The Sword of Aldones (3 page)

Schmitz (1966), Rissa Kerguelen by F. M. Busby (1976), and Lisa Kane (1976) and Sword of the Demon (1977) by the author of this Introduction.

Bradley recalls her early attempts to break the stricture of male protagonists only, in adventure-oriented science fiction—and the result: “In those days (late 1950s and early 1960s) you couldn’t write science fiction from a woman’s point of view and have any real chance of getting it published. I tried it once and couldn’t get it published. That was a novel called Window on the Night. It’s never been published and it never will be. The science became obsolete.”

In regard to the artistic challenge of writing from the viewpoint of the opposite sex, Bradley has stated: “Can a man write from a woman’s point of view?

Can a woman write from a man’s point of view? If anyone still has the nerve to ask that question after reading a story by Hal Clement in which he writes from the viewpoint of a disembodied alien, I think they should be ashamed of themselves.”

Quite aside from its intrinsic values, its virtues and faults as a piece of literature, The Sword of Aldones is of special interest because it was the first novel Bradley wrote. In it she felt constrained to abide by the rules of heroic adventure writing as they stood at the time it was conceived in 1945.

Thus, the action is carried by Lew Alton and Robert Kadarin, both men. Female characters, in the heroic adventure tradition, existed primarily to be threatened, frightened, captured, rescued—in short, their roles were totally passive. In addition, they might provide emotional support and occasional physical assistance to male characters, and they might offer a small degree of sex appeal for the mild titillation of adolescent male readers (there was almost never any “real” sex in such stories; this had to be supplied by the reader’s imagination).

Bradley maintains that this female passivity is no longer a feature of her works, and cites the transitional novel for this point as Winds of Darkouer (1970). Nonetheless, even in The Sword of Aldones, Bradley chafed under the requirement. She gave her female characters as much freedom and rebelliousness against the traditional submissive role of women in this type of story as she felt able to do in the era and the category in which she worked. Thus, when the Comyn or ruling council of Darkover debates the arrangement of a politically expedient marriage for the young woman Linnell Aillard, her guardian—also a woman—Callina Aillard, hurls defiance at the council. And she does so not on the grounds that the council’s prospective direction is unwisely chosen, but on the grounds that the council has not the power to dictate to herself or the younger woman. “Linnell is my ward!” Callina asserts. “This is no matter for council meddling!”

Further, while there is no explicit “onstage” sex in the novel, Bradley makes it clear that the attractive young woman Dio Ridenow takes lovers of her own selection and without official sanction. This in itself was revolutionary for a science fiction novel of the time of The Sword of Aldones. And to make it even more so, Bradley portrays Dio neither as a slut nor as a scheming adventuress utilizing her wiles to gain unworthy ends, but as a sparkling and thoroughly sympathetic figure who ultimately “gets the leading man” by marrying Lew Alton!

For these reasons The Sword of Aldones offers valuable insights into the early attitudes and later development of its author, and into the standards and conventions of adventure science fiction during the 17-year period from the novel’s conception to its publication.

Mention was made previously of the long and loyal relationship between Bradley as author and Donald A. Wollheim initially as editor and later as editor and publisher. Bradley has written material other than science fiction for editors other than Wollheim. She mentions having written “a whole lot of gothics,” and without providing a bibliography mentions that these appeared from a number of publishers, including Berkley Medallion and the now defunct Lancer Books, under the Marion Zimmer Bradley byline.

She was also the author of a number of “vaguely risque” volumes for the now long-defunct Monarch Books in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Bradley does not object to mentioning the existence of these books, but declines to reveal their titles or the byline or bylines under which they appeared. She does state that they were not credited to Marion Zimmer Bradley.

This does leave one anomaly, The Colors of Space, which was also published by Monarch (1963). This book was written by Bradley and sold to Monarch approximately at the time of her temporary falling-out with Wollheim. To the suggestion that the sale of the book to Monarch was connected with a dispute with Wollheim, Bradley responds with a denial: “Not really— [it was] just that they asked for a book and I needed the cash.”

