion Zimmer Bradley's death; but I loved this series when I was a kid, and so when I stumbled on an old paperback, I thought I'd revisit it.

...maybe the rest of the series was better? This book exists solely to explain how the society the series focuses on came about. Since I only dimly remember a lot of the details, I probably missed some subtle cues. But there's basically no plot. It starts post-crash. Then some stuff happens. But there's no real driving conflict, and the main characters barely have arcs. There's no book here.

But that's not the part that made me want to throw this across the room. I had vaguely remembered MZB as being a feminist writer. This was earlier in her career, I suppose, but...oh my god. I feel like most of her male contemporaries did not go as far out of their way to make sure we all knew that women are fragile, illogical, emotionally-driven morons. Seriously, barely two or three pages can pass without her making some kind of comment denigrating women. At first, I thought that the viewpoint character was going to get his comeuppance and learn an important lessons. But no, apparently he's right. Women really are fragile creatures who need to be protected and who annoyingly keep thinking they have a right to make their own (wrong) decisions.

I think the crowning moment is when the astrophysicist, who got pregnant while under the influence of hallucinatory sex pollen, wants to get an abortion and is refused on the grounds of needing the genetic diversity. Now, the conflict makes sense. But the completely unsympathetic doctor mansplains to her that she's being selfish and hysterical, including the jaw-dropping passage, "the first results of curcial social overcrowding was the failure of maternal behavior. It's a pathology. Man is a rationalizing animal, so sociologists called it "Women's Liberation" and things like that, but what it amounted to was a pathological reaction to overpopulation and overcrowding. Women who couldn't be allowed to have children had to be given some other work, for the sake of their mental health. But it wears off." I wish I could say this passage was ironic, or meant to indicate that the speaker is an asshole. But the rest of the book supports him as being right.

I don't even know what to do with that.

So yeah, I think I can safely write off revisiting any more of these.

[Lana Del Slay · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Not a review of any particular edition.)

Coming to this after Thendara House was a bit of a letdown for me. I wanted to like the characters a lot more than I did, and I wanted to embrace their philosophies more than I could. I was able to sympathize with exactly two: Judy Lovat and Camilla Del Rey. Well, three, but the third is a spoiler.

If only this had been written after 1972.

Falling in the early days of Bradley's SCA involvement, it seems natural to me that she should create a fantasy world in which her Earth colonists are forced back to the Middle Ages. If her imagination had only extended to a world in which the colonists weren't trapped pre-women's lib, I might even have believed they came from a spacefaring society.

A world that had passed a Terran Bill of Rights supporting gender equality could not have come about with so many reactionaries scattered in the population. Because what else am I going to call people who patronize women endlessly, in that world? Their attitudes don't square with their legislation at all. Shall I presume that the colonist-types are also the ones who want to roll back women's lib? Bradley can paint a broader picture of an egalitarian society, but she can't, when it comes down to it, make her men believably part of that society at this point in her career.

Where in other novels I am able to accept that some people must die in order to keep the populace strong, in this one the idea leaves me sick to my stomach. Once the Darkovans have forgotten their Terran heritage, I can also see them forgetting why eugenics got such a bad rap. For the colonists, this exaggerated "natural" selection (the pointed non-use of the little technology the group had) should have been a reminder of certain human rights violations. You know, like the gassing of "defectives" under Hitler. Or the forced sterilization of women of color.

Even if in later novels she revises her thinking, in this one it cannot be denied that the ideal colonists are willing, at the end of the book, to let a woman bleed to death -- it's implied that she is doing so in an obstetrical context, because the woman, Laura, is otherwise ambulatory and able to communicate. No injury is mentioned. So either that's a placenta previa they couldn't manage, or it's a plain old miscarriage. But we don't find out! Ewen and Heather don't even examine her. We're meant to trust, what, that the medical staff's rudimentary laran now dictates what's best?

It's the coldest, creepiest passage I've read in a long time.

The justification for the forced birthing is similarly nauseating. Women on Earth have been brainwashed out of having kids -- what?! You mean there was a childfree coup? That'll be the day. Even now a woman has to fight for the right to take herself out of the gene pool. Even now that the planet is supporting six billion-plus lives, we still recognize that a one-child policy restricts human rights, and so it remains unique to the Chinese.

Camilla isn't given any kind of choice. No one puts it to her that she might strike out on her own, forfeiting the protections of the new colony, rather than participate in this breeding program. None of the colonists get that choice. A particular social contract is forced upon them, out of which they cannot opt. They are not allowed to choose their way forward. By the epilogue, I'd say she's been brainwashed in reverse: she's had seven kids survive infancy, implying there were others who did not, and in order to broaden the gene pool, she's had them by multiple fathers.

As for Judy Lovat, she's crazy until men decide she's not. Fabulous. She knows who fathered her child, and she has to persuade her friends that she's sure. Apparently you can only be sure of who you had sex with if the other participants were human or something? MacAran and Camilla can vouch for each other just fine, and Heather, MacLeod, and Ewen ditto, but Judy, who went off on her own after a man whose heart would've given out well before [cough] completion -- who can prove she actually had sex, given she's knocked up -- nah, she's nuts. I'd have run away to live with the chieri at that point.

