Beltane 1999 Newsletter Hail and Farewell Marion Zimmer Bradley

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 remained four months on the NY Times best seller list, and she also wrote The Firebrand, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical fantasy novel, The Forest House, is a prequel to Mists Of Avalon, and Lady Of Avalon fits between them.

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 two grandchildren.

(reprinted from the Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasty Magazine)