"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Best Of Marion Zimmer Bradley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

point of the day, and an empty mailbox will make me sulk or fall into a
depression. I published fanzines, wrote volumiнnously for them, wrote reams of
letters (I still do), and tried to write for the pulp magazines I still
passionately loved. (I couldn't afford to buy books, and it never would have
occurred to me then to try writing them. That came later, with my first novel,
SEVEN FROM THE STARS. "Falcons of Narabedla," and "Bird of Prey," which later
became novels, were novelette length Kuttner pastiches; not because I was
deliberately imitating but because I wanted to write stories like the ones I
read in the magazines.
Nevertheless my first long published novelette was not a pastiche, but my first
really original work; in this day of embryo transfers and test tube babies it
seems almost prophetic. "Centaurus Changeling" reflected my love of reading
medical books. "The Wind People" was, I think, a dream I had in Texas. Most of
those early Texas stories were reflecting a drab daily life cooking and washing
diapers and cleaning our small rented houses; and an extremely lively interior
life based on the books I read and the people I knew only through fanzines. Big
events in my life were a sandwich at the local hamburger cafe (a night out);
there was nothing else to do except go to church or listen to football games,
and I have kept a perfect record: I have never yet attended a football game. I
was, on the other hand, a vigorous listener to the Metropolitan Opera radio
broadcasts, and my first use of money, when I began having it, was to buy season
tickets to the San Francisco Opera; my biggest indulgence now is for telecast
video tapes and laser disc performances of real operas.
Well, a day came when I sold my first long novelette: "Bird of Prey," later to
be DOOR THROUGH SPACE, a novel about the Dry Towns which would surface later in
the Darkover novels. Then I began writing about Darkover. About the time I was
beginning to write science fiction again after a long hiatus writing
pseudonymous novels for a trashy publisher called Monarch Books, I left Texas
and my first husband. I have nothing bad to say about my first marriage: the
enforced loneliness threw me on my own resources and gave me leisure to write.
Brad thought I spent too much money on paper and postage, but if I was willing,
as he put it, to have these things instead of fashionable clothes and
possessions, it was OK with him; he was not ambitious. Also, if I was willing to
live modestly on his salary instead of getting a job (I preferred not to raise
our son in the care of someone whose market worth was even less than mine -
i.e., leave him in the care of an uneducated woman who would otherwise be doing
unskilled labor) he allowed me to do so. Evenнtually, the Monarch romances paid
my tuition to a local small college - ostensibly so I could get a teachнing
certificate and support the family after Brad reнtired from the railroad.
Instead I left Texas, moved to Berkeley, and married again; had two younger
chilнdren by my second marriage, and once again discovered that writing was a
way to stay home with my kids while working. This is why I have never believed
the story that domesticity damages a woman's intellectual life; while the kids
were small I wrote a few books every year.
Not easily. I remember training the kids that Mommy was never to be interrupted
at the typewriter, and I bribed them shamelessly for letting me alone - they
call it positive reinforcement, now.
But I had to learn to be sociable. I remember being afraid that with
intellectual stimulation, libraries, music, free concerts and a loving husband
who wished for my company instead of using me as a housekeeper, cook, laundress,