I don't like these colonists much. They make what was otherwise a great story painful. Their viewpoints are conservative even for 1972. I can see how a conservative society would've grown out of them, but as protagonists, they kinda suck. I wonder what Bradley thought of them as she filled in the timeline? Did she think of them as I think of the Puritans? -- There's a tangent I meant to explore. This story, whether or not that was the intent, is pretty much the founding of Plimoth rehashed. Two groups with conflicting purposes and ideas, a ship getting so lost the other colonies aren't reachable, a harsher winter than anyone's known before, the problem of the natives: shit, son, you might as well call that crashed starship Mayflower and be done.

In that context, the colonists are almost palatable. Until you remember what happened next in history. Let's just say I don't give much for the chieri's chances.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Colonists from a future Earth crashland on a random planet and are forced to make their home there. Not only is the planet almost entirely without metals, so that all their technology will swiftly become worn out and unusable, but there are strange and inexplicable happenings--almost like magic.

I read this many years ago, and completely forgot about it until I searched for a poem I've had tumbling through my head for years and realized it was from this book. Reading through what's available on google reader was a trip: it's so funny to me the lengths and manipulative twists MZB would go through in order to make her various fantasies seem like the logic choice. It's like you can see her working backward from the Darkover she wanted to write about later. There's also this tremendous great joy and energy in creating a new society and exploring a mysterious, wide open world, but my ability to come along for the ride kept being spoiled by some character randomly getting super sexist and gender essentialist at me. Basically: this seems like a book uncomfortably of its time. Also? It's impossible to read all the forced sex in this book and not be reminded that MZB protected a child molester and probably was one herself. Realizing she wrote the poem I've had running through my mind for decades really did my head in.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

There has been some debate about how good of writer MZB was. If I am being totally honest, I would have to say that she is not the best writer in the world, and considering the massive amount of work she put out, some of it is "hack" work.

The Darkover novels always stand out, however. Part of this for me is that there is almost consistent theme of the good of the society versus the rights of the inidivual in the books, even in the earlier ones. That theme is one full view here.

Landfall tells the story of the colonization of Darkover. It is nice to see the real gods and goddesses that later Darkoveran characters talk about. One of the undercurrents in the novel is the relationships between men and women. It seems that the men assume control too quickly, that women are forced into subservient roles. Is it sexism, Bradley seems to be asking, or something? If given the chance, will equality be thrown aside? The most controvesial aspect is the refusal of an abortion to a main character, a non-colony woman who is trapped on the planet. While I wanted to smack the cold hearted male doctor, one has to admit the question in a colonizing sitution should abortion be allowed? Bradley really challenges the reader here, and that is a good thing.

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

The is excellent novel forms the science fiction basis for the fantasy in the Darkover series. Bradley is often credited with successfully blending the elements of science fiction and fantasy, and she does so brilliantly in this book.

Darkover Landfall is largely a “hard” science fiction novel; it tells the story of how a colony ship, forced badly off course by a gravitational anomaly, crash lands on the only planet it can find with a habitable atmosphere. The planet has an abnormally large sun, four moons, an unusually tilted axis, higher mountains than Earth, along with a much colder climate. Readers of the Darkover series will recognize these elements.

Those who crash are largely divided amongst those who wish to devote the entire efforts of the people to repair the ship, and those who think repair is impossible and who want to make a more formal settlement. Many of those who wish to settle come from either the Scottish Highlands or the Hebrides, some of Earth’s most inhospitable climates, and also an explanation of why red hair and certain linguistic tendencies become standard amongst some people on Darkover.
As the survivors seek to deal with the climate and come more and more aware that repair of the ship is unlikely for many generations, the new conflict develops—should the colony develop its own technology and culture, one that is appropriate to the world on which they find themselves, or should they cling to Earth’s ways.

Longtime readers of Darkover novels will recognized many of the names, both family and first names, that become standard. Protagonists include Rafael MacAran and Camilla, a lapsed Catholic named Valentine, and a woman named Sara who bears a child to a native humanoic who is not identified as a chierri but who clearly is one. The seeds are sewn for the world that will become Darkover. And Bradley writes with a light touch; although the Darkover world is well established by the time she writes this book, she hints at but doesn’t over explain things.
The one thing that makes Darkover “fantasy” is her use of laran, or telepathy. Darkover Landfall posits an “SF” explanation for it, noting that early humankind had to have some sort of telepathy to survive. Because of a person’s limited eyesight, limited hearing, and limited strength, there is no way humanity could have survived without some telepathy, in Bradley’s analysis—it was a survival trait the evolved. However, with the advent of technology and advanced civilization, it was a capacity that became less advantageous, especially in urban environments, so it lay dormant.

Certain plants on Darkover, however, give off what is essentially a hallucinogenic pollen, one which awakens in the humans on Darkover the telepathy that had lain dormant for generations. Ultimately, those on the planet need it to survive. One of the chierri gives Judith a blue stone as a gift, one that seems to amplify her latent telepathic powers, and thus the stage is largely set for future Darkover tales.
One question remains—how did those on Darkover ever forget they used to have ‘advanced’ technology, or that they were in fact descended from humankind? The answer lies with the ship’s captain, either a brave man or a mad man. He has been working hard to get the ship repaired and, once he realizes it’s not going to happen, he’s been working to preserve all available knowledge in the ships’ computer, saving it from future generations.

