World Wreckers [Paperback]

Marion Zimmer Bradley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1988

The wild and beautiful planet of Darkover becomes the target of the World Wreckers, an intergalactic company that destroys the ecology and economy of a planet so that Terran investors can make a profit in restoring it. Reprint.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ace (January 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441911781
• ISBN-13: 978-0441911783
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,589,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marion Eleanor Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67.
She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to VORTEX SCIENCE FICTION. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels and for her Arthurian novel, THE MISTS OF AVALON.
In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called SWORD AND SORCERESS, which is still published annually under the title MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY'S SWORD AND SORCERESS.
She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Makes no sense in context, April 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The World Wreckers (Darkover: Against the Terrans: The Second Age) (Paperback)

Of all the Darkover books, this is the one that should have been either rewritten completely (a la Sword of Aldones becoming Sharra's Exile) or never reprinted. It was written early, before the development of many Darkovan characters and plots, and it quite simply does not make any sense given later novels.

Among the worst examples:

1. At the end of Sharra's Exile, Darkover has joined the Terran Empire (which turns out to be a democracy, not a monolithic Evil Empire out to destroy primitive planets). Given this, there is no reason for the World Wreckers to attempt to destroy the planet.

2. In Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile, Regis Hastur is depicted as bisexual with a preference for men (or rather, for *a* man, Danilo Syrtis). Danilo is his own age, and is his best friend as well as his lover. The romance with Linnea may just *barely* make sense (it's foreshadowed in Heritage of Hastur), but Danilo's complete lack of jealousy (and his apparent age!) are absurd.

3. The "sex settles everything" ending worked *once*, in Forbidden Tower. It comes across as very, very dated and early 70s.

4. Given that the Comyn have officially surrendured power on Darkover at the end of Sharra's exile, the attempts to kill what Comyn are left should rather be directed at the non-Comyn authorities, such as the Renunciates.

5. Andrea Closson is supposedly out to kill the Comyn because they displaced the chieri. However, considering that chieri intermarried with the Comyn, and that chieri features such as polydactylity and laran are dominant, destroying the Comyn means that she's destroying the last remnants of the chieri. Huh?

If the Chosen Continuators such as Adrienne Martine-Barnes *really* want to do Darkover a service, they should rewrite this. Right now it's probably the weakest of the MZB-written books, and that includes some mighty weak books.....

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An essential Darkover novel., April 17, 2002

By 

"doloryn" (Douglas, WY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: World Wreckers (Paperback)

Although this is not the best Darkover novel written, it contains a conflict we all knew had to happen--Terran interests try underhanded methods to gain control of Darkover. How Darkovans deal with it is interesting. I do think it's a shame that the major villain had to be a lost Cheri. Too predictable. However, I like the reorganization of the Comyn which was forced by the ecological disasters and the weakening of the major bloodlines.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The sad thing is, this had a lot of potential..., April 8, 2001

By 

A.J. Chodan - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World Wreckers (Darkover: Against the Terrans: The Second Age) (Paperback)

There were some very good ideas here, and I suppose that theoretically the other (later and better!) books should have been written to be more consistent with this one, but...

Ditto on what the previous reviewers said about inconsistencies, and another one I noticed - Regis is described as fairly short in World Wreckers, while in Heritage he's 5'10" at 15 (and presumably expected to grow some more).

The romance between David and Keral was written well enough and with enough sensitivity to keep this from being a one-star review, but damn, I wish this had been rewritten as The Bloody Sun was....