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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Jeff Kerwin, Darkover meant home, the home he had left as a child, the home he had longed for through the many years. Yet, he was to be terribly disappointed when he finally returned. First he learned that there were not records of any kind of either his birth or childhood on Darkover. And then, after he renounced his Terran allegiance and joined the natives attempting to free Darkover from Earth's control, the Darkovans accused him of being a spy. Had Jeff been conditioned on Earth to betray them?

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.

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.

Turning under a blood-red sun, Darkover had always been a mystery to the Terrans. Its most puzzling riddles lay in the incredibly high mountains known as the Hellers. These jagged and almost impassable peaks sheltered races and enigmas that had become legend in the outside world - the howling inhuman Ya-men, the deadly Ghost Wind, the fiefs of barbaric brigand chieftains, decaying eldritch Dry-Towns...and the eerie forces that were worshiped as gods.

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.

Book View Cafe celebrates its fifth anniversary with an anthology of our favorite stories. From the fantasy and science fiction of our roots to steampunk, romance, historical and mainstream; from humor to life's hardest challenges, across the spectrum from light to dark.

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.

Sci Fi Shorts is a collection of classic science fiction stories from the "Golden" age of space stories. This group of nine unabridged short stories by seven authors covers such adventures, as hidden aliens on earth, a conquered humanity, super villains made by super science and time travel.

"The Planet Savers" is a 1962 science fiction book by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It is part of her "Darkover" (a fictional world) series. Desperate to discover a cure for the cyclical 48-year-fever, known as "Trailmen's fever", Dr. Randall Forth persuades a colleague, Dr. Jay Allison, to undergo hypnosis. He calls forth a secondary personality, Jason Allison, who is gregarious and an experienced mountain climber, while Dr. Jay Allison is a cold, clinical man with no outdoor skills...

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.

A novel from the Darkover series, about a man on his first mission to the planet. What he encounters when he leaves the space station is to determine the fate of every Terran stranded there. Two natives of Darkover are forced to combine Darkover matrix magic with Terran technology to stand against a shared enemy.

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.

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.

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.