In a moment of clarity, however, he realizes that this technology he preserves will limit the colonists, will keep them from becoming fully Darkovan, will keep them from developing a technology and culture appropriate to their world. Darkover is metal and mineral poor, and not an optimum planet to sustain human life, so, he realizes people will have to change a great deal, and a new way of life will need to be developed, for humanity to survive there. To go on, the captain realizes, the past must be dead, and so he destroys the computer, and all of the ships records. It is, as I said early, an act of great moral courage or an act of madness. Either way, it is one of the major acts that shapes the future Darkover that readers come to know.

[Taksya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Era il 1994 quando ho incontrato per la prima volta Darkover. Di Marion Zimmer Bradley avevo già letto Le nebbie di Avalon, ma la saga di Darkover ha colpito in maniera poderosa l'immaginario, portando ad una sorta di dipendenza durata più di un decennio e sublimata in un gioco di narrativa online ancora reperibile in rete.
Nel corso di quel decennio credo di aver riletto la saga almeno quattro volte, prima in ordine cronologico seguendo le uscite italiane, poi in ordine di pubblicazione, integrando con i libri in inglese, poi nuovamente cronologico... l'ultima volta, stando alla data scritta sul libro, nel 2005.
Questa è la prima volta che rileggo la serie, a mente fredda e adulta, curiosa di vedere cosa ne penso dopo così tanto tempo.
Di Naufragio sulla Terra di Darkover ricordavo la storia a grandi linee, non tutti i personaggi e non tutti i riferimenti alla saga inseriti. Non c'è tutto, molti libri iconici sono stati scritti dopo Naufragio e non possono essere citati, ma relativamente ai libri già usciti alla sua pubblicazione è un tripudio di fanservice e io adoro il fanservice.
Alcuni dei personaggi sono insopportabili, Rafe MacAran su tutti. Più che adulto, scienziato e uomo sicuro di sé sembra un adolescente rompiscatole.
L'ambientazione sconosciuta, la perdita di certezze e la necessità di creare una nuova colonia, lontana dalla madre Terra e dell'impero, rendono credibili molte delle scelte compiute... per quanto impopolari.
Il fatto che MZB sia donna e che il tutto sia stato scritto negli anni '70 del secolo scorso si sente e, nonostante il dichiarare la parità dei sessi e la pari opportunità, allora come oggi la dura verità è che gli uomini al comando tendono ad avere modi paternalistici e scandalizzati davanti al comportamento forte e indipendente delle donne dell'equipaggio.
Come già detto, le scelte fatte dai superstiti nell'ottica di favorire una sopravvivenza loro e dei loro discendenti sono comprensibili, forse non condivisibili, ma necessarie.
Nel complesso, tranne qualche dettaglio che adesso suona molto poco futuristico, ho gradito questa rilettura. Più volte ho intravisto l'autrice dietro la storia ma, alla quinta/sesta rilettura non da fastidio.
Il leggerlo in inglese mi ha anche risparmiato gli orrori della traduzione italiana, che spero siano stati sistemati nelle edizioni più recenti.

Ma, come sempre, adesso mi troverò costretta a leggere anche gli altri... per qualche anno non resterò a corto di letture.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

An ok book but it just doesn't really go anywhere - it's clearly written as a nothing more than a prequel filling in Darkover's history.

A spaceship crashes - but no reason is given as to why. No-one seems to know, much less care. It's a colony ship, but the colonists don't seem to have basic equipment like personal communicators or any kind of transportation, and the captain doesn't mention any standard emergency procedures for crashing on an alien planet, surely a basic part of officer training? The ship doesn't have anything like a distress beacon or any means of communicating off-world, it's just assumed that once they crashed they'll never be found, no-one would be sent to look for them. All this is just terribly weak and lazy writing, with various emergencies injected to add what is otherwise lacking in drama or tension.

There are some nice touches, but a lot of bad touches - the sexism being pretty heavy-handed even for the 1970s. I've no idea what Bradley intended by this. It's partly designed to set up a rather trite romantic tension between two characters, but a better writer would have achieved this is better ways.

I can only assume Bradley knocked this together after pressure from her publisher, possibly whilst bored and stuck at an airport for nine hours. A must for Darkover fans, but probably don't waste your time to anyone else.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazingly hard book to write. Some have called it a Robinson Crusoe story. I disagree. This wasn't about just one man being marooned on a desert island. It was an entire spaceship full of people. Call it a Lord of the Flies story instead. There's a reason not many of these have been written. They're hard. The author has to realistically figure out how the marooned characters are going to set up society in the absence of all controls and influences, thus realistically answering philosophical questions on the nature of people and their moral natures, and then convincingly portray the consequences. To my mind, Bradley achieves this difficult task with a great deal of verisimilitude and tells a fascinating story in the process.

