Marion Zimmer Bradley controversy - Trigger Warning

[the4thpip]

Trigger Warning: Sexual abuse of boys and girls mentioned in these reports.

I am pretty stunned by these revelations:

Marion Zimmer Bradley, award-winning author (The Mists of Avalon, Darkover, amongst others) not only aided and abetted her husband in child abuse (Walter Breen, a man who was first convicted in 1954), she also took part in it, according to an email from her daughter published yesterday.

All relevant links here: http://www.metafilter.com/139836/Tri...ng-Child-Abuse

I don't think I've ever read any of her books. I know my mom got Mists of Avalon as a gift once, but fantasy has never been her cuppa. I sold a lot of Zimmer Bradley's books in the 90s when I was working at the LCS that also sold fantasy novels.

I know the sexual revolution movement of 1968 in Europe had been somewhat infiltrated by pederasts, but here it was actually the feminists within the movement that helped define consent and made clear that child molesters were not another persecuted sexual minority like gays and lesbians and transgenders. So it's very saddening and surprising to read that one of the leading feminist voices in fiction writing serially raped girls and boys and helped cover up the crimes of others.

[Sprite]

That is deeply saddening. I don't know what to else to say.

[the4thpip]

I put a trigger warning in the thread title (which was also different).
Mods, could you please put the trigger warning back in? Some people need it to avoid severe emotional reactions.

Edit: Thanks.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Wow, that's heinous, if true.

So is there any hint of it in her writing? I don't think I've read more than the odd short story.

So I guess the question is, should it affect how people read her, or should it be considered separate from the work? I dunno. If you only read books by good people that never did anything awful you'd have a very, very boring bookshelf. But something that rises to the level of sustained, rapacious criminality has to color one's perception.

[Arvandor]

Are you sure about all this? First I've heard, and I'd have thought a controversy about a big name author like her would receive more coverage. There should be more.


That said, I rarely show much interest in the private lives of famous people. So I've probably only myself to blame.

[Paradox]

I've read a ton of her Darkover stuff. It did have a medieval attitude of very young girls being married off, but it was generally in a negative light. Even the seduction scenes by an older person to a younger one were portrayed as heinous. One of the tenets of the society she had there was that people didn't even TALK about sex with someone of another generation, let alone have it (although, again, married off young to someone older seemed to be common). Seems very weird to me that she'd do this, but then writers don't always write about themselves.

[the4thpip]

Are you sure about all this? First I've heard, and I'd have thought a controversy about a big name author like her would receive more coverage. There should be more.

I would not have posted this if I had not checked out the links in the article I posted, and some of the links those pages link to, and judged the story to be most likely legit.