"You cannot take hawks without climbing cliffs."

The ironic realism of this proverb underlies Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. For every gain, there is a risk; choice involves a testing of will and courage. Darkover—a stark world of inbred telepaths, forest fires, blizzards, and a precariously balanced ecostructure—is not one of the bliss-filled utopias that fill books of speculative fiction. Unlike such places, in which, it seems, consensus and good intentions promote social well-being, on Darkover any attempt at change or progress carries with it the need for pain-filled choice. From the very settlement of Darkover, after an accident that caused colonists to crash onto an unknown world, people accepted the necessity of deliberate choice. (p. 73)

Starting from Darkover Landfall, in which the colony director explains how women, since their fertility is affected by forced adaptation to a new planet, must be sheltered, Bradley traces the...