All of us human beings have our pet idiosyncrasies, the lies we tell ourselves that simplify our views of our extremely complicated society. The simplest among us (Donald Trump, for example) believe (or profess to) in conspiracy theories. The Deep State is a far easier phenomenon to understand (if it were true) than understanding all the motives of the individuals and factions of government that exert influences on the institutions that affect us. Religious people writing purely from their perspective base society on another type of (what is ultimately a) conspiracy theory. Heinlein and Rand would have their characters set society up on another set of simplified principles (Libertarianism and Objectivism, tomayto and tomahto). Golding set Lord of the Flies society up on a Rousseau noble savage ideal, even if it was one that ultimately went horribly wrong. Only fellow subscribers to these simplified views of the world can really derive satisfaction from the simplified assumptions doctrinaires such as them make. The rest of us are aware of and experience a more complicated world and are all too well aware of how these authors fell short.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was a complex, intelligent person who really grappled with these questions without resorting to a simplifying lens to prejudge her answers. Anything can and did happen in her society and it couldn't be predicted. I found her take exciting, fresh, and surprising. I'm not going to say anything further on her answers because they are the heart of the story, which I don't want to spoil for anyone.

Finally, I must address the many overly strident feminists who take issue with Bradley's book. First, they make the simplistic error of conflating the words that come out of the characters' mouths with being Bradley herself's view on abortion, feminism, and societal gender roles. They aren't, of course. Those views are her characters'. Second, since they consider that view (partly on abortion, partly on gender roles) reprehensible, they condemn either this book, the author, or both. That's just ignorant. The overwhelming majority of society, including both genders, held similar views on gender roles prior to 1970. You have to remember women couldn't vote until 1920, were rescued on sinking ships first because they belonged to the same category as children ("women and children first"), were called and thought of as "girls" well into the 1970s (and still are when referred to as girlfriends), could be legally raped by husbands until the mid-1970s, and only in 2017 are beginning to effectively fight sexual harassment in the workplace by rich and powerful men. Can't we cut Bradley a little slack for not being on the bleeding 2018 edge of feminism in every way as far back as 1970?

Finally, I found it provocative and interesting to consider the ramifications, given the different and unique situation the colonists were facing, of denying women who had signed agreements to the effect, the right to an abortion. Their society needed every baby in order to continue to exist. People are complex. Writing people (or their books or ideas) off entirely for having a single view not in conformance with yours is your loss. Plenty of people dismiss gay people as possibly being worthwhile human beings (a view most now consider wrong or even evil) at their own loss on the basis of that one issue too from the desire to have things be simpler than they are.

I look forward to reading the next two works of the Darkover series, the ones set in the Ages of Chaos.

[Clarice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am going through quite a phase with Marion at the moment, and it was her Avalon series that got me hooked on her work. It made sense to progress to the critically acclaimed Darkover series next. I also decided to find more background information on Marion Zimmer Bradley and this can be found on http://readaroundtheclock.blogspot.com.

In terms of internal chronology, Darkover Landfall is a good starting point as it tells the story of the first earthlings stranded on Darkover following the crash landing of their spaceship. Landfall was first published in 1972 - ten years after the publication of "The Planet Savers", Bradley's first Darkover novel.

Don't expect too much in terms of storyline, this book is intended to set the scene and fill a chronological gap providing the reader with background info on the initial phase of the planet's colonisation: Who were the first humans on Darkover? How did they end up there? Why did they stay? What were their first impressions of the planet and which challenges - both in terms of internal / social as well as external / environmental - did they face? In line with this, Landfall is mainly concerned with the exploration of various themes, whilst the characters remain superficially drawn. Giving a thorough synopsis of the book would give away too much of its content. Below, I will briefly summarise some - but not all - of the plot and introduce Bradley's main themes.

What happens when a group of highly skilled and educated humans get stranded on an uncharted, seemingly inhospitable planet? The group consists of the spaceship's crew and a number of colonists, originally on their way to be dropped off on another planet. Whilst the astronauts are keen to get the spaceship up and running again, the colonists are more inclined to accommodate their fate and make the best of their predicament by settling on Darkover.

Darkover, however, isn't everybody's cup of tea. Due to a lack of metal deposits, it is unlikely that it would ever support the requirement's of a technologically advanced society, its climate is subjet to severe - and mostly freezing - temperatures and it is already inhabited by two other, humanoid species. Each of these characteristics on their own is reason enough not to earmark the planet for potential colonisation. What's more, Darkover's "powers" seem to gradually set free psychic abilities in its new inhabitants and a strange "Ghostwind" causes barriers between the individuals to temporarily break down, thereby leading to mass orgies with at times grave consequences.

However, when it becomes clear that the spaceship is not salvageable, the colonists, a bunch of red - haired Scots from the Outer Hebrides, take the lead and get everybody "winter - ready". Adapting to life on the planet is not easy, especially not for the spaceship's tech - savvy crew. On Darkover, the colonists' skills as food growers and house builders are sought after and essential in ensuring survival, whilst the crew members' scientific and engineering backgrounds are as good as obsolete for all but future generations. This is what I loosely term Bradley's "back - to - basics theme" and it permeates Landfall throughout, culminating in the settlers' recognition that a society governed by the principles of scientific knowledge and technological innovation is not a viable option for the organisation of life on Darkover.

