Things That Bug Me About Darkover

Note: these are off the cuff, and probably were addressed thirty years ago in a book I didn't read. They're also probably not fair, given that the important details of the world were thought up by a very young woman more than fifty years ago. (They also only really apply to the far end of the timeline, though the Adventures of the Super-Powerful Romantic Gorgeous Aristocrats Who Can Eat Massive Amounts of Good Food While the Peasants Starve has always made my hand itch for a gun.) And they shouldn't be taken to say anything about my enjoyment of the Darkover novels as books; it's often the things I enjoy reading the most that drive me batty when I start thinking about the world they imply.

Also: I've been poking at this for several months now, and I'm posting it now because it's a Saturday, and I always need to dig up a post for Saturday.

1) Physical: The entire planet seems to be no larger than France. (It's ruled by seven aristocratic families, and the fastest transport and communications, in most circumstances, is by horseback. No one ever has to travel by ship from a far-away area, and no region has a notably different climate. It's the size of a European country, at best.) It also all seems to have precisely the same, bad, climate. Does this mean the entire rest of the planet is uninhabitable to humans for some obscure reason? Or are these people just too dumb to move to the tropics?

This is "it was raining on Beldar 7" territory, in spades.

2) Economic: Even the resources of a rainy, "metal-poor" planet are quite substantial, although -- since the entire population seems to top out at maybe thirty or forty million -- they might not have the warm bodies to exploit much of it.

Presumably the "Terran Federation" is not a monolithic entity, and some individual operations would be willing to work with Darkovrans to exploit some of those resources -- perhaps the ones on the other 99% of the planet that we never see.

And I find it a little hard to believe that no Darkovran learned anything about extra-planetary technology (or, apparently, ever wanted to), so that when "all the Terrans leave" (rolls eyes heavily) no one left on the planet knows how to do anything.

(Really, the entire Darkovran economy is a maze of unexamined assumptions and ridiculous bald assertions.)

To find an in-story reason to explain this, I have to imagine that the Darkovran overlords would much rather see generations of peasants die horribly in various ways than tamper one bit with their precious privileges, which brings me to...

3) Political: The Darkover novels are generally about the kind of people who should, as a class, be stood up against a wall and shot as the first act of the revolution. (Oh, sure, our heroes and heroines are always the good aristocrats, but even in context they're not that wonderful.) They've exploited, marginalized, and outright starved to death their working class for hundreds if not thousands of years by now. The few luxuries available on the planet are all held closely by the ruling aristocrats. They've long ago squandered any possible good will, and their oh-so-special laran powers are used primarily for pointless two-finger exercises in the resource-sucking Towers, or put to bad use in scheming among the aristocrats, or (and this seems to my cynical mind to be the most common option) used to seduce and abandon young farmgirls.

Bluntly: they have no sense that good government is required of them, and they rule a peasant population with an iron fist. What to do?

Shoot 'em. Shoot 'em all, and any vaguely democratic soviet the lower classes put into place has got to be a better solution for the vast majority of the population. We'd also get some kind of industrialization that way, which can't hurt. (What, is it going to ruin the climate? Of Darkover? I laugh hollowly.)

4) The Compact: I'm sure The Bomb lay behind this idea (especially given when Bradley started writing), but it's quite ironic how it works. Historically, distance weapons have acted to allow the weak to confront the powerful on something like an equal basis -- a lord might have a fine horse, expensive armor, a big piece of sharp cutlery and years of experience using it, but he's just as vulnerable to a longbow's shaft as anyone else. On Darkover, though, the total ban on distance weapons is presented as a way to protect the poor innocent peasants from nasty ol' laran weapons...although regular laran is still pretty much only in the hands of the aforementioned inbred decadent aristocrats, who would also have the good swords and horses and guards and so on. But, really, peasants, it's all for your benefit, so just lie back and think of Darkover...

Let's be honest and call a spade a spade: Darkover is a fantasy kingdom with irregular starship service to Earth. That's the only way any of this makes sense. The problem is: although I do like reading fantasy, I keep trying to put Darkover into the "SF" bucket in my head, and it just doesn't fit there. Maybe ranting here will help...