So, maybe you know or maybe you don’t, but a famous sci-fi and fantasy writer, Marion Zimmer Bradley, was a paedophile hurting her own children. And this crime is the most important problem we should have with her works. However, there are others. And in this post, I’m not going to judge myself or other people for reading her novels. Neither I’m going to ask whether the concept of the death of the author is applicable to her. Instead, I’m going to explain how obsolete, actually, her science fantasy series about Darkover is. It’s worse than obsolete, it’s sexist, classist, and racist. And believe me, I’m not exaggerating.
The story is about a lost colony under a red sun, where Spanish, Basque, and Celtic people developed a merge of science and magic through so-called matrix Towers. It’s a feudal world we can observe for entire centuries, from the period of wars between divided kingdoms and duchies to the times of re-contact with Terrans. It’s also a world where not only humans live, but, for example, elvish-like chieri too.
The first problem from the modern perspective is how the metaphors for race are handled here, and how absent people of colour are from Darkover. Non-white people can be only Terran arrivals in this world, and there are very few novels where they appear at all, such as Rediscovery or The Saga of the Renunciates. In many cases, it looks like tokenism. Darkovans wondering at one’s brown complexion isn’t a good commentary on racism, Ms Bradley, especially when your Spaniards-descending characters are white, and when “Celtic” red hair is the mark of high-birth in your realm’s society. A planet colonized by Latino or Afro-Latino people? Never!
You may say that, come on, the series started in the 1950’s. And while we certainly should take it into consideration, we should also remember about other authors who’d managed to introduce ethnically diverse characters before it became a popular thing. Ursula K. LeGuin or Robin Hobb did their job. Bradley didn’t.
And it wouldn’t be that baffling if not the racial undertones present in the series. The Chieri, described as beautiful and superior to humans, are all very pale, slender, and fair-haired. It’s hard to not see it as suspicious in the face of colonialism and colorism, and in the face of the way Black bodies are stereotyped. The elvish-like race of Bradley is superior. And it’s exceedingly white.
And how about other native people of Darkover? The first thing is that “humans” mixing with them are described as dangerous and uncivilized in such books as The Winds of Darkover. Racial hysteria about miscegenation, Gone with the Wind vibes, anyone? And let’s not forget that when those native people, such as Catmen, defend their land, they are shown as villains with whom Brave Blond Men must fight (The Forbidden Tower omnibus). Wonderful. But there are surely other folks on Darkover, yes? Well, there are, for example, Trailmen, small furry peole living in forests. And because they carry a fever affecting Darkover once in several decades, the main hero of Planet Savers, Doctor Allison, proposes to kill them off. And please don’t tell me that it was the first book in the series, published back in the 1950’s. Never ever a character pondering on genocide should be described as merely neurotic but not villainous, oh, not at all. And speaking of Trailmen, it couldn’t be, of course, that their culture has merits of its own. The Trailmen must be taught, for example, how to make fire, taught by our brave White Saviours, a Darkovan aristocrat and his Terran buddy (The Star of Danger). Arrgh!
You may say that Lewis’ or Tolkien’s book are equally problematic, and yes, they are. But they’ve been receiving criticsm, while nobody seems to care about Darkover’s racism. Just as problems about Pullman’s books aren’t discussed that often. And I don’t write so because I believe that conservative or religious writers receive such criticisms more often. It’s more because Narnia and Middle-Earth are simply more famous worlds than Darkover. However, it is also easy to omit difficult tropes and fragments in books like Bradley’s. Just as in Gone with the Wind‘s case, some people may be prone to say that it couldn’t be racist/classist because it is feminist.
And classism is even bigger problem of this series, and one of the biggest problems in fantasy, I always thought. Common-born characters in Darkover series are often very tokenistic, described as Ye Ol’ Good Peasants. If they help the protagonists, they are good. And if the protagonists help the said commoners, they are our Benevolent Rich Saviours. Rich characters here can define themselves, or their kindness, on the basis of what they do for the “low-born” ones, such as Marguerida Alton does, one of the biggest Mary Sues of the series, known for establishing schools and having friends among craftsmen. It’s an equivalent of “I have a Black friend, I can’t be a racist, bro!”, it seems to me.
It’s even worse, actually. Some characters argue (The Forbidden Tower) that feudalism is better than capitalism. Wait, isn’t that they are both awful in certain spheres? Oh, Unicorn Goddess, this world need some socialist changes! But for this, of course, neither the feudal Comyn nor the technocratic merchants as described in the series, would agree.
