Marion Zimmer Bradley

Literary career

Early work

Bradley stated that when she was a child she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy authors such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, C. L. Moore, and Leigh Brackett, especially when they wrote about "the glint of strange suns on worlds that never were and never would be". Her first novel and much of her subsequent work show their influence strongly. At 17, she began her first novel The Forest House, her retelling of Norma; she finished it before her death.

In 1949 Bradley made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Amazing Stories with the short story "Outpost". "Outpost" was published in Amazing Stories Vol. 23, No. 12, the December 1949 issue; it had previously appeared in the fanzine Spacewarp Vol. 4, No. 3, in December 1948. Her first professional publication was a short story "Women Only", which appeared in the second (and final) issue of Vortex Science Fiction in 1953. Her first published novel-length work was Falcons of Narabedla, first published in the May 1957 issue of Other Worlds.

Gay and lesbian pulp fiction

Early in her career, writing as Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, Bradley produced several works outside the speculative fiction genre, including gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels; I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, her novels were considered pornographic when published.

Darkover

Bradley's 1958 novel The Planet Savers introduced the planet of Darkover, which became the setting of a popular series by Bradley and other authors. The Darkover milieu is a science fantasy fictional world, with science fiction as well as fantasy overtones: Darkover is a lost human colony where psi powers developed to an unusual degree, and work like magic, while technology has regressed to a more-or-less medieval stage. Bradley wrote many Darkover novels by herself, but in her later years collaborated with other authors for publication; her literary collaborators have continued the series since her death.

Encouraging fan interaction

Bradley took an active role in science fiction and fantasy fandom, promoting interaction with professional authors and publishers and making several important contributions to the subculture. In her teens she wrote letters to the pulp magazines of the time, such as the above-mentioned Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Starting in the late 1940s and continuing in the 1950s and 1960s, she published her own fanzines, including Astra's Tower, Day*Star, and Anything Box. She also co-edited fanzines, including Ugly Bird with Redd Boggs and MEZRAB with her first husband Robert Bradley. Bradley contributed to several other fanzines, including The Gorgon and The Nekromantikon.

For many years, Bradley encouraged Darkover fan fiction. She invited submissions from unpublished authors and reprinted some fan fiction in commercial Darkover anthologies. This ended after a dispute with a fan when Bradley wanted to use some parts of the fan's story she had read in a Darkover novel she was working in 1992. As a result, the novel remained unpublished and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.

Tolkien fandom

In the 1970s, as part of the contemporary wave of enthusiasm for J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, Bradley wrote an essay about Éowyn's supposed love for the hero Aragorn called "Of Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship" for the Astra's Tower fanzine. She also penned two short fanfic stories about Arwen, publishing them in chapbook format. One story, "The Jewel of Arwen" (originally published in a different form in the fanzine I Palantir #2, August 1961), appeared in her professional anthology The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley (1985), but was dropped from later reprints. She continued to contribute to different science fiction and fantasy fanzines and magazines throughout her career.

Other work

In 1966, Bradley became a co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism and is credited with coining the name of that group.

Bradley was the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which encouraged submissions of fantasy stories featuring original and non-traditional heroines from young and upcoming authors. Although she particularly encouraged young female authors, she was not averse to including stories from men in her anthologies. Mercedes Lackey was one of many authors who first appeared in the anthologies. Bradley also maintained a large family of writers at her home in Berkeley, California. Following Bradley's death, the anthology was edited by Elizabeth Waters and continued until 2019.

Her most famous single novel may be The Mists of Avalon, a retelling of the Camelot legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar. It grew into a series of books and, like the Darkover series, the later novels are written with or by other authors and have continued to appear since Bradley's death.

Bradley was posthumously awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000.

