Marion Zimmer Bradley
| Name: | Marion Zimmer Bradley |
| Also Known As: | MZB |
| Occupation: | author, editor, historian |
| Medium: | Novels and short stories |
| Works: | Too many to list; Series include Darkover and the Mists of Avalon; |
| Official Website(s): | http://mzbworks.home.att.net/ |
| Fan Website(s): | |
| On Fanlore: | Related pages |
| STUB | This article is a stub. Please help us out by expanding or adding to it. |
Marion Zimmer Bradley is important to the larger world of writing and science fiction for many reasons. She's important to media fandom largely because of two things: her writing, especially the Darkover and Mists of Avalon series, that have inspired a great deal of fanfiction (more than the average written series), and the controversy about fanfiction supposedly making it impossible for her to publish one of her own novels.
Contents |
Her writing
Marion Zimmer Bradley's fanzines included Mezrab and "her earlier fanzine, Astra's Tower."[1]
See Darkover for more information on that series.
The Controversy about Fanfiction
After Marion Zimmer Bradley had written a number of Darkover novels and stories, she started accepting submissions from other authors to produce Darkover anthologies, including unpublished authors; she also encouraged fan fiction within the Darkover universe. In 1982 she edited a Darkover fanzine, Bitter Honeymoon & Other stories.
At some point circa 1992, MZB saw something she liked in a fanwork, and offered the fan money and credit in exchange for the idea (or character).[2] The fan tried to negotiate different terms. At this point, the story becomes hard to follow. Fanworks.org has tried to pull all available versions of the story to one page here but it leaves as many questions as it answers.
The fan says she recieved a letter from MZB's lawyers threatening her with a lawsuit. The story among authors in SF fandom is "Marion lost a book! Because of fanfic!" or in more detail, that the fan had a lawyer, and made it impossible for MZB to continue working on the novel she was working on, losing her anywhere from months to "four years" of work, and thus proving that allowing fanfic in your universe is the first step to a life of poverty and degradation.
Authors/editors who tell versions of this story to "prove" how dangerous fanfic is:
[more here]
Authors/editors who tell a more nuanced version of the story:
- Patrick Nielsen Hayden,
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden,
[more here]
Misc.
Back in the '70s, MZB wrote Star Trek stories for fanzines:
- "The Immovable Object," published in the zine The Other Side of Paradise #2, edited by Amy Falkowitz and Signe Landon in 1977, related the early days of the Enterprise under Captain Kirk.[3]
- "Cross Currents", published in Obsc'zine #4, edited by Lori Chapek-Carleton, was a short Uhuru/Chapel story.
She coined the name The Society for Creative Anachronism.[4]
Wikipedia lists pseudonyms that she used early in her career -- Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, among others, that she used to write gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels. For example, I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, they were considered pornographic when published, and were a rare source of gay lit of the time.[5]
References
- ↑ Zimmer, Paul Edwin. "Appreciation" . in Return to Avalon edited by Jennifer Roberson. New York, NY: Daw Books, 1996. p. 303.
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ Verba, Joan. Boldly Writing. F T L Pubns, March 26, 2003
- ↑ MZB's wikipedia page
- ↑ MZB's wikipedia page
Categories: People | Stubs | Industry
