The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
	Book Information Publisher: DAW Book Type: Paperback Rating: 8 ISBN-13: 9780886772680 - ISBN-10: 0886772680 Publication Date: 4/5/1988 Book Reviews

This hefty collection, part of a new series on women SF writers, includes 16 stories arranged chronologically from Bradley's first sale in 1954 through two tales from 1980. Several are from her major work, the Darkover series, and many consider such topics as sex and pregnancy in space. Missing is a rationale for the selection of these particular tales (surely even Bradley has written better stories) or any explanation of their context, whether in her career or in the genre as a whole. Bradley was one of the few women writing SF before the last decade and one wonders how that fact connects to the explicit and implicit sentiments in these stories that "women are all alike," that biology is destiny and that women should or already do constitute a secret, witchlike society within the ruling patriarchal culture.