Bradley's depiction of this dichotomy (skilled manual labour versus academic education) moves to another level when she explores the effects of the newly regained telepathic abilities on her protagonists. Whilst some are at ease with being guided by their gut - feelings, others, such as the spaceship's captain, find it much harder to come to terms with the existence of these powers. Hard science and its principles are thus pitted against the powerful forces of psychic intuition.

One final point worth mentioning is Bradley's engagement with the pivotal role of women and their significantly altered attitudes towards motherhood. Darkover's chemical composition has rendered all hormone - based contraceptive methods ineffective and due to above - mentioned "get - togethers" a large number of females have become pregnant. When it becomes clear that there is no escape from the planet, all pregnant women are literally forced to continue their pregnancies in order to ensure the colony's survival. Initially, this goes against the grain amongst those women who tend to have a rather sanitised attitude towards motherhood. As we move through the book, this attitude gradually changes. Rather than viewing motherhood as an inferior choice, which is to be avoided at all costs - the dominant viewpoint held by the spaceship's first officer -, its true value is uncovered by the characters in the end.

My verdict: Darkover Landfall was a highly enjoyable read and a good starting point for getting a feel of the series. It certainly got me hooked and more Darkover novels are on the way. Bradley's work undoubtedly differs from the more technology - oriented novels in the genre, as she views human development as a function of its environment and she focuses on exploring the effects of alien environments on societal norms and values. Written in the 1970s, Darkover clearly reflects the concerns and technical advances of a different era, but Bradley's ideas are still contemporary for a 21st century audience.

[Jacqueline J · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story was okay but you could really tell the author was doing an origin story for a series already well under way. I liked it for the most part. It was interesting but felt incomplete for the reasons I already stated. It was interesting to see the author attempting to deal with women's issues looking back on the beginning of the women's movement from 50 years on. On the whole the book felt very melancholy to me.

[Heiki Eesmaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A colony ship is stranded. Lots of fairly implausible explorations and dialogue ensues, which become much more understandable and -- perhaps -- enjoyable once one knows more about the authors background. She was a practicing Wiccan or a Pagan, wrote pornography and allegedly was involved in sexually abusing children. Without finger-waving I'd say her books show elements of this; here for example all the events of stranding exotic red-haired people on a mystic, psionic planet with several alien races, one of them elf-like; the subsequent events of psychedelic ecstasy of the planet's winds and the sexual liberation it brings lead to a series anti-technological and anti-clerical deeds. All a setup to establish a Wiccan Utopia.

[Sakura87 · Rating 2 out of 5]

La serie di Darkover è così stratificata che reputo opportuna una più o meno prolissa introduzione prima di parlare del romanzo oggetto della recensione. Va subito detto che Darkover non nasce come serie, lo diviene nel corso della pubblicazione: nell'idea dell'autrice, ogni romanzo doveva essere fruibile a sé, e, per lo stesso motivo, talvolta viene a mancare la coerenza interna tra un romanzo e l'altro.
La pubblicazione dei romanzi non segue la linea storica della colonizzazione di Darkover: il primo romanzo pubblicato, Le foreste di Darkover (1958), si situa cronologicamente piuttosto avanti, nell'ultimo ciclo, collocato migliaia di anni dopo l'arrivo dell'uomo sul primitivo pianeta, evento narrato in Naufragio sulla terra di Darkover (1972).
Volendo ordinare e riassumere la serie, i cicli narrano l'Insediamento (Naufragio sulla terra di Darkover, antologia L'alba di Darkover) sullo sconosciuto - e ancora senza nome - pianeta; la cosiddetta Età del Caos (La signora delle tempeste, La caduta di Neskaya, La donna del falco, Gli inferni di Zandru, A Flame in Hali, quest'ultimo inedito in Italia), che ha luogo mille anni più tardi, e in cui, perso ogni residuo di tecnologia, sul pianeta vige una sorta di società feudale dominata dalle Grandi Famiglie e basata sulla magia; l'epoca dei Cento Regni (Il sapiente di Darkover, Gli eredi di Hammerfell, l'antologia I cento regni di Darkover), caratterizzata da lotte sanguinose tra staterelli originate dalla comparsa delle armi; la pacifica Era dei Comyn (La riscoperta di Darkover, La catena spezzata, La spada incantata, La torre proibita, I regni di Darkover, La città della magia, Ritorno a Darkover, Il signore di Storn, l'antologia I signori di Darkover), in cui sono state progressivamente abbandonate sia la tecnologia che la magia e in cui giunge sul pianeta una nuova astronave terrestre, che apre un periodo di convivenza e scambio tra le due culture; l'epoca dei rapporti tra I Comyn e l'Impero Terrestre (L'esiliato di Darkover, L'erede di Hastur, Le foreste di Darkover, L'esilio di Sharra, L'esilio di Sharra, Il ribelle di Thendara, l'antologia Darkover e l'Impero, l'inedito in Italia Hastur Lord, La sfida degli Alton, La matrice Ombra, Attacco a Darkover, gli inediti in Italia The Alton Gift e The Children of Kings), rapporti che vanno deteriorandosi a causa delle crescenti pressioni perché Darkover entri a far parte dell'Impero terrestre.