But a dispute with Wollheim did take place, and its circumstances are worth noting.

The estrangement resulted from Wollheim’s tampering with the conclusion of the American edition of Bird of Prey/The Door through Space. This was published by Ace Books under Wollheim’s editorship. What Wollheim had done was to extend the final paragraph of the book by two sentences. While this sounds like a minor, even a trivial, case of tampering, the additional sentences serve to reverse totally the philosophical charge of the novel. It is not surprising that Bradley was furious. For the record, then, and with the enthusiastic concurrence of Marion Zimmer Bradley, the following lines, with which The Door through Space concludes, should be noted as not her work. Further, she disclaims, disowns and denounces them:

Now, after all my years on Wolf, I understood the desire to keep their women under lock and key that was its ancient custom. I vowed to myself as we went that I should waste no time finding a fetter shop and having forged therein the perfect steel chains that should bind my love’s wrists to my key forever.

Eventually, Bradley and Wollheim became reconciled and she resumed writing for him. In fact, she states that the reconciliation did not take very long, once Wollheim had explained the problems on his part which led to his adding the two sentences. “I didn’t stay mad long.” Bradley states, “more upset.“14

Nonetheless, she has never become reconciled to those two sentences.

Richard A. Lupoff Berkeley, California

THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Lew Alton was returning to Darkover—returning at the command of men who had once been all too glad to see him leave. For Lew, a Darkovan on his father’s side and a Terran on his mother’s side, had always walked between two worlds, accused by each of belonging to the other, and trusted by neither.

Yet Lew alone had the power to understand both worlds and to save them from each other’s unknown forces. That was the reason that caused him to return at last—armed with tihe legendary sword of the Sharra matrix, whose destiny was to cross forces with the equally mystic Sword of Aldones in one mighty battle that would decide Darkoyer’s fate.

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY comments on herself that: “I’ve been writing and selling since 1953, that I am an active science-fiction fan, circus fan and amateur publisher, that in spite of living in dull hot Texas I enjoy such far-out pastimes as doubling for the human target for a carnival knife thrower, and that I am in my early thirties, married to a railroad man, and have one husband, one son and four typewriters.”

To which may be added that she has had short stories published in a number of magazines, that as a carnival target she was nicked at least once by a thrown knife, and that Ace Books have published her previous books, THE DOOR THROUGH

SPACE (F-117), and SEVEN FROM THE STARS (F-127).

THE SWORD OF ALDONES by MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

We were outstripping the night.

The Southern Cross had made planetfall on Darkover at midnight. There I had embarked on the Terran skyliner that was to take me halfway around a planet; only an hour had passed, but already the thin air was beginning to flush red with a hint of dawn. Under my feet the floor of the big plane tilted slightly as it began to fly aslant down the western ridge of the Hellers. Peak after peak fell away astern, cutting the sparse clouds that capped the snowline; and already my memory was looking for landmarks, although I knew we were too high.

After six years of knocking around half a dozen star-systems, I was going home again; but I felt nothing. Not homesick. Not excited. Not even resentful. I hadn’t wanted to return’ to Darkover, but I hadn’t even cared enough to refuse.

Six years ago I had left Darkover, intending never to return. The Regent’s desperate message had followed me from Terra, to Samarra, to Vainwal. It costs plenty to send a personal message interspace, even over the Terran relay system, and Old Hastur—Regent of the Comyn, Lord of the Seven Domains—hadn’t wasted words in explaining. It had simply been a command. But I couldn’t imagine why they wanted me back. They’d all been glad to see the last of me, when I went.

I turned from the paling light at the window, closing my eyes and pressing my good hand to my temple. The interstellar passage, as always, had been made under heavy sedation. Now the dope that the ship’s medic had given me was beginning to wear off; fatigue cut down my barriers; letting in a teasing telepathic trickle of thought.

I could feel the covert stares of the other passengers; at my scarred face; at the arm that ended at the wrist in a folded sleeve; but mostly at what, and who I was. A telepath. A freak. An Alton—one of the Seven Families of the Comyn—that hereditary autarchy which has ruled Darkover since long before our sun faded to red.

