Book Review: The Colors of Space

  

© 1963 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

 

 

OK, deep breath. Many weird feelings with this one.

 

First, the good.

 

This is my third time through The Colors of Space. The first time I read it must have been in the late 70s, during my own personal Golden Age of Science Fiction (age 12), if not a year or two earlier. I discovered it mysteriously on a shelf in my grandparent’s basement, and only later did I figure it must have belonged to my uncle, only eight years older than me. In short order I read it, and while a lot of it sailed over my head, some scattered trivia in the novel and some rudimentary SF tropes stayed with me for decades.

 

For example, one of the aliens in the story is named Ringg. Ringg. With two g’s at the end. I vividly remembered it over the years, long after I forgot the book’s title and authoress. Another plot point that stuck with me was my first introduction to color blindness. Our hero undergoes substantial plastic surgery to disguise himself among the bad aliens, who cannot see color. Then, during a seemingly harmless conversation, he mentions that a certain star is “green.” He catches himself and realizes no one else has caught on to his mistake. At least, he thinks so, and the tension of uncertainty ratchets up.

 

So I read it and it sailed away down the river of forgetfulness, save for those two items.

 

About fifteen years ago, curious and nostalgic, I did some web searching one afternoon using the key words “Ringg” and “color blind” and, after numerous dead ends, landed upon the correct title. Ah! Time for a re-read! Soon the postman brought the The Colors of Space to my mailbox and I immediately commenced its re-read.

 

This happened the year before I started this blog, so I did not review here in these electronic pages. I don’t remember much feeling one way or the other, except that I enjoyed it. Some scenes in the beginning and middle had a déjà vu feel to them, but of the ending it was as if I had undergone a Lharian brain wipe (what our aliens do to you after you’ve traveled with them between the stars).

 

Finally, about two months ago, I scored it in a local bookstore as a reward for a stressful yet productive month of labor. After reading a lot of military history and epics this spring, I decided to run through a bunch of my SF paperbacks, and this was #3 on my list. I read it, for the third time in my life, in four days.

 

And I loved it! To me, this is the quintessential Golden Age science fiction story. Every young fan of SF needs to read this story. It ranks right up there with all of Asimov and Heinlein’s “juveniles.”

 

The Colors of Space is a concise, compact tale of a young man avenging his father and giving mankind the “gift” of travel between the stars. Our hero, young Bart Steel, is waiting for his dad at a Lhari spaceport. The Lhari are a race of alien traders who alone know the secret of interstellar travel. Turns out Bart’s dad has been killed by the Lhari, and a stranger impersonating Bart’s father tells the young man he must finish his father’s quest: transform himself into a Lhari, learn the secret – it has something to do with an “eighth color” – and share it with his human masters. Bart follows through, but soon learns that the Lhari may be more “human” than they present and the humans are more “monsters” than they realize.

 

A fast paced tale to satisfy any youngling with an interest in science, fiction, and science fiction. Some tense scenes, some action scenes, and a satisfying conclusion where the real bad guys get it and everyone ends up happy.

 

So, naturally, I grade this an A+. Glad I re-read it that third time. Took me back to happy place in my childhood.

 

So why all the rumbling about weird feelings at the beginning of this post?

 

Well, it has to do with something that happened between my second and third reading of this book. Something I found out:

 

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter came forward and stated that she had been abused by her mother between the ages of 3 and 12. Her father, too, was involved and had sexually abused other children, of which her mother knew about. I believed he was convicted and may have spent time in prison towards the end of his life, in 1993. Bradley herself got her reward in 1999.

 

In addition to the child sexual abuse, Bradley was a hardcore feminist and extremely pro other perversions I will not go into in this blog. She is probably most famous for her Mists of Avalon series, a feminist and pro other perversion take on the Arthurian mythos. Fortunately, by the time my daughters were old enough to read fantasy books on this level, I was aware of this woman’s deviancies, and I was able to steer them away from these books.

 

For the past two or three years, I have been an ardent anti-“Cancel Culture” man. But now I faced a dilemma before I picked up Colors of Space a third time. Do I re-read a beloved work when the author’s disgusting personal life is pubic knowledge? (At least, for those in the know.)

 

I was troubled, and really did give much thought to whether I should read the book. Though I’d only be devoting three or four hours to read it, it still would be three or four hours of my life I’d never get back. And I am a firm believer in the GIGO application to the mind, body, and soul – Garbage In, Garbage Out. Would I want this woman infecting my life with her nastiness?

 

Hmmm.

 

Wisdom came from my youngest daughter, age 13. I had spoken about this with my wife and oldest, too, but Patch came up with the elegant solution. “Dad,” she said, “does she write about child abuse in her novel?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then it’s okay to read it.”

 

That made sense to me. We talked over some other possible examples. It’s okay to cancel OJ Simpson because he wrote a book about murdering his wife, which he actually did (and another innocent person). It’s not okay to cancel Pete Tchaikovsky because his countrymen invaded a bordering nation unprovoked 130 years after his death. Or something like that. Or more specifically, you shouldn’t cancel The Colors of Space because of Bradley’s deviancies, but it’s okay to cancel The Mists of Avalon.

 

I dunno. It’s not an airtight hard-and-fast ironclad rule, but it allowed me to read this childhood classic guilt free. YMMV.