Considerando questo mastodontico affresco, va da sé che giudicare il solo Naufragio sulla terra di Darkover ha ben poco significato, trattandosi peraltro di un prequel scritto quattordici anni dopo l'inizio della saga. Il romanzo in sé è ben deludente, poiché dimostra - più che la volontà di scrivere un'opera autoconclusiva, come invece dichiarato dall'autrice circa i volumi della saga - l'intenzione di coprire un buco temporale risalendo indietro nel tempo per narrare l'esatto momento in cui l'essere umano all'apice dell'era tecnologica - una nave coloniale - fu costretto da una tempesta magnetica a stanziarsi su un pianeta deserto e sconosciuto per ricominciare da capo la sua evoluzione.
L'impatto su Darkover costringe gli uomini dell'equipaggio a recuperare il contatto con la terra, a temere il clima avverso, ad abbandonare le vestigia di tecnologia ormai inutili su un pianeta che non possiede le risorse per mantenerle attive, ma soprattutto a fronteggiare l'ingresso dell'irrazionale nelle loro vite: una sostanza nell'aria, o forse nella terra, che causa momenti di delirio di durata variabile in cui cade ogni inibizione, e che risveglia nei coloni poteri ESP della cui esistenza avevano sempre dubitato sulla Terra.
Manca insomma una vera e propria struttura narrativa: l'unico punto fermo è il naufragio, cui seguono i primi passi alla scoperta del pianeta e i primi contatti con i primitivi abitanti, tra cui si nascondono - tuttavia - creature molto più civilizzate e sfuggenti; mancano persino dei veri protagonisti, ridotti a mere voci con la funzione di riflettere sul futuro di quella porzione d'umanità condannata alla regressione culturale e all'isolamento, ma non priva della (infondata) speranza, in tre o forse quattro generazioni, di poter ritornare ai suoi mondi.
Il romanzo, seppur in sé mediocre, lascia intravedere un'architettura affascinante; chi volesse recuperare l'intera serie di Darkover deve però armarsi di una robusta dose di pazienza: non solo il numero di volumi è spropositato, ma finché qualcuno (la Fanucci sarebbe un'ottima candidata) non si occuperà di una ristampa pedissequa, recuperare tutti i fuori-catalogo precedentemente pubblicati da Nord e Tea sarà un'impresa titanica.

Recensione pubblicata anche su
http://www.lastambergadeilettori.com/...

[Yzabel Ginsberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Erf. I've started re-reading this series, because I remember how much I loved it when I was a teenager... but damn, I didn't remember this one was so bad. (Or is it because I sometimes used to like shite as a teenager, and that was part of it?)

The story in itself is not uninteresting, all the more since it's THE origins book in the Darkover series, but the relationships... especially the way women are viewed and treated... Wow. That was one special level of bad.

I can sort of accept a patriarchal society, women being treated as wombs, etc. in the more 'medieval-like' novels of the series, because 1) it fits a certain conception of 'dark ages obscurantism', as cliché as that may be, and 2) as far as I remember, in those books, it was often presented as something that isn't so good: while it does remain infuriating, it's part of the conflict underlying those narratives.

Here, though, in a group of engineers, colonists, space crew, scientists, where men and women have similar levels of skills, with gender equality laws on Earth? Nope. Doesn't sit with me. Especially not as soon as pregnancies enter the picture, and give yet another reason for males (and some women!) to be patronising, chalk every reaction to 'she's pregnant', veer towards gaslighting at times (because obviously, the guys in the story know better than Judy Lovat who's the father of her child), and go spouting crap about how not wanting children is some sort of mental illness. Camilla's arc was particularly painful, because, yes, she is being reduced to a walking womb, what's with the doctor even threatening to sedate her during her pregnancy (actually, it does happen once), like some kind of stupid, ignorant being who needs to be locked for her own good. Empowering much, right?

So basically, you get accidentally pregnant (not through any fault of hers—ghost wind was to blame, same for her partner), while you thought your contraceptive was doing its job, you don't want to have a child, but you're denied an abortion. OK. Not cool. In the context of colonists stranded on a hostile planet, that poses an interesting conundrum (= it's obvious that either they need to spawn as much as possible, or they'll die in one or two generations). However, was it really necessary to lay it in such rude and demeaning ways? The Battlestar Galactica reboot has a similar subplot, but the episode about it was at least treated with much more gravitas and moral ambiguity.

It is also important to note that, no, Camilla didn't sign up for this, so treating her as a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum was inappropriate. Putting it back into context: she's an engineer and programmer, she signed up to be part of the ship's crew during the trip, not to be a colonist meant to help populate a new planet. And even in the event of staying on that colony, it would've been in a society where she would've had a few years to make the decision.

I have no idea if anyone considers this book as a 'feminist' work, but if you do, please stop. This is not feminist, it's patriarchy at its worst: insidious.

[To be fair, I didn't remember this book as being the best in the series either, nor my favourite at all, so I'm still going to try rereading 2-3 others.]

[Lois · Rating 1 out of 5]

Marion Zimmer Bradley was my first introduction to fantasy and sci fi. I started reading her novels, which had been gifted to my mom who still hasn't read them; pretty sure I read Mists of Avalon in 6th or 7th grade.

Her work was always problematic as in her Darkover books are full of sexism & racism and attempts to normalize many types of societal oppression.

I never understood the characterization of her as a feminist.

