rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

reposted in the other thread.

many years follow up to the Marion Zimmer Bradley revelations from 2015, posted way way up thread, this kind of started circulating again recently as her sister-in-law, fantasy writer Diane Paston, who lives at a house called Greyhaven in Berkeley, was attacked by a family member last week in an attempted murder. Given that I've lived in this town for over 30 years I was surprised that I'd never known about the MZB revelations (missed it in 2015) nor did I even know she'd lived here, but she lived not far from where I live now (not at this house Greyhaven, a different one). Because I'm unemployed and bored this week, I did a huge deepdive into this over the past few days.

1) the situation with her husband, Walter Breen, was well known in fan communities dating back to the early 60's and his exclusion from a fan convention was a massive point of contention in that community. Biggest revelation to me was how organized these sci fi fan communities were all the way back to 1960 or so; they had newsletters, distributed zines, etc. I'm not a fandom person at all, so I'd really thought these types of conventions started with Star Trek in the 70's.

2) reading through some of the documentation of the time (aforementioned zines) there was absolutely an attitude in the community that would be rather shocking today; that adult male / child/teen sexual activity were not necessarily cause for concern. One would think that most people's attitudes on this shifted by the 90's when this started to come to light again (when Breen was arrested for the third time for molesting a child) but it's clear from MZB's testimony, and the testimony of her secretary/lover Elisabeth Waters (who is still alive and who, based on her response to this coming up again in 2015, is a fucking monster), that 'people's sexuality was their business' and they didn't bring up or question a lot of things in the lead up to that final arrest.

3) MZB's daughter seems like a highly traumatized person (no surprise) but has also gravitated to the far right, condemning all homosexuals as child molesters and has also accused her mother of 'satanic ritual abuse' which I'm sure we all cock an eyebrow at.

4) MZB's grandchild, Paston and Greyhaven were on Last Chance U (in the season I didn't watch, obviously) and apparently this came up there.

My final takeaway: hippy SCA sword and sorcery-based alternative family groups in the 60's and 70's did not have a very firm grasp on morality and there is still likely a lot of fallout from that. One wonders what happened to the rest of Breen's victims, most of whom sounded like street kids and kids going in and out of the foster system.