I'll Never Wear a Blue Stone

25 years ago today

2026-04-01T16:15:17Z

I adopted Crumpet and Butterscotch, nine month old siblings who were still about two thirds feral.

They were very good cats.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: GURPS Darkover

2026-04-01T12:21:52Z

GURPS Darkover by Walter Breen and Leslie Fish (role playing game supplement)

Withdrawn from publication schedule

Time period: notes given for both the Ages of Chaos and the post-recontact eras

Roleplaying under the Bloody Sun

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Shattered Chain

2026-02-05T03:05:09Z

The Shattered Chain

First publication in 1976 by DAW Books (DAW Collectors #191)

Read from DAW omnibus The Saga of the Renunciates (DAW Collectors #1231)

Time period: The Renunciates

A Comynara, a Terran, and a Free Amazon walk into a patriarchy.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Heritage of Hastur

2026-01-27T02:18:05Z

The Heritage of Hastur

First publication in 1975 by DAW Books (DAW Collectors #160)

Read from DAW omnibus Heritage and Exile (DAW Collectors #1219)

Time period: After the Comyn (Against the Terrans: The Second Age)

The Cadet Guard turns boys into men! Except when it turns them into broken wrecks. Young Regis Hastur, laranless and just returned from schooling at Nevarsin, will see it happen and be able to do nothing about it.

Meanwhile, a circle of untrained telepaths, most with their own special problems, launches an effort to make Darkover a player on the interstellar stage, using a matrix stone far beyond their abilities to control... a matrix stone that just wants to burn. What could possibly go wrong?

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Spell Sword

2026-01-10T02:07:20Z

The Spell Sword

First publication in 1974 by DAW Books (DAW Collectors #119)

Read from DAW omnibus The Forbidden Circle (DAW Collectors #1239)

Time period: Against the Terrans - The First Age (Recontact)

Terran Andrew Carr and the astral projection of Callista Lanart-Alton fall in love at first sight, complicated by Andrew's near death in a flyer crash and Callista's captivity in hands unknown. At the same time, Damon Ridenow, cousin of Callista and her sister Ellemir, rides to the Alton seat of Armida, where he and Ellemir plot Callista's rescue. Will Andrew's unexpected link to Callista give them the edge to succeed?

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: Darkover Landfall

2025-12-30T03:19:00Z

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.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Waterfall

2025-12-27T00:48:29Z

"The Waterfall"

First publication in Jem magazine, February 1958, under the name "Morgan Ives"

First book publication in 1976 bound with The Planet Savers, 1976 Ace printing

Read from DAW omnibus To Save a World (DAW Collectors #1312), published 2004

Time period: unstated, but possibly around the time of The Forbidden Tower

A young Comyn woman finds her laran and discovers the joys of both sex and engineering her lovers' deaths.

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Thoughts upon browsing the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

2025-12-26T20:08:11Z

Huh, I never knew there was a third collection in that series.
Well, that year was after I stopped reading the author.
Man, I wish Tracey was still with us so I could tell her.
Though odds are she knew.
Gods, I miss Tracey.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The World Wreckers

2025-12-24T22:02:28Z

The World Wreckers

First published by Ace Books in 1971

Read from DAW omnibus To Save a World (DAW Collectors #1312), published 2004

Offworld interests hire a fixer to pull a United Fruit Company on Darkover, while Regis Hastur realizes the danger the Darkovan telepath class is in.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Winds of Darkover

2025-12-20T21:39:25Z

The Winds of Darkover

First publication in 1970 as Ace Double 89250, tête-bêche with The Anything Tree by John Rackham

Read from DAW omnibus A Word Divided (DAW Collectors #1278), published 2003

Time period: Against the Terrans - The First Age (Recontact)

When a mountain lord's keep is captured by bandits, he resorts to a desperate, forbidden tactic: body theft.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: Star of Danger

2025-12-17T00:49:10Z

Star of Danger

First publication in 1965 by Ace Books

Read from DAW omnibus A World Divided (DAW Collectors #1278), published 2003

Time period: Against the Terrans - The First Age (Recontact)

Two teens, one Terran and one Darkovan, get into and out of peril and adventure, from the Trade Town to the backcountry and places between.