The notion that Darkover isn’t ready for equality because #whatever is constantly present in the series, anyway. In Two to Conquer, Bard, the main antagonist, is shown as a good and necessary alternative for a democratic commoners’ republic of Marenji even when he is still at his villainous stage. in Traitor’s Sun, one of the books dealing with the Terrans’ presence’s aftermath, it is claimed that democracy is good for “degenerates” from Terra. and not for Darkovans. You may take, of course, a postcolonial approach to this statement and draw parallells between the West forcing their methods of governing on other regions and between Terrans doing the same on Darkover. But who is the voice of the colonized in this series? Native Trailmen? Impoverished farmers? No. It’s the Comyn, the rich, the privileged, the pale ones. And that’s why I can’t take it seriously, neither this nor complaining on how aristocrats are constrained by social expectations to marry for position and not love. Guess what? Merchants and farmers were marrying in the same way, but on a lesser scale. They also had to think of profits, job, and land, not of love.
Overall, I think that recognizing problems with classism in this series and others is important, because it reflects how we think about our ancestors. We are all descended from serfs, slaves, and workers. But we don’t care about them. We prefer stories of kings and nobs, and that’s very sad.
Nobody really cares about classism, you may say. There must be some other progressive elements in this series! And, well, although feminism is considered one of the themes of Darkover books, it wasn’t that obvious from the begining. First Darkover books are quite sexist, and women there are either absent or shown as mere love interests of the protagonist, a love interest sometimes treated like a sex-worker. Feminist elements start appearing only in the sixties to be fully developed in the seventies, and to be continued from that point. Over time, it is admitted that Darkover is patriarchal, and heroines fight against it. The sad thing, though, is that it’s no intersectional struggle. It’s rather your stock white feminism focused on able-bodied women born into privileged class. And I can see that it reflected, more or less, the second wave feminism. But again, while Bradley was continuing her series in the nineties, Ursula LeGuin, somehow, managed to write feminist stories with an intersectional message, such as they are in Four Ways to Forgiveness. And in Darkover series, there are many elements which wouldn’t be considered so feminist nowadays. It’s quite telling, for example, that the almost only way in which women defy patrarchy here is being warriors like the Renunciates, or becoming a powerful leroni, which is the name for a telepath/magician. The first part, to be honest, reminds me too much of the rhetoric where women can be emancipated only through being like men. And although there are compassionate and kind men in the series, defying their gender roles to some point, they are also less numerous than the non-comformist heroines. And it’s a problem, because men also need new role-models and new inspirations. Not to mention that when we speak about power-balance, it’s quite strange that in the world of telepaths, men still hold a superior role. Because what? Because an average guy is physically stronger than an average lass? I just think that a society based on psionic powers wouldn’t look like that. The question of abusing one’s power is a nasty one in those books, anyway, since in Two to Conquer, the anta/protagonist Bard Di Asturien is forgiven having raped many women physically and mentally. And why? Because he regrets his crimes and he’s learnt the power of True Love. Or something. Bleh. Very, very bleh.
Neither love is shown in a feminist way from the modern perspective. One notion of Darkovan culture makes me especially angry: that men always need sex and that sex during pregancy is bad, and thus a guy can have sex with his wife’s sister when his wife is pregnant. Like… what this sh*t is about, come on? In the books, this custom isn’t questioned by the most of characters, including those who seem to be open about polyamory. But the said custom isn’t empowering, I’m sorry to inform you. It’s your good old patriarchal prejudice that men are entitled to sexual gratification and that pregnant people are strange, untouchable. And why, on earth, sex during pregnancy is something bad?
But there are LGBT+ people there, you may say, and that was innovative. And while I think that as for her times, Bradley was doing a good job about representation and showing various queer relations, from the gay love between King Regis Hastur and his paxman to the relationships between intersexual chieri and humans, some things do not ring true anymore in those threads. Chieri, for example, are often described as being delicate and feminine, and their human partners, of course, are strong and masculine. Such understanding of gender, stereotypical and binary, is more than irritating. And the sad truth is that Darkover society isn’t that tolerant, since the word emmasca, meaning an intersexual human, is often used there in a deregatory way. Nowadays, intersexual, transgender and non-binary people are given better representation in books by Kacen Callender, Traci Chee, and many others. If you seek gender-questioning tropes in pop-literature, you’d better go for them, and not for Darkover.
I don’t mean that everything is wrong with this series, or that there are no aspects to it that I’ve enjoyed. I like the aura of a “lost colony”, the Celtic elements, the descriptions of psionic powers, I like how cultural contrasts – between the Lowlands and the mountains, between Terrans and Darkovans – are explored there. And I enjoyed a lot the continuations by Deborah J. Ross. Ross can’t make up for such problematic questions like the lack of ethnic diversity, but she manages to transform Darkover into a series relatable to the modern young readers. She writes somehting more recognizable to the fans of Laini Taylor or Leigh Bardugo, especially with her flawed but charming characters, than the (beautiful) mess of Bradley’s work. Still, I think it is important to examine this series critically, to acknowledge that what was progressive forty years ago may be no longer so.
Left Hand of Fiction 