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Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67. She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens, and made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Fantastic/Amazing Stories in 1949. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to Vortex Science Fiction. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels. In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited many magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called Sword and Sorceress for DAW Books. Over the years she turned more to fantasy; The House Between the Worlds, although a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was "fantasy undiluted". She wrote a novel of the women in the Arthurian legends -- Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, and others -- entitled Mists of Avalon, which made the NY Times best seller list both in hardcover and trade paperback, and she also wrote The Firebrand, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical fantasy novels, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Mists of Avalon are prequels to Priestess of Avalon She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack. She was survived by her brother, Leslie Zimmer; her sons, David Bradley and Patrick Breen; her daughter, Moira Stern; and her grandchildren.… (more)
User reviews
The second collection, The Sword of Chaos, though still enjoyable, didn't impress me as much. I'm afraid I feel the same about Free Amazons of Darkover. The first collection seemed mostly taken from a contest, and perhaps that pushed the quality up. So many in the contents page of the next two anthologies seem the usual suspects. Besides two stories from MZB, Diana L. Paxson, Susan M. Shwartz, Elizabeth Waters and Patricia Matthews all appeared in the first two volumes. I think I also found myself rather irritated with the whole concept of the Free Amazons on reread. My first Darkover book as a teen was The Shattered Chain, which heavily features them--a "sisterhood" of woman who take oath to become family to each other, renouncing their own, and among other things--no son can be kept in the guildhouses beyond five years old. I just recently read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel about the plight of contemporary Muslim women, and I think that influenced how I read this. It no longer seems heroic to me that women would seclude themselves together to escape forced marriages, rape, incest and battery. Why aren't they fighting instead to make that every women's right? And how can they expect to change their society if they send their sons away? So I feel out of sorts with the theme. But it's also that I just can't pick out any story here as outstanding--even if all were enjoyable. I'd still recommend this to a Darkover fan, but with less enthusiasm than the first anthology.