The sword of Aldones (The Gregg Press science fiction series) [Unknown Binding]

Marion Zimmer Bradley (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 164 pages
• Publisher: Gregg Press (1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0839823673
• ISBN-13: 978-0839823674
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,728,296 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

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What MZB thought of Sword of Aldones, January 23, 2003

By 

JL (Phoenix AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Planet Savers, The Sword of Aldones (Paperback)

Yes, I knew Marion. After helping me sell my first novel, House of Zeor, she became my writing mentor for many years, and I can safely say she taught me maybe 80% of what I know and today teach about writing -- maybe more -- in workshops such as the one at Westercon.

Sword of Aldones was my absolute all time favorite Darkover novel, and that's still true today -- which was a disappointment to MZB.

You see SoA was her first actual forray into attempting to take the embarrassingly juvenile "Sevener" series she wrote for personal amusement (as we today write Star Trek and Buffy stories)and turn it into a professional product.

It's sale was a milestone in her life and professional career -- but she always knew and felt that it had technical and structural flaws. She felt the characters did a lot of running around, and people, issues and things popped out of nowhere, and the whole thing lacked a central motivational backbone.

But you see - that is what I love about it.

I just made up all the missing parts and never missed them.

Thus while the rewrite of this part of Darkovan history is now the actual basis of the series, and SoA is ignored -- I found the rewrite less enjoyable because it told me the answers to all the unanswerable questions posed in SoA (which I had so much fun answering for myself).

Because MZB and I are so very - VERY - different people, of course what I made up to explain the inexplicable is very different from what she eventually supplied.

However, if you are as much of a Darkover fan as I am (I found Darkover when I was a Freshman at the U. of Calif at Berkeley - which is when I also discovered Theodore Bikel -- these two having literally changed my life) -- then you need to read and compare these two books and decide for yourself which is the actual foundation of the Darkover series.

At the same time you will discover one of the foundations of my own Sime Gen Universe, now available on amazon.com. Sime Gen: The Unity Trilogy is much more like Sword of Aldones than it is like Sharra's Exile.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

9 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Sharra's Exile?, January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Planet Savers, The Sword of Aldones (Paperback)

I can't believe I'm the first to review this book. Where are all you loyal "freinds of darkover" hiding. Anyway I never read "Sharra's Exile" but I am well aware that this is the original story of Lew Alton and his dealings with the Sharra Matrix. Which is why I never bothered with Sharra's Exile, shoot read The heratige of hastur and this one and your all caught up. I like this one because it doesn't go to far into the characters, cause they always have the same problems no matter what family they come from, which actually makes me read more to actually find out what is going on. The ending is anti-climactic but who cares, Sharra's dead right? NOT!