Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. She was noted for the female perspective in her writing, something before little-seen in sword and sorcery fantasy. Bradley began writing at the age of 17 and later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hardin-Simmons University. She co-founded the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1966. She also served as the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. She was posthumously awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000. Though Bradley remained popular during her lifetime, her reputation was posthumously marred when in 2014 her daughter reported that Bradley had sexually abused her, and allegedly assisted her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in his own grooming and sexual abuse of multiple unrelated children. Many science fiction authors have since publicly condemned Bradley.
Personal life Born Marion Eleanor Zimmer on June 3, 1930, she lived on a farm in Albany, New York, and began writing at the age of 17. She was married to Robert Alden Bradley from October 26, 1949, until their divorce on May 19, 1964. They had a son, David Robert Bradley (1950–2008). During the 1950s she was introduced to lesbian advocacy organization the Daughters of Bilitis. After her divorce, Bradley married numismatist Walter Breen on June 3, 1964. They had a daughter, Moira Greyland, who is a professional harpist and singer, and a son, Mark Greyland. Moira's son, RJ Stern, is a college football player who was featured on season 5 of Last Chance U on Netflix. In 1965, Bradley graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. Afterward, she moved to Berkeley, California, to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, between 1965 and 1967. In 1966, with her brother Paul Edwin Zimmer, she helped found and name the Society for Creative Anachronism and was involved in developing several local groups, some in New York after her move to Staten Island. In particular, she and Breen founded and served as the first directors for the Kingdom of the East. Bradley and Breen separated in 1979 but remained married. They also continued a business relationship and lived on the same street for over a decade. They officially divorced on May 9, 1990, the year Breen was arrested on child molestation charges after a 13-year-old boy reported that Breen had been molesting him for four years. She had edited Breen's book Greek Love (published pseudonymously), which was dedicated to her (named simply as "[his] wife"), and in 1965 had contributed an article, "Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Literature", to Breen's journal The International Journal of Greek Love. She allegedly was told of Breen's abuse of a minor by her secretary; the secretary has said "she was extremely upset" and immediately divorced him. However, Bradley's daughter Moira has alleged that Bradley knew of Breen's abuse for many years prior to being 'informed' by her secretary, but never attempted to call the police or otherwise protect Breen's victims.
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.
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