Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Forbidden Circle

Marion Zimmer Bradley ~ The Forbidden Circle
From: DAW

The Forbidden Tower (published 1977) is set in her well known world of Darkover and is the second book in the unofficially recognized Forbidden Tower “sub cycle”. Marion Zimmer Bradley never actually designated The Spell Sword, The Forbidden Tower (both found here in this newly published book called The Forbidden Circle) and The Bloody Sun as a true trilogy within the series but since she made the effort in 1979 to re-write The Bloody Sun with a new first chapter explaining how the events in The Forbidden Tower lead to the story found in The Bloody Sun… I for one, lump all three books together when talking about them. Now why did the publisher want to add to the confusion and call this The Forbidden Circle is beyond me but at least you are getting two of the three books.

Series wise, the most interesting thing about this grouping is way it tracks Marion as a writer The Spell Sword was written when Marion was 16 and is the first book about Darkover she ever wrote and the story’s simplicity reflects her age. The Bloody Sun is considered by fans the first “adult” Darkover novel that defined a style and a formula that would bring Marion a huge fan base. Placed smack dab in the middle, The Forbidden Tower is Marion at her peak writing skills and is a prime example of the writing done during her most creative period right before the 80′s. As a warning though, Marion Zimmer Bradley along with several other of the well known sci-fi series writers (Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey) follows an unfortunate rule in the fact that I stop recommending anything by the author after about oh 1981 or so. It may seem to be an arbitrary cut off date but take it from me, the golden era of Sci-fi fantasy series seems to end with the late 70′s in my opinion.

Our hero the lonely, misunderstood, man from outer space (typical Marion Zimmer Bradley trademark) Andrew Carr comes to Darkover and rescues the “damsel in distress”… and hey, this all was really gone over in The Spell Sword but you get a quick summary in The Forbidden Tower too. He ends up married to said “damsel in distress” Callista and living in her father’s castle with sister in law Ellemir and brother in law Damon, who stay over in the next room. Now if this all seems like the end to some children’s fairy tale and if you stop reading after The Spell Sword you would be correct in thinking that it all sounds pretty unexciting and well worn plot wise, no surprises there. This next book though, The Forbidden Tower then starts turning the whole “happily ever after” on it’s head while beating it severely around the head and shoulders till it screams for mercy.

Turns out that the “damsel in distress” is a highly trained telepath with a couple of serious sex issues and the other members in the family are telepathic too. Our poor heterosexual hero, farm boy, space man, Andrew Carr turns out to be telepathic also but he has no idea how an alien society like Darkover makes all this work. He has to come to grips with relatives who can read his every thought and every emotion as he learns more about the strange world he has chosen to live in and do all this while trying to fit himself into this noble alien family. While we are at it he also has to learn the politics, the expectations, and the cultural taboos and last but not least their sexuality.

Now notice; I told you that Andrew Carr was heterosexual and that the in-laws were in the next room and that they were all newly married and telepathic and teaching Andrew to be OK with all this? Um, well think about it and you will understand why I love this book. Pure pot boiler!

The Forbidden Tower in my opinion was Marion Zimmer Bradley at her peak writing skills in the 20 or so books she wrote in the Darkover series, what gets written about the Darkover society here is much more detailed than she had ever been up until this point and that is probably why she decided to rewrite the older book The Bloody Sun in 1979 in order to give it a more consistent flow with the world she evolved and elaborated on. The Forbidden Tower is more than just a sequel to a simplistic story she wrote at 16, it’s an exploration of how even in the fictional world she built the characters lives do not come with easy answers, convenient labels, and every decision has a sometimes unknown price even after the story ends. She also goes to great lengths to intelligently explain her worlds culture and I don’t think you can get more intimate culturally than learning about their sexuality and how they express it. The typical sci-fi cliche telepathy aspects provided Marion with a springboard for why the Darkovan culture is so alien in contrast to our own even though it is familiar on the surface but what she explores even sexually here is never graphic or vulgar like say your Robert Heinlein.

Now about this sexuality that gets talked about in the book… This is the only book in the whole series that contains more than a brief mention of how these Darkover people express sexuality in their married lives and only because they are having to explain these things to Andrew. I am not talking about out and out pornography just intelligent discussion of the facts not descriptions of the acts. In a nutshell, sexuality is simply an expression of intimacy and a persons sexual preference only designates the emotional needs not the physical events that may occur. In other words, on Darkover whatever gender you would choose to marry may not be the only gender you will ever have sex with. Especially if you have a truly intimate friendship with someone, it is accepted and also somewhat expected if you share such intimacy it will also be expressed sexually even with the same gender. Their society has a very fluid idea of sexuality that allows for those gray areas in life to exist and occasional events to happen without being absolutely traumatic to your sense of self or what others may think of you. Marion expresses this whole quagmire of complex and hard to define human sexuality so well that this unique perspective has stayed with me since I read this book many years ago. It made sense to me as a teenager and I still appreciate Marion’s thoughts about it all now.

The most memorable part of this whole book in my opinion is the reactions of our poor heterosexual hero, farm boy, space man, Andrew Carr in learning all this twisted and perverted stuff. Here he was playing the traditional story book role of macho hero and faithful husband only to find the culture he married into has an entirely different set of expectations of him. The scene I will never forget is close to the end of the book when Damon confronts Andrew after he gets used to the fact he likes the whole sharing a bed with the other couple setup and keys him into the fact that Damon (Another man!) is in that bed too and Andrew needs to get over that particular aspect.

What is hilarious in hindsight is Marion Zimmer Bradley was a woman writing sci-fi novels back when women were not supposed to do such things who also ended up writing more intelligent gay or bisexual male characters with a natural masculinity and believable motives and realistic relationships with other men and women than most of the “real” Gay authors of the time period. It is incredibly sad but since her death a lot of people are missing out on a very unique amalgamation of space ships and technology, and sword & sorcery (well OK… psychic, mental matrix magic, oh whatever!) done in a fashion that is quite entertaining even if it can seem that it is heavily borrowing from the typical pulp sci-fi genre. Give this “Happily Ever After” a shot you might like it with your M/M Romance.

Tags: DAW, Grade A, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ménage Romance, SciFi