Add in that she not only covered for her child molesting husband but also participated and I just don't really read or reread her work any longer.

She never wrote literature and her themes are dated and sexist, racist, etc.
Really nothing of value beyond entertainment and even that value is mediocre.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

http://file770.com/breendoggle-histor...

[Steelwhisper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reread. She holds up to time.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

well, read the first part, not so gripping to read the whole series...

[Florin Pitea · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was O.K., but nothing to write home about.

[Valerie]

The original meaning of the word 'cartoon' was more like a preliminary sketch. This book is something like a POSTliminary cartoon--an attempt to explain logically how people got in to the sort of situations we see them in in 'later' (though often written earlier) books. There's some effort at explanation, but not much. Why, for example, do the ships not have distress beacons? There's a later book in which contact with the Terran Empire is reestablished--but there's a lacuna of hundreds of years. Why? Did the chieri create a mental aversion to even THINKING about Darkover in the Empire? And if so, how did it fail?

Bradley tended to object to detailed critiques, but here's one--how did the Darkovans get horses? There're none (that I see) on the original ship. When they were tinkering with genotypes during the Ages of Chaos, did the Darkovans breed horses because they felt a need for such? And were the 'Darkovan' horses genetically compatible with off-planet horses?

The anti-'technology' bias among the Darkovans is not an opposition to technology per se; rather to mechanization. It's still not a particularly valid critique. It's somewhat explicable in the sense that the involuntary colonists CAN'T maintain the mechanisms they brought with them--but the distaste they later evince is at least partly due to the prejudices of the 'colonists'. Technology is everything from tableware to microchips--and there's no psychic merit to shoveling out a stable. The people who establish the (frankly
high-tech, though, granted, not mechanistic) civilization on Darkover are not, generally, the same people who have to till the fields--who, frankly, would mostly not have been averse to the odd tractor, however powered. When the soft-handed aristocrats are forced to put their hands to building walls (which is rarely), they roll up their sleeves, spit in their hands, grit their teeth, and do it...for a few days...IF they can't figure out a way to do it WITHOUT manual labor. Yet they presume to make the choice for others to refuse Terran technology.

Valid? Perhaps...to a degree...IF the Terran technology is, as presented, no different from the ad-hoc technology Bradley saw around her. It's highly unlikely that the Terrans could have made it to the stars without modifying the technology, and the attitude toward technology, that Bradley saw around her during the writing of most of the Darkover books. This is a critique of most 'anti-technology' writers, however, and not unique to Bradley.

All this is relevant to the whole series. There are specific critisims of this book. One simple one--where's the antimatter? The ship had a matter/antimatter drive. Unless they were manufacturing antimatter as they went (unlikely), there must be some aboard. It didn't escape (there'd have been a massive explosion, likely witn NO survivors). It must be contained somehow, let's hope securely. A half-(anti?)teaspoon of antimatter would solve the colonists' power problems for
generations--IF means could be found to confine and use it.

The argument whether the computer library should be maintained is disingenuous, though it's hard to say who's kidding whom. Do the highly educated ship's crew REALLY believe that future generations will be so wanting in critical capacity that they won't recognize that the archives were established by humans, and should be subject to critiques, exegesis, and alteration based on local conditions? Very few people even believe such things about religious dogma (as is pointed out in the book). So why do they distrust their descendants (and their own skills at teaching critical thinking) so much that they feel they have to emulate the Ch'in Emperor (who wanted scholarship to be believed to have started with his reign, and so persecuted, reassigned, and sometimes killed, Confucian scholars)?

The arguments about what happens to fertility in colonies is unsubstantiated, and is rendered untestable by arguing that it only occurs with differences in gravity, oxygen levels, etc. That it rarely happened on Earth (It's hard to say never, because records don't remain about what happened when humans first colonized areas, mostly), and when it did, happened only with extreme differences in altitude, etc, is fairly strong argument against it; but in context, it might have to be accepted. The idea, however, that you just have to let women miscarry, is absurd. 'Nature' (meaning, in context, human reproductive and immune systems) is not omniscient. It's not even very smart. 'Natural selection' is not involved. Traits that are selected against prenatally are rarely to never traits that would have long-term deleterious effects (especially in situations where the reproductive system becomes hypersensitive, as seems to be the case here)--but they very well MIGHT have long-term benefits in an unknown and unpredictable world. The starship population is small (less than three hundred), and is not viable if ANY genetic variation is lost. Maybe even if it isn't. The minimal input from the Chieri isn't likely to add that much variation. It comes from one or two individuals, at most.

The assertion that all sane women would want four children each, except in an overcrowded world begs the question: 'How did it become so overcrowded, if not that women were having four children each?' The supposedly benign, protective Earth that's described is frankly implausible. The engineering challenges alone are not even addressed. At present, nobody who climbs Chomolungma is able to spend more than about five minutes skyclad without almost immediately thereafter being immured in an oxygen tent--where are these people on the chairlifts, etc getting their air from?

