The World Wreckers
core novel 1971 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1971 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.72 (2,067 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 215 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780441911714 |
Synopsis
A mysterious off-world woman accepts a covert contract to sabotage Darkover's fragile economy, part of a scheme to force the proud planet into deeper dependence on the Terran Empire it has long resisted joining outright. As strange ecological disasters and unexplained failures spread across the countryside, a local Darkovan leader grows alarmed enough to break with tradition and recruit a mixed band of telepathic men and women, pairing their individual gifts so they can combine their powers in ways Tower training normally forbids. Together they set out to uncover who is behind the escalating sabotage before it destroys the world's independence, testing old prejudices about gender, technology, and psychic power along the way.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 6 of 22 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Notes
- From the series record (Darkover): Core Canon = the 22 novels published under Bradley's own credited authorship during her lifetime (1958-1999; some jointly credited with a co-author -- Mercedes Lackey on Rediscovery, Adrienne Martine-Barnes on Exile's Song/The Shadow Matrix/Traitor's Sun -- but always alongside Bradley herself). Per Bradley's own stated preference, publication order is used rather than the internal Darkovan chronology (Founding/Ages of Chaos/Hundred Kingdoms/Rediscovery/Modern eras), consistent with this project's deliberately-unrecorded-chronology pattern used elsewhere. Expanded Canon (the post-2000 continuation novels written entirely by Deborah J. Ross after Bradley's 1999 death -- the Clingfire Trilogy, The Alton Gift, Hastur Lord, The Children of Kings, Thunderlord!, The Laran Gambit, Arilinn) is deliberately deferred out of scope per the credited-authorship bright line (same approach as Pern's generational handoff), same treatment as InCryptid's and Solomon Kane's deferred Expanded backlogs; not populated as book records yet. The Door Through Space (1961) shares worldbuilding details but is explicitly not part of the Darkover setting per its own cover copy and is excluded. The Sword and Sorceress anthology series (which Bradley edited but did not herself write) is out of scope for the same reason Songs of the Dying Earth was excluded from Cugel's Saga.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Darkover: position 6 of 22: previous The Winds of Darkover (1970) · next Darkover Landfall (1972)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Darkover series
- sfadb: Marion Zimmer Bradley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Wreckers
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