More speculative fiction by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Darkover — (1972- ) Publisher: When a Terran ship crashed on Darkover, many of the colonists and crew wished to stay and build an Earthlike society on the alien planet. They might be the most intelligent species on that world and could make themselves its lords and masters. They didn’t realize the dangers that lurked until the Ghost Wind began to blow and the powers of Darkover worked to claim them completely…

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Claire Moffatt — (1972-1990) Horror. Publisher: The townspeople said Sara Latimer was a witch — just like her Great Aunt Sara before her. All Sara Latimers were witches. And Sara felt the power stirring within her. Would she embrace it, or would her love for Brian drive all darkness from her soul?

Hunters of the Red Moon — (1973) Publisher: For the Hunters, the Hunt was a religion. The Sacred Prey, sentient beings collected from all over the galaxy, were literally given a fighting chance — they were allowed to choose weapons from an armory with every imaginable weapon and given time to train. Then they were taken to the place of the Hunt, where death awaited them. Those who survived until the eclipse of the red moon, however, were honored by the Hunters and rewarded with all the wealth they could desire. The trick, of course, was surviving.

The Atlantean Chronicles (Web of Light) — (1982-1983) Publisher: Before there was Avalon, there was Atlantis. Domaris, disciple of the Temple of Light, was wrenched from her peaceful life by the arrival of Micon, the Atlantean prince, whose powers over wind and sun, earth and fire, are coveted by the sorcerers of the dark who would harness his gifts for their own evil ends..Soon, out of a tender, earthly passion, would rise forces that might decide the final victory. For soon Domaris would bear Micon a son — but Deoris, her sister, would be enthralled by the forces of darkness.

Lythande & The Gratitude of Kings — (1986, 1997) Publisher: She was pledged by sword and spell to forever fight the forces of chaos..; a Pilgrim Adept of the Blue Star, she had mastered all the true magic of the world, but the power of an Adept was always bound to a Secret, and whoever discovered this sorcerer’s Secret could steal away the Blue Star power, leaving the Adept defenseless, fit only for death; and her secret was perhaps the most dangerous of all, setting the magic apart from all humanity, forcing her to war against spell beast, sorcerer, thief, swordsman, and the magic of the gods themselves.

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Light — (1995-1998) Publisher: What is the Truth? Truth Blackburn’s father thought he knew what it was. Thorne Blackburn and his followers settled at Shadow’s Gate, a magnificent old house in upstate New York, and sought the Truth about life through ritual and magic. One night, something went badly wrong during Thorne’s most powerful ceremony. When the chaos had passed, Thorne had vanished, and Katherine, mother of Thorne’s young daughter Truth, was dead. Thirty years later, Truth Blackburn searches for smaller truths: what really happened that night at Shadow’s Gate? Did Thorne truly have magical powers? And what happened to her half-siblings, a boy and girl Truth last saw that horrible night when her mother died?

Falcons of Narabedla — (1957) Publisher: Mike Kenscott is having a really bad vacation. One minute he’s camping in the Sierra Mountains with his brother Andy, and the next minute he’s on a different world — or in a different time — or both. He’s also in a different body. Now he’s Adric, Lord of the Crimson Tower, of the Rainbow City of Narabedla. He has to cope with his fellow Narabedlans: the Dreamer Rhys, the mysterious veiled Gamine, the dwarf Idris, his brother Evarin the Toymaker (whose Toys are deadly), and Karamy, the golden witch, who is either his lover or his greatest enemy – with most of both his and Adric’s memories gone, he’s having trouble knowing what she is. Then there are the people outside the city, led by the man called Narayan. Mike/Adric knows that they are important to him, but he desperately needs to remember why.

Seven from the Stars — (1961) Publisher: Reidel had been caring for the animals on the colony ship before its destruction. He hadn’t expected to find himself the leader of the survivors. While there were only seven of them, but they were a varied group, both in psi powers and in temperment. He also had to deal with the people on the Closed Planet they had been marooned on… and then there were the enemy aliens to worry about.

