The World Wreckers (pub. 1971) is, in terms of internal chronology, the last book set in post-Contact Darkover written by Bradley alone, without a collaborator. It is a story of catastrophic endings and unlooked-for new beginnings, and is the book that gives us the most information about the original non-human inhabitants of Darkover, the chieri. Andrea Closson is a world wrecker. For a fee, her company will destroy the economy of a planet, making it easier for her clients to step in and take it over. And she has been hired to damage Darkover so badly that the planet will have to give up its protected status and beg for Terran assistance. Her methods are ruthless. She targets three key resources - forests, soil, and the Darkovan telepaths - with arson, poison and assassination. The irony is that Andrea Closson is a chieri, and the world she is destroying is her home, the telepaths, her distant cousins.Regis Hastur knows that something is wrong. The Comyn are dying, through illness and assassination, and the people are starving as forest fires and other disasters wreak havoc on Darkover's fragile ecology. Desperate to keep the knowledge of Darkovan matrix sciences alive, Regis offers to teach these sciences to Terran telepaths. The pilot project brings together Darkovans - Regis, his paxman and lover Danilo Syrtis, the elderly Desideria (from Winds of Darkover) and her granddaughter Linnea - and Terrans - David Hamilton, David Connor, and Rondo - and most unexpectedly, two chieri - Keral, one of the last fertile members of a dying race, and Missy, a foundling with no knowledge of her background who has wandered the Terran Empire for centuries, living by her ability to project a powerful femininity but so psychically damaged that she is barren. Supervising the project, which seeks to understand what makes a telepath, is Jason Allison (whom we met in the very first Darkover novel, The Planet Savers).As matters grow worse, Regis puts out a call to bring together all the telepaths of Darkover - not just those of known Comyn heritage, but anyone with a trace of laran - to form a new Telepath's Council to replace the Comyn Council. Closson sees this as her chance to put an end to all the telepaths of Darkover, and plants a bomb to explode during the Festival of the Four Moons, when her spy within the project, Rondo, has reported that all the telepaths will be celebrating at Comyn Castle. When the Festival begins, Closson conceals herself nearby, to see the end of the those she thinks of as the usurpers of the place her own people once held. When the remaining chieri teleport into the festival, called by the newly pregnant Keral's joy, Closson's shock allows Rondo, to read her mind and discover her plan. A powerful telekinetic, he calls the bomb to himself and in a desperate attempt to save the others, hurls himself upward, still holding it; the bomb detonates high above the city, and Closson comes out of hiding to face her long-lost kin.Now knowing that the Darkovans carry the heritage of her own people, Closson puts her knowledge and fortune to work saving Darkover; finally at peace, she dies holding the child of Keral and David Hamilton in her arms.
I have a deep and abiding love for this series...but I must admit that this is not my favorite Darkover book, for several reasons. A few examples:First, there is little real action or conflict in this book. Despite the dramatic title, there is no ongoing struggle -- no concrete plan of action -- which saves the Good Guys from the Bad Guys. They are, instead, saved in large part by chance. Not exactly a good way to build narrative tension.Second, I am as always a big fan of emotional drama -- but, in this case, that drama bleeds over the line into unpalatable melodrama in several places throughout the book. I could feel my eyes rolling more than once, unfortunately.Third, this book is a regrettable example of the consistency problems that plague the series as a whole. Those who read the series in chronological order will find quite a few minor to medium-sized continuity glitches between World Wreckers and preceding books such as Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile. These include things like physical descriptions of certain characters, modes of death for characters from previous books, timeline discrepancies, even the existence of some characters (for example, in World Wreckers Regis' oldest children are said to be in the nursery -- ignoring his two older sons from Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile, who shoud be roughly 14 and 10 at this stage).Also -- not a complaint, just an observation -- even though this book was written several years before the preceding two books in the series, for some reason this book discusses sex in entirely different terms than the "earlier" (chronologically earlier, written later) volumes. In this book sex is, at one point, described in great detail; and, in fact, it is one of the main recurring themes throughout the book. In the preceding two books, however, the sexual act itself is hardly touched on at all -- and, when it is mentioned, it is described in one sentence or less (I'm serious here -- at one point in Heritage of Hastur, a character describes the first time he made love to his True Love as "we did what lovers do"). The difference makes me wonder whether somebody complained about the sexual content of this book, so that Bradley might have intentionally toned down the subsequent books. Just speculation!Overall, this is not a terrible book, but it's also not a particularly good one. If you love Darkover, by all means go ahead and read it. But if you're new to the Darkover books, read Heritage of Hastur instead.
What do You think about The World Wreckers (1979)?
"The World Wreckers" is what I call mature Bradley. She knows what she wants to say and how to say it. The tale is slickly done and covers the nature of the sexual being, the definition of femininity, culture shock, and, more than usually, the nature of capitalist exploitation of the environment and the peoples who inhabit it. It is also Marion's story about the chieri and their ancient heritage and the second tale of Jason Allison. As is so often the case, Bradley gives us a glimpse into her sexually deviant world in a vivid rape scene in the midst of a story of unconventional love. Her sexually and physically abused daughter, Moira Greyland leaves us with these thoughts of the person and legacy of Marion Zimmer Bradley: And no remorse was ever seenReality was in betweenHer books, her world, that was her lifeThe rest of us a source of strife.She told me that I was not realSo how could she think I would feelBut how could she look in my eyesAnd not feel anguish at my cries?
—Gregg Wingo
I've been reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels in order of publication, and if you've seen my fairly negative reviews of the last few, you may be wondering why I keep reading them. Well, before The World Wreckers, Marion Zimmer Bradley was wondering why she kept writing them. They hadn't sold well. She felt like she was repeating the same stories. She was ready to call it quits -- and then she found inspiration. (So she says in her introduction to this book.) That inspiration shows here, and I am glad I kept on. This one is much better than its predecessors -- yes, I enjoyed reading it! Sure, I still get annoyed at the oddities that should have been caught in editing. And if you're a Darkover die-hard, well, take heed that the really harsh reviews over at Amazon contain bitter complaints about inconsistencies with other stories of the, uh, Darkover-verse. But none of that came at the expense of my enjoyment of this book.The World Wreckers takes place as Andrea Closson, representing a shady interplanetary business interest, plots to destroy the fabric of Darkovan society. See, Darkovans have been resisting outsiders' attempts to exploit its resources for profit. Andrea wants to destroy Darkover's unique civilizations, so that those who seek profit can move in and build it up again as they desire. Closson is close to succeeding in her destructive scheme. The old ways, the old peoples, are dying out, the sabotaged environment is killing the planet's population, and those who remain are scattered, unorganized and unable to fight back. This book is the story of a few who come together, from far and wide, to fight for Darkover's survival. The crisis is planetary, but the stories are intensely personal for our protagnoists. And even if the culmination of their struggle is -- well, rather sudden and most definitely orgy-tastic -- I was entertained from beginning to end.
—Ken
Upon rereading, this novel is less interesting than I found it 25 years ago. The plotting and execution is shoddy and clumsy by turns, the interpersonal relationships too stereotyped, and the resolutions much, much to optimistic and easy. Much of this can be attributed to the editorial reluctance and interference at Ace Books, which objected to the subject matter. And some of the problems may also stem from Bradley's rush to write for the income (in just three or four years should would show incredible growth as an author). On the other hand, this books is notable for several "firsts" for a science fiction work: treatment (albeit primitive and often confused, if not contradictory) of lesbianism, male gay relationships, human/alien sex (although twenty years previously Philip Jose Farmer had also explored this territory, Bradley's aims are somewhat different than Farmer's ever were).
—Christopher Sutch