There's another argument that's made tacitly, mostly. After the crash, the colonists and crew argue that there's no time for mourning. Later it's argued that there's no time for fantasy. There MUST be. At one point there's said to be a service for the dead planned--but WE never see it. And fantasy is an important part of coping mechanisms in critical situations. Perhaps even more so than in 'normal' situations. The idea that human imagination is not sufficient to explain why we've made it this far is one of the more bizarre products of that same imagination. We NEED to imagine our way into new solutions for problems--and exercises in imagination are often important teaching tools. Stories, rhymes, songs, counting games... Without these vital elements, survival is unlikely. A psychic ability to tell wholesome from poisonous food isn't enough--there needs to be a way to tell others.

It's more than a little odd that a starship crew would ever have HEARD of the term 'savages'. The term has been abandoned in technical literature for a long time, because a relatively non-judgemental technical meaning ('forest-dwellers') had come to have a pejorative connotation in general usage. Unfortunately, popular usage tends to lag behind technical changes--but by that much?

It's not clear what principles are used by the food synthesizers. What raw materials, for example? But the odd idea that agriculture is a 'natural', non-artificial survival strategy is an odd one. From what I can tell, it seems to have originated around the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Pretty generally, people before that understood that agriculture is almost entirely a product of artifice, and that 'nature' stood OUTSIDE the fields. Even the sort of low-tech horticulture being practiced here is one of the most high-tech activities in the impoverished desert island culture being established. Only inhabitants of a society that had turned almost completely to other means of producing food (?algae tanks?) could really believe (IF they examined the premise at all), that they were going 'back to nature' in any meaningful way.

[Science and Fiction · Rating 2 out of 5]

The basic premise had so much promise, with a colonizing spaceship crash landing on the wrong (and unknown) planet. Besides the intrigue of unknown and possibly hostile elements on the planet, MZB set up potential for some good internal dramatic tension between the military crew operating the ship and the civilian team for that was trained to start a new colony. But there end the positives. Thinking upon who was actively writing science fiction in 1972 who wasn’t part of the speculative New Wave movement, I asked myself who would have done a better job with this great premise and I think of Poul Andersen. But it is apparent that MZB hadn’t yet hit her stride as a writer who later went on to fame with the Mists of Avalon series. So what went wrong? Do you really want to know? Okay, you asked for it . . .

The beginning had me eagerly turning the pages, investing in the story of survival in the immediate aftermath of the crash. But starting around forty pages in the cringe began. As tensions mount and there is bickering amongst the crew about what should be done the tone of the story shifts to a men vs women perspective. I haven’t heard such talk since the highly hyped September 1973 televised “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Chauvinistic male attitudes, petulant hyper-sensitive female attitudes, oooh the misunderstandings and hurt feelings! Auntie Em, say it isn’t so! I powered through hoping this was only an awkward phase of the book. Then things get even weirder (Spoiler alert): Next we get the hallucinogenic pollen carried on a “psychedelic wind” that has people behaving strangely. It starts out almost entirely like the Star Trek episode “This Side of Paradise” from 1967, but then MZB takes it to another level: men and women randomly couple, sometimes in threesomes. After the effect of the spores wanes, people harbor grudges: from one of the threesomes the man wishes the woman would really take an interest in him, but that woman hates him while the other woman who the man has no interest in wishes he’d pay her some attention, and so on. Later on when the women are pregnant they try to remember who they had sex with to determine paternity. With deep sighs I powered through all that too.

Then we get a subgroup of colonists who were from the rugged lands of the Hebrides and Orkney Islands, who have long hair and long beards, wear beads and sing songs. In other words, hippies in space. It was hard to take any of this seriously, yet, as I understand it, this group goes onto form a permanent fixture in the rest of the books in this series. But there is more. Throughout we see a fixation on paranormal abilities such as ESP, precognition, second sight, and luminous visitations.

In sum, this could have been a good hard science story, a good alternative to the more hardboiled Heinlein. But unfortunately it went all soft and squishy along with a good dose of cringe.

[2Due · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book thinking it was the first of the Darkover series, to have a better understanding of it, to later learn this messy collection has a lot more to offer, but it still gave me a nice, better introduction than "Falcons of Narabedla" which I read twice years ago and still today I find confusing.

This book has been... conflicting
Despite very well written, it turned somehow a little boring and I didn't like any of the characters but for the Captain.

As many already pointed out, the misogyny is quite irritating and very present, especially with one of the main characters. Being a woman myself, was annoying to read... The women in the book still do show to be able to fight it and show their value, but in the end it seemed it took them nowhere. The main lady sure had pepper in her answers, but she sadly bowed her head "for the good of the Colony".
Was it because of the time the book was written? Was the author criticising something through the characters? I don't know...

The romance is awkwardly forced, no chemistry at all, just a patch to the raw madness of the Winds of Darkover, and when you already don't like the characters, you start to dislike it even more. It got a little worse when the main lady herself is confused about it and starts to have the hots for a man who could easily be her father.

I'll give credit to the author for tackling a very delicate matter still today, being incredibly bald. It was still used in the matters of "For the good of the Colony", but it's really hard to talk about high risk pregnancies and abortion, and gave a neat (good or bad) point of view of the people being on another planet and considering all the conditions.

In conclusion, it's been a relatively ok book to read, but it didn't blow me away nor convince me to try other works of this series, probably none of the author's. I wish it was more focused on the alien aspect of the setting, making the world and creatures more unique.