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Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Planet Savers

2025-12-13T01:34:34Z

The Planet Savers (novella)

First serial publication in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, November 1958

First book publication in 1962 as Ace Double F-153, tête-bêche with The Sword of Aldones (to be discussed later)

Read from DAW omnibus To Save a World (DAW Collectors #1312), published 2004

Time period: After the Comyn (Agains the Terrans: The Second Age)

To save Darkover from plague, a Terran doctor must be driven out of his mind - and into a more appropriate one.

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Rereading Darkover in the 21st Century: overture

2025-12-11T02:47:58Z

So. Like it says up there, I've decided to (re)read Darkover.

Why would I do such a horrible thing to myself?

There's plenty of reasons not to, and let me state the biggest one right off the bat: Marion Zimmer Bradley, creator of Darkover, was a horrible person. Really horrible. I respect people who will not read Lovecraft or listen to Leslie Fish, who were common or garden bigots; Bradley was worse.

I'm not going to go into details; if you want to lose your appetite, you know where your favorite search engine is.

As for the works themselves, there are unpleasant deeds done in them - some that resonate unpleasantly with MZB's deeds - and unpleasant setting details. You probably know some of them. I'll touch on them when they arise.

So why, why am I doing this?

I'll be frank, part of it is because I'm curious how much it's going to hurt. And, overlapping that, because I'm not who I was in high school and college, when I read the existing Darkover books for the first time, and I will certainly read things in them now that I didn't before.

And because Darkover at one time was influential. I don't intend to analyze that influence, and much of it occurred in places beyond my view. But Darkover had a long reach through fanzine culture, even leaving its traces in the Star Trek canon. And one of my favorite songs is a Darkover fanfic.

(And because I'm not going to pay James Davis Nicoll to do an unpleasant thing that I should really do for myself.)

So what am I not going to do?

For a start, I'm not going to claim to be reviewing the Darkover works. I'm not going to tell you whether I enjoyed any given work. (I don't even consider that to be part of what a review should do.) I'm not going to try to let you know whether you would enjoy any given work. (I don't know how to do that. That's why I'm not calling these reviews.) I'm not going to attempt any sort of literary formalism, or even write something that would have satisfied my English 1113 instructor. (I did that a quarter of a century ago. I no longer remember how.)

I'm not going to reread The Heirs of Hammerfell. I found it a lesser work at the time, and by my understanding, it's not really even a Darkover novel; rumor has it that Bradley had a hole in her publishing cadence, so she pulled an unsold Gothic novel out of her trunk, sprinkled a little laran over it, and submitted it.

I'm not going to reread Rediscovery. I found it a much lesser work at the time, and it doesn't seem like I was the only one.

I intend to read the post-Bradley novels but I won't commit myself to posting about them. May, may not. They're the works of different minds, no matter how much in the way of notes Bradley left for their authors.

I won't commit myself to reading the short story anthologies, nor to write about them if I do. (I will probably reread one short-short that I found chillingly effective, and the stories by an author I particularly like. But, once again, the works of different minds.)

And I do not plan on saying anything at all about any person still alive.

Weird, but they're your brain cells. What's the plan?

I am going to read novels first, by publication order. If Bradley rewrote a novel, I'm going to skip the earlier version; hence I'll read The Bloody Sun after Stormqueen! rather than after The Planet Savers, and Sharra's Exile instead of The Sword of Aldones. I do own the pre-rewrite editions, but have no special plans to refer to them (unless you tell me I should, and where to look). I'll read ancillary materials like "A Darkover Retrospective" or the short story "The Waterfall" when and if it seems to make sense to, but I almost certainly won't post about them.

I'll continue until I decide to stop, or my friends stage an intervention.

Lēctūrus te sālūto.

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