Child sex abuse allegations

In 2000, shortly after Bradley's death, author Stephen Goldin, the stepfather of a boy who had been molested by Walter Breen, started a website claiming that Bradley had been fully aware of her husband's crimes and made no effort to report them or protect his victims. However, Elizabeth Waters, Bradley's secretary, claimed that she was the first one who told Bradley and that Bradley "was extremely upset" at the news.

In 2014, Moira Greyland, the daughter of Bradley and Breen, accused Bradley of sexual abuse from the ages of 3 to 12. In an email to The Guardian, Greyland said that she had not spoken out before because "I thought that my mother's fans would be angry with me for saying anything against someone who had championed women's rights and made so many of them feel differently about themselves and their lives. I didn't want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut".

Greyland also confirmed Goldin's statements by saying that Bradley was aware of her husband's behavior and chose not to report him. Greyland reported that she was not the only victim of Bradley's, and also that she was one of the people who reported her father for child molestation, for which he received multiple convictions.

In December 2017, Bradley's daughter published a detailed biography of her mother, including her pedophilia and sexual abuse, in a book entitled The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.

Additionally, according to Greyland, Bradley assisted Breen (her husband at the time) in accessing and abusing multiple unrelated young boys, knowing he was a pedophile who was engaging in sexual contact with children as young as eight. Greyland states that Bradley and her live-in female partner (whom Greyland refers to as her step-mother) both admitted to knowledge of the abuse and purposefully avoided investigating, questioning, or notifying any authorities. Bradley was also accused of attempting to adopt a child whom Breen was interested in sexually.

In a 2014 interview, her brother Mark also confirmed the allegations, having himself been a victim of sexual abuse.

In response to these allegations, on July 2, 2014, Victor Gollancz Ltd, the publisher of Bradley's digital backlist, began donating all income from the sales of Bradley's e-books to the charity Save the Children. Janni Lee Simner donated advances and royalties from her two Darkover short stories and, at the request of her husband, Larry Hammer, payment for his sale to Bradley's magazine, to the American anti-sexual assault organization Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

A number of science fiction authors have publicly condemned Bradley. Among the first was John Scalzi, who expressed his horror within a day of the allegations being made public. Hugo Award winner Jim C. Hines wrote that Bradley's positive effect on her readers and fellow authors "makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic." G Willow Wilson, who, along with Bradley, is a fellow World Fantasy Award winner, said she was "speechless". Diana L. Paxson, who collaborated with Bradley on a number of novels and who continued to write novels set in the Avalon Series after Bradley's death, said that she was "shocked and appalled to read Moira Greyland's posts about her mother ... I never personally observed, nor had any reason to suspect, that (Bradley) was abusing either of her children."

Religion

While she was attending the College for Teachers (now University at Albany, SUNY) in Albany, Bradley became involved in Western esoteric tradition. She later completed a Rosicrucian correspondence course.

In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Bradley and Walter Breen founded the Aquarian Order of the Restoration based on the work of Dion Fortune. By 1961 she was formally initiating others, including Ramfis S. Firethorn.

Bradley was active in Darkmoon Circle, which was founded in 1978 by several women who were members of her Aquarian Order of the Restoration. Bradley renovated her garage to provide a meeting room for Darkmoon Circle as well as for other local Pagan groups. In 1981 Bradley, Diana L. Paxson, and Elisabeth Waters incorporated the Center for Non-Traditional Religion.

In the 1990s Bradley said she would return to Christianity, telling an interviewer: "I just go regularly to the Episcopalian church ... That pagan thing ... I feel that I've gotten past it. I would like people to explore the possibilities."

Death

After suffering declining health for years, Bradley died at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a heart attack. Her ashes were later scattered at Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England.

Pseudonyms

• Lee Chapman
• John Dexter
• Miriam Gardner
• Valerie Graves
• Morgan Ives
• Elfrieda Rivers (also Alfrida Rivers and Elfrida Rivers)
• Astara Zimmer (also Astra Zimmer and Astra Zimmer Bradley)
• John Jay Wells (with Juanita Coulson)