Showing results by author "Marion Zimmer Bradley"

A posthumous recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, Marion Zimmer Bradley reinvented - and rejuvenated - the King Arthur mythos with her extraordinary Mists of Avalon series. In this epic work, Bradley follows the arc of the timeless tale from the perspective of its previously marginalized female characters: Celtic priestess Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar, and High Priestess Viviane.

She was Eilan, the daughter of a Druidic warleader and gifted with visions. In a land struggling to survive both Roman conquerors and her own people's enemies, surely fate had marked her to become a priestess of the Forest House. But first Eilan had chosen a different, forbidden path - to love Gaius, a soldier of mixed blood among the legions sent to subdue her country. So she must hide a terrible secret when she is anointed as the new High Priestess.

Darkover, planet of wonder, world of mystery, has been a favorite of science fiction fans for many years. For it is a truly alien sphere - a world of strange intelligences, of brooding skies beneath a ruddy sun, and of powers unknown to Earth. In this novel, Marion Zimmer Bradley tells of the original coming of the Earthmen, of the days when Darkover knew not humanity. This is the full-bodied novel of what happened when a colonial starship crash-landed on that uncharted planet to encounter for the first time in human existence the impact of the Ghost Wind, the psychic currents that were native only to that world, and the price that every Earthling must pay before Darkover could claim him for itself.

During the lawless Ages of Chaos, a baby was born to the lord of Aldaran. This child, born on a dark and thunder-filled night, was possessed of a terrifying and uncontrolled talent: Dorilys, heiress to her father's domain, could unwittingly call forth lightning, even while still a fretful child. Fearful for his daughter's life and the safety of his domain, Lord Aldaran sent to a tower for help. But even the powers of a trained monitor and a Hastur lord might not be enough to save this painfully afflicted and deadly young woman.

Described as "Bradley's best novel" by Locus, The Heritage of Hastur, the longest and most intricate of the Darkover series, is a brilliant epic of the pivotal event in the strange love-hate relationship between the Terran worlds and the semi-alien offspring of forgotten peoples. This is the novel of the Hastur tradition and of the showdown between those who would bargain away their world for the glories of star-borne science and those who would preserve the special "matrix" power that was at once the prize and the burden of ruddy-sunned Darkover. 

This first volume of Favorite Science Fiction Stories features "the best of the best" from the Golden Age of science fiction. It includes 21 stories by, among others, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Silverberg, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Philip K. Dick, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, Alan Edward Nourse, Fritz Leiber, Frederik Pohl, Fredric Brown, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and others.

The women of Darkover are treated like slaves, despite the fact that they alone can control the power of the matrix, but the Free Amazons provide a key to the future. The many colorful threads of that part-human, part-alien world are rewoven into a strikingly different literary tapestry. One such thread could be called the Heritage of Ardais, for the heir to the Ardais Domain has vanished and must be found.

This is the novel of four who defied the powers of the matrix guardians - fanatics who protected those powers so that the planet of the ruddy sun might never fall beneath the influence of materialistic Terrans. The four who found themselves fused into a terrifying unity in that defiance were two men and two women. The men were Damon Ridenow, a Comyn of the ruling caste, and Andrew Carr, the Earthman who had won for himself the right of clan-entry.

Through the generations the women of Avalon prepare for the coming of the Defender, the sacred king who will guard the old ways of the Britons and save their land from destruction. On the holy isle of Avalon, hidden in the mists between the world of Faerie and the world of men, they wait. For High Priestess Caillean, facing the Roman foe, salvation comes not through victory, but bitter sacrifice.

Jaelle has been raised in the harsh patriarchal environment of the Dry Towns. Her mother Mellora is a Comyn woman who has been kidnapped in order to breed laran-gifted offspring for her barbarian "husband". But when a desperate, pregnant Mellora dies in childbirth following a daring escape aided by a band of Renunciates, the still young Jaelle is adopted into the Guild, and becomes the Free Amazon Jaelle n'ha Mellora, a woman who has never known kindness from a man.

Although Darkover was a world inhabited by humans as well as semi-humans, it was primarily forbidden ground to the Terran traders. Most of the planet's wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive. But for Andrew Carr there was an attration he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him - and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him. Until the planet's magic asserted itself - and his destiny began to unfold along lines predicted only by phantoms and wonder workers of the kind Terran science could never acknowledge.

Leonie Hastur has a high degree of laran, the telepathic power of the Comyn caste, and wants to be Keeper of Arilinn Tower, which will give her as much power as her twin brother Lorill, Heir to Hastur. But she has a premonition that something strange and disturbing will come from the sky and change their world forever. She is correct. Ysaye Barnett loves life on shipboard and would happily stay right there, with her beloved computers, forever.

When a British princess falls in love with a Roman officer destined for imperial greatness, their forbidden desire exacts an unexpected price: banishment from Avalon. Journeying outside the enchanted isle, Helena grows from maiden to mother to wisewoman, experiencing both joy---with the birth of her child---and loss, when politics forces her lover to choose between the Empire and her.

Haunted by mysterious images of hooded figures, Magdalen Lorne, chief Terran operative on Darkover, pursues a quest not only to the frozen ends of the physical world but also to the perilous limits of the spiritual world. And there she is tested by the evil sorcery of the Dark Sisterhood.  

She had rejected her noble birthright and embraced the freedom only a man could claim. She was Romilly who lived among the beasts of hill and forest and communicated with them, who tried humanity and turned it down for its evils and jealousies. She had the MacAran Gift, the rare Laran that conferred mastery over hawk and horse. 

After the Age of Chaos had almost destroyed civilization on the planet of the Bloody Sun, even the Sharra had been exiled. But now the Sharra had returned, embodied in the image of a chained woman wreathed in flames, an image that could change the history of Darkover forever. 

A classic novel in the best-selling Darkover series. For three quarters of a century, Darkover has resisted the Terran Empire's efforts in colonization and industrialization. But the leader of Planetary Investments Unlimited (known as Worldwreckers, Inc.) has decided to take on this assignment herself...for long ago, she had called Darkover home.

The books that started Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, this audiobook combines the 1958 novella Planet Savers and the 1962 novella The Sword of Aldones into the only one-volume treatment authorized by the Marion Zimmer Bradley Trust. These two short novels are a welcome addition to any SF fan's library. The Planet Savers, the first Darkover novel, introduces the listener to the now legendary world of Cottman IV.

Nobody alive knew how the feud between Storn and Hammerfell had begun, but that didn't stop the fighting. When Storn's men burned Hammerfell's castle, his infant twin sons were separated, and each grew up thinking himself the rightful Duke of Hammerfell. Conn, raised in the mountains by his father's paxman, continued to fight the Storns. Alastair grew up with his mother in Thendara and planned to marry his cousin, Floria. But when Conn came to Thendara to seek King Aiden's help, and the twins encountered each other, it changed all their lives.

What forces would operate if there were two objects that were absolutely identical in form and substance? This problem has occupied both workers in magic and the scientists of physics and psychology. It is the pivot of Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel of Darkover during the final flaming days of the Ages of Chaos. This is the story of the era when the planet of the Bloody Sun was divided into a hundred warring kingdoms and civilization teetered on the edge of oblivion.