And yet, not quite one of them. My father, Kennard Alton—every child on Darkover could repeat the story—had done a shocking, almost a shameful thing.

He had married, taken in honorable laran marriage, a Terran woman, kin to the hated Empire people who have overrun the civilized Galaxy.

He had been powerful enough to brazen it out. They had needed my father in Comyn Council. After Old Hastur, he had been the most powerful man in the Comyn. He’d even managed to cram me down their troats. But they’d all been glad when I left Darkover. And now I had come home.

In the seat in front of me, two professorish-looking Earthmen, probably research workers on holiday from mapping and exploring, were debating the old chestnut of origins. One was stubbornly defending the theory of parallel evolutions; the other, the theory that some ancient planet—preferably Earth itself—colonized the whole Galaxy a million years ago. I concentrated on their conversation, trying to shut out awareness of the stares around me. Telepaths are never at ease in crowds.

The Dispersionist brought out all the old arguments for a lost age of star-travel, and the other man was arguing about the nonhuman races and the differing levels of culture on any single planet.

“Darkover, for instance,” he argued. “A planet still in early feudal culture, trying to reconcile itself to the impact of the Terran empire—”

I lost interest. It was amazing, how many Terrans still thought of Darkover as a feudal or barbarian planet. Simply because we retain, not resistance, but indifference to Terran imports of machinery and weapons; because we prefer to ride horses and mules, as an ordinary thing, rather than spend our time in building roads. And because Darkover, bound by the ancient Compact, wants to take no chance of a return to the days of war and mass murder with coward’s weapons. That is the law on all planets of the Darkovan League, and all civilized worlds outside. Who would kill, must come within reach of death. They could talk disparagingly of the code duello, and the feudal system. I’d heard it all, on Terra. But isn’t it more civilized to kill your personal enemy at hand-grips, with sword or knife, than to slay a thousand strangers at a safe distance?

The people of Darkover have held out, better than most, against the glamor of the Terran Empire. I’ve been on other planets, and I’ve seen what happened to most worlds when the Earthmen come in with the lure of a civilization that spans the stars. They don’t subdue new worlds by force of arms. The Earthman can afford to sit back and wait until the native culture simply collapses under their impact. They wait till the planet begs to be taken into the Empire. And sooner or later the planet does—and becomes one more link in the vast, overcentralized monstrosity swallowing world after world.

It hadn’t happened here, not yet.

A man near the front of the cabin rose and made his way toward me; without permission, he swung himself into the empty seat at my side.

“Comyn?” But it wasn’t a question.

The man was tall and sparely built; mountain Darkovan, Cahuenga from the Hellers. His stare dwelt, an instant past politeness, on the scars and the empty sleeve; then he nodded.

“I thought so,” he said. “You were the boy who was mixed up in that Sharra business.”

I felt the blood rise in my face. I had spent six years forgetting the Sharra rebellion—and Marjorie Scott. I would bear the scars forever. Who the hell was this man, to remind me?

“Whatever I was,” I said curtly, “I am not, now. And I don’t remember you.”

“And you an Alton!” he mocked lightly.

“In spite of all scare stories,” I said, “Altons don’t go around casually reading minds. In the first place, it’s hard work. In the second place, most people’s minds are too full of muck. And in the third place,” I added, “we just don’t give a damn.”

He laughed. “I didn’t expect you to recognize me,” he said. “You were drugged and delirious when I saw you last. I told your father that hand would have to come off eventually. I’m sorry I was right about it.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. “I’m Dyan Ardais.”

Now I remembered him, after a fashion, a mountain lord from the far fastnesses of the Hellers. There had never been any love lost, even in the Comyn, between the Altons and the men of the Ardais.

“You travel alone? Where is your father, young Alton?”

“My father died on Vainwal,” I said shortly.

His voice was a purr. “Then welcome, Comyn Alton!” The ceremonial title was a shock as he spoke it. He glanced at the square of paling window.