Q Literature

To Save a World
by Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW

This is a Darkover omnibus containing the novels The World Wreckers and The Planet Savers, as well as the short story The Waterfall.

The Planet Savers was the very first Darkover story and was published originally in 1958. The Trailmen, one of the native sentient races of the planet Darkover, have a childhood disease known as “Trailmen’s fever”. A pandemic sweeps across Darkover every forty-eight years, bringing mild discomfort for the Trailmen but a high mortality rate to the humans.

Regis Hastur, the regent’s grandson, has decided to personally go to the Trailmen, with a Terran medical team, to try to convince them to participate in medical experiments to find a cure before the next outbreak, due later in the year. If they are successful, thousands of lives will be saved. If they are not successful and the Terran colony is destroyed, it could mean the end of the Terran presence on Darkover.

Fortunately, one of the Terran doctors, Jay Allison, was raised by the Trailmen. While still a child, he and his father were in an airplane crash in a remote area of Darkover. Allison’s father died, and the three year old boy was rescued by the Trailmen and raised until he was a teenager. In leaving the Trailmen to be reunited with human society, Allison was shocked into dual personalities. Jay became the scholarly, unemotional physician. Jason became a gregarious all-around guy. Jason remembers the Trailmen and his foster parents with affection, and speaks the language. Jay, although trained as a physician, has little compassion; he sees an easy solution in the form of a couple of well placed thermonuclear warheads.

The World Wreckers is set several years later. Darkover is a closed world, and an off world corporation has taken a contract to wreck its economy, in an effort to force it to open itself to an imperialistic takeover. They will do whatever it takes: forest fires, disease, famine, drought.

Dr. Jason Allison has set up an institute to study the telepathic powers of the Darkovans in the Terran trade city. People of telepathic ability have been gathered from all over the galaxy, including Dr. David Hamilton. News spreads, and out of the deep forests of Darkover comes one of the last, and the youngest, of the ancient race known as the chieri, Kemal. Regis Hastur brought Kemal to the institute and stayed himself to learn and participate.

Although these novels, and the story, appear to be about economics, power politics, medicine, and so on, at their most personal level they are about love and sex.

Regis Hastur is an interesting example. Although it is clear from many books that he loves many women, and enjoys sex with them, his primary concern is to spread his genetic wealth and raise heirs to his family. He is greatly concerned that telepathic ability among Darkovans is on the decline, and wants to do his part to ensure its continued survival in strength. However, his primary and strongest love is to Danilo, who is ever present. The novel The Heritage of Hastur is all about their love and is the most explicitly gay of all the Darkover stories.

David also falls in love with Kemal. He has quite a time reconciling with his feelings, for Kemal is of another species and also is not female. The chieri are hermaphroditic, and have both male and female organs and potentialities.

In short, this is another great omnibus. Each novel is available separately, but there is a significant savings in buying the combination volume.

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Cary Renfro is an author and book reviewer.  He is a feature writer for The Capitol Forum in Salem, Oregon.