was a fan of science fiction and fantasy.
She sold her first piece as part of an amateur fiction contest in Fantastic/Amazing Stories in 1949 and, three years later, she sold her first professional short story to Vortex Science Fiction. Her first novel, The Door Through Space, expanded from a 1957 magazine story, was published by Ace in 1961.
As she later recalled, "it was the pulps and the sleazo paperbacks that put me through college." She remained flexible throughout
novels, Planet Savers and Sword of Aldones. They were an immediate success among SF fans, with Sword of Aldones earning a Hugo nomination in 1963.
Their financial success, however, was modest. For the rest of the decade, she supported her family by writing romances, confessions, mysteries, Gothics, astrology articles, and even daily horoscopes.
By the late 1960s, Bradley felt that the world of science fiction had become stale. As she would later write, "I was tired of writing the same novel over and over again. I was tired of reading the same novel over and over again."
She pledged to herself that she wouldn't write any more Darkover stories, and probably would have given up writing altogether if Anne McCaffrey hadn't urged her to read Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness.
LeGuin's book made Bradley think, in her words, that "maybe there was still some good science fiction after all!" She began to have ideas for new Darkover stories, and her next book, The World Wreckers, was published in 1971.
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