The Door Through Space — (1961) Publisher: …across half a Galaxy, the Terran Empire maintains its sovereignty with the consent of the governed. It is a peaceful reign, held by compact and not by conquest. Again and again, when rebellion threatens the Terran Peace, the natives of the rebellious world have turned against their own people and sided with the men of Terra; not from fear, but from a sense of dedication. There has never been open war. The battle for these worlds is fought in the minds of a few men who stand between worlds; bound to one world by interest, loyalties and allegiance; bound to the other by love. Such a world is Wolf. Such a man was Race Cargill of the Terran Secret Service.

The Brass Dragon — (1969) Publisher: It’s bad enough for a teen-age boy to wake up with amnesia, strange burns on his legs, and even stranger nightmares. But when a creepy stranger claiming to be his father tried to remove him from the hospital, his adventure was just beginning — unless, of course, the adventure had already happened.

The Endless Voyage — (1975) aka The Endless Universe. Publisher: Gildoran was an Explorer. Despite the number of planets found and tied into the Transmitter network that enabled everyone else to travel instantly from planet to planet, his home was his Ship, and the only people he could count on were her crew. For Explorers traveled through space to find new planets, and their years were decades or centuries to anyone not on the Ship. As they found and struggled to survive on unknown worlds, the rest of the Galaxy moved on, so when they returned to “civilization” anything could have happened, and the world they left was not the one to which they returned — even if it was on the same planet.

The House Between the Worlds — (1980) Publisher: Cameron Fenton participates in a parapsychology study, using an experimental drug. Instead of increasing his ESP, it causes him to leave his his body and enter other worlds. But are they real, or do they exist only in his mind? And if they are real, will he ever be able to get anyone in his world to believe him?

Survey Ship — (1980) Publisher: How do you make a spaceman? You start the same way that you start to make a chess master, a ballet dancer, a trapeze performer, or any other difficult and complex task demanding highly trained and concentrated skills, physical or mental; you start when the future professionals are too young to know whether that is what they want out of life, or not. United Nations Expeditionary Planetary Survey — UNEPS — starts every year with one hundred five-year-olds, discovered, in early testing, to be both mentally and physically superior. Twelve years later the best graduates of the Academy are given a Ship and sent out to find habitable planets for humans to live on. But what happens to a small crew of teenagers once the Ship leaves Earth?

Warrior Woman — (1985) Publisher: This is not a typical Marion Zimmer Bradley novel. This book is the result of a bet between Marion and Don Wollheim, her editor for the Darkover novels at DAW Books. In addition, it’s her response to the Gor novels – where men were men and women were slaves – that were also being published by DAW Books. Yes, this book does start out with a heroine who has been captured and is being sold as a slave, who has amnesia and remembers nothing of her life before the trip across the desert with the slavers – and, due to a head injury, remembers mercifully little of that. But she does know that she would rather fight in the arena than be a harlot for the men who do, and that choice changes the rest of the book. In a Gor-style novel the woman would become less her own person, eventually learning to be a contented and obedient slave. In this book, even while the heroine, called Zadieyek of Gyre, remains a slave, she is something quite different from the typical ‘slave girl’ – she grows and develops, always searching for her memory and her past, convinced that this is not how her life is supposed to be. And, of course, she’s right.

Night’s Daughter — (1985) Publisher: Since time immemorial, when the Serpent-lord coupled in the Great Rite with the Priestess of the Night, the Kingdoms of Light and Dark, of Sun and of Moon have been at war. Now Pamina, daughter of the Starqueen, supreme symbol of the Night, and of Sarastro, King of the Royal House of the Sun, has to choose which of her parents she will follow, in custom and in principle. And together with her lover, the princely Tamino, she must face her Ordeal at the Court of Wisdom, Ordeals of Earth and Air, of Fire and Water, from which none can flinch and none can escape.