Misty White Towers And a Bloody Sun (Darkover)

[ase]

There are Darkover discussions going on across two different entries on coffeeandink's journal. As coffeeandink puts it:

Darkover! Planet of the Bloody Sun! World of broody redheaded grey-eyed part-alien telepaths who called their powers laran! Extended polyamorous marriages, thinly disguised consciousness-raising feminist groups stuck down in a medieval patriarchy, contradictory but strangely convincing world-building, mountains, cold, horses, virginity as a requirement for psychic power except maybe not, great dollops of the Golden Bough, shiny blue stones called matrices used to amplify psychic power, bare is the back without brother, what's done under the four moons need be neither remembered nor regretted, ohmygod I loved this stuff.

Let's have a moment of Darkover love. Many of the books are terrible - particularly City of Sorcery, Heirs of Hammerfell, and Two to Conquer - and have not worn well - parts of Thendara House come to mind - but who cares? The series had atmosphere and kinky telepathic romances and weird embedded author attitudes and such elaborate character relationships you could draw six-generation family trees. Reading the Darkover novels at 12 or 14 is just great; if I were introduced to them today I'd throw 'em across the room. But when I was a teenager I was hooked.

So, why should you read these? Honestly, I'm not sure you should. People marry their cousins, and lust after their older half-brothers, and have orgies, and fall in love with their obnoxious husband's ex-wife, and have touching slashy relationships right until the author realizes it's time for them to do their duty and sprog.

(Granted, no one character did all of those. But some of them did two of those.)

There's a particular sort of sf/f novel series which has nothing but evocative worldbuilding and elaborate character genealogies to recommend itself to readers. Everyone is related to everyone else, and each character on the tree has a story (novel plus) of their own. There's made-up vocabulary to describe ideas and artifacts and relationships that don't exist or aren't legitimized/institutionalized in the "real" world. Oh, and fake geography! (How many Towers can you name? There's Neskaya and Arilinn and Tramontana, and if it hadn't been at least a year and a half since my last reread I could probably get the rest of them.) Darkover does it, Asaro's Skolia series does it, the Vorkosigan series edges into it - don't tell me it doesn't, you can draw a four- or five-generation Vorkosigan family tree, and if lecture's really boring you can try to hang Vorvaynes and Vorsoissons on there too. Tolkien does something similar with the Silmarillion material. Following the concept of the "fantasy of manners", I'd call this the "fantasy of genealogy" subgenre or something. I'm not sure it's exclusively SFnal, it just goes well with some of the SF gimmes. (I'm thinking of romance series where an entire family gets romanced and married off one character/novel at a time.) It's trashy stuff which you'd never recommend, but which makes great comfort reading.

So. What was the last fantasy of genealogy you read?

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

You're on to something here.

The David Eddings books are most definitely of this type, although they cheat by having thousand year old characters who know/are related to everybody.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Coolness. Must read one day. Comments?

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

PERN!

[ase.livejournal.com]

Yes-sort-of: do you know anyone's parents, grandparents, and kids? And do they all have novels of their own? McCaffrey has a lot of everyone-knows-everyone, but they're all Really Good Friends. (The Star Wars novels were sometimes like that. Innumerable planets, and the same 20 people ran into each other an awful lot.)

Put that way - I think I just described the Rowan series. Of which I read one book. Am such a geek.

[dragonpaws.livejournal.com]

Here via synaesthete7's friends list... ANYTHING fantasy by Christopher Stasheff. I swear, the man just goes "okay, this is the book where we marry off Character X! Oh, and there's other plot. And we run into Character Y and his adorable new wife (who got together last book) to demonstrate that True Wuv Conquers All!"

It's absurd. I own a lot of them. *grin*

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

I like you hair, and the Stasheff books I've read.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Awwww. Yes, sounds a little like. Must look into Stasheff next time I get on a genealogy kick.

[tessfawcett.livejournal.com]

Jennifer Roberson's Cheysuli series.

Her genetic agenda is pretty blatant, too; although I'm not sure she intended the utter pointlessness of the plots.

With added multigenerational incest! (Okay, so I'm American and disapprove of marrying your first cousins. Repeatedly. For generations at a time. I suspect there were some characters in there with about three great-grandparents, total.)

[ase.livejournal.com]

Jennifer Roberson's Cheysuli series.

I remember reading the back cover blurbs - they rang true.

Okay, so I'm American and disapprove of marrying your first cousins. Repeatedly. For generations at a time.

Let's talk about lethal recessives for a while. If you're really unfortunate, I'll also start muttering about haplotypes, and then it's a short slippery slope to LOD scores and other statistical analysis. Ah, genetics!

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

Best I can remember is Melanie Rawn's Sun-Runner bi-trilogy. First novels I can remember where it was necessary to _consult_ the family trees on a regular basis just to keep everyone straight. There are other, more complicated trees, but they usually weren't all characters "on stage" at the same time!

[ase.livejournal.com]

But was it fun? And were there magic powers involved? If you have things like, "OMG, character's grandmother was an Alton, s/he might have the Alton Gift!" it's a fantasy of geneaology. If it's just that character A's marriage to character B has political implications, it might just be Byzantine politics. Also, there should be characters in the first book who might not show up in the last. Having to consult is a little dubious, but wanting to consult marks a book as being a fantasy of genealogy.

[coyotegestalt.livejournal.com]

Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books seem to hbe heading this way, too... how many Haldanes can she spin off into their own trilogies- and everyone gets to be the Tragicly-Heroic-Last-Of-A-Noble-House?

[tessfawcett.livejournal.com]

Eventually, of course, to be destined for a saccharine and utterly conflict-free happily ever after!

But hey, if you keep hiding spare children, you can have entire generations as the Tragically Heroic And Alone Last Of His/Her Noble House.

[ase.livejournal.com]

But hey, if you keep hiding spare children, you can have entire generations as the Tragically Heroic And Alone Last Of His/Her Noble House.

And then they meet their twin sisters?

Oh, wait, wrong fandom. ;-)

[ase.livejournal.com]

Haven't read, don't know. But hey, magic and genealogies - perfect brainless reading.

[coyotegestalt.livejournal.com]

truetrue.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I tend not to notice that in fantasy, for much the same reason someone raised in Alaska might not notice there's a lot of snow in a fantasy novel.

I was related to a whole lot of people in the area where I grew up -- including the most outspoken local antisemite. The important link was via a father and son who married sisters, and therefore stopped speaking to each other for decades -- while living in the same house.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Sounds like family reunions would have been excuciating. So I bet you notice when there's a lot fo fictional families like my RL family, where no one talks to anyone further than a first cousin and can't remember more than three generations back.

[mareklamo.livejournal.com]

A lot of romance novels are fantasies of genealogies. I think Stephanie Laurens has based her entire career on one family.

[ase.livejournal.com]

I remembered hearing something like that in passing. I can believe it, after reading Little Women.

[filkferengi]

Great term! very descriptive.

Of course, now the trope's in the brain, & I'll be noticing it in books all over the floor [& the shelf, & the chair, and...]. :)

[ase.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's modeled on other people's terms, but what the heck.

I'll be noticing it in books all over the floor [& the shelf, & the chair, and...]

I got you thinking - good for me! ;-)

[filkferengi]

I suspect it'll be pretty good for me, too. :)