Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: Darkover Landfall

[patrick_morris_miller]

Darkover Landfall

First publication in 1972 by DAW Books (Daw Collectors #36)

Read from DAW omnibus Darkover: First Contact (DAW Collectors #1305)

Time period: The Founding

Long, long ago, a lost Terran colony ship makes a good landing on the wrong world. Will the ship ever fly again? Will the colonists survive in this harsh environment? For some foregone conclusions (and some heavy antifeminism), read on.

The ship's landing would best be called a crash, though the kind with many injuries, some deaths, and enough damage to the ship to be possibly irreparable in the field, rather than the kind that makes a big hole in the ground, or a debris field scattered across a continent.

Immediately the goals of the survivors are at odds. Captain Leicester is determined the ship will be repaired and he will discharge his duty of bringing the colonists to Phi Coronis Delta. The Earth Expeditionary team wants to ensure the continued survival of the crew and passengers, and if repairing the ship will be the work of years - or generations - then most effort now must go to scouting the environment and ensuring a food supply; setting everyone to work on the ship may mean everyone starves.

And more and more colonists come to the view that a planet is a planet, and they should just get on with the work of making their new home here.

Then the Ghost Wind blows...

Continuity

Obviously, the colonists live, thrive, and survive. The very point of the novel is to show how that happened and led to the world we've been reading about.

As the story is set long before the time of Regis Hastur, the cast of characters is entirely new. They will be long dead by the time of the stories written so far, but vestiges will survive: protagonist Rafe MacAran's family name will live on, and Camilla Del Rey's might as the city Dalereuth; the colonist's settlement New Skye will become Neskaya, oldest city on Darkover; Father Valentine will be remembered as Valentine of the Snows, saint of the monotheistic cristoforos and patron of the monastery of Nevarsin of the Snows.

And the survivors will discover many of the unique attributes of Darkover. Geologist Rafe MacAran will discover and name the Wall Around the World. Dr. Judith Lovat's latent psionic abilities will be blasted open by the Ghost Wind; the chieri lover she takes will give her the first starstone held in human hands - and a daughter likely to herself become an ancestor of the Comyn; as Lovat explores and develops her abilities she becomes the first leronis and possibly the first Keeper.

Though most of the colonists consider the chieri to be a Ghost Wind hallucination of Dr. Lovat, many other Darkovan life forms are discovered, such as the shy, treetop-dwelling trailmen, and both the banshees and the scorpion-ants are encountered and named. (Here the bite of the scorpion-ants debilitates its victim and may contribute to his later death. In one of Bradley's fanfics, Aragorn (yes) calls it a nuisance and easily remedied.)

Consent issues

Okay, this is going to be rough.

Worst of all centers around Camilla Del Rey's unwanted post-Ghost Wind pregnancy. The medic she asks to perform an abortion flat denies it because Colonies Need Babies. And to twist the knife, the medic - previously a sympathetic side character - reminds her that "Women's Liberation" - he even pronounces the quote marks - is just a "pathological reaction to overpopulation and overcrowding", and once her hormones are normal she'll make a good mother and be happy having baby after baby.

Then the conversation finds a way to go downhill. Involuntary sedation is involved. The word "brainwashing" is spoken. And later on Camilla 'gets her hormones right' and agrees with that judgment. Folks, I give you Marion Zimmer Bradley, feminist writer - it says she's one right here in Wikipedia.

(Side note: early on it's discovered that the contraceptives all women of the right age are required to take don't work on this planet. Then we're informed that the first generation on a new world has a very high rate of both miscarriage and congenital defects incompatible with life. You can't win.)

After that, discussing the Ghost Winds is almost a palate cleanser. In The Winds of Darkover the windborne pollen of the kireseth flower is a known danger with known precautions; here it comes upon the colony out of nowhere. The Ghost Wind awakens latent telepathy; the Ghost Wind is an aphrodisiac... and the Ghost Wind induces psychosis in which some harm or kill themselves. Or others.

In the wake of these first Ghost Winds comes numerous unexpected pregnancies, often with paternity unremembered after sanity returns. Often this is accepted with little more than a shrug; after all, Colonies Need Babies, and if it's upsetting not to know who Daddy is, well, it's good to give the gene pool a good stir when you're starting with a population this low.

(I doubt Bradley knew what a genetic bottleneck is. She may have intuited the concept of founder effect; Darkover will come to have lots of telepaths...)

Then there's the brawls and accidental deaths and suicides. Injured patients rip open their wounds; Rafe MacAran nearly beats Captain Leicester to death over Camilla; and persons unknown wipe the computer's navigational data and set off an IED in the ship's drive.

And Father Valentine, unable to forgive himself for enjoying sex in a group of men, cuts his lovers' throats. But hey, at least he'll spend the rest of his life in self-imposed penance. (And found a homophobic religion.)

Collected miscellanea

Darkover is what Earth Expeditionary terms a Class M planet, so it should at least have roddenberries.

Article Four of the Terran Bill of Rights: "No law shall be made or formulated abridging the rights of any human being to equal work regardless of racial origin, religion or sex..." Clearly the Darkover stories are set in the Good Universe.

(Of course, Article Four goes right out the window after the crash because Colonies Need Babies.)

It's speculated the psi is a vestige of powers that "primitive man" needed for survival - reminds me of Colin Wilson and his Faculty X.

With repeated exposure to kireseth pollen, Camilla develops precognition; perhaps she is the source of the Aldaran Gift.

At one point MacAran reminds himself to use his intelligence, or else he "might as well be an Australian bushman". I bet the Aboriginal Australians had to use intelligence by the busload to survive the continent where everything wants to kill you, Rafe.

I've been wondering for a few books where starstones come from - are there starstone mines somewhere? do people pan rivers for them? Here, on one of his expeditions MacAran finds some embedded in the rock of a cave. On a lark he chips some loose. Judith Lovat's unusual daughter asks for one: "I think perhaps I can work it as [Lovat] does."

And in the last lines the narrative tells us that Earth will not recontact Darkover for two thousand years. Of course, Bradley liked to change her mind about such things.

Concluding thoughts

Origin prequels like Darkover Landfall, Dragonsdawn, and others are a sort of fanservice, I think. What might otherwise be the adventure - will the survivors successfully survive? - is never in question for the reader who even knows that other stories exist. We're just there to get that little thrill when the various details of the setting are first discovered, or we encounter the great-to-the-nth grandparents of a hero. It might even be immature, but some people enjoy that sort of thing. I'm one of them.

Colonies Need Babies. I'm gonna barf.