Leigh Brackett

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Leigh Brackett was a writer, particularly of SF, but also of mysteries and screenplays. Her work in Hollywood included the noir film "The Big Sleep" (1946) (written with William Faulkner) and the screenplay and novelization for "The Empire Strikes Back" (arguably the best of the Star Wars movies). "Empire" was posthumously dedicated to her.

Brackett married fellow SF writer Edmond Hamilton on Dec. 31, 1946. They collaborated officially only on one work, Stark and the Star Kings.

Commentary

Brackett was described by Damon Knight:

Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow is a startling performance from the gifted author of so much, but so entirely different, science-fantasy. Miss Brackett is celebrated among fans for her intense, moody, super-masculine epics of doomed heroes on far planets, all extremely poetic and fantastical, and all very much alike.[1]

Michael Moorcock:

Leigh Brackett would have credited Edgar Rice Burroughs for everything, but Burroughs lacked her poetic vision, her specific, characteristic talent, and in my view her finest Martian adventure stories remain superior to all others.[2]

Bibliography

notable works

  • "Martian Quest" (1940 in Astounding Science Fiction; her first published SF story)
  • "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (1943) (colonialism themes)
  • No Good from a Corpse (1944 novel; first published novel; a hard-boiled detective mystery)
  • Screenplay with William Faulkner for The Big Sleep
  • Shadow Over Mars (1944 novel SF; first novel-length SF work)
  • Lorelei of the Red Mist (started by Brackett, finished by Ray Bradbury)
  • Enchantress of Venus (1949) (picked up themes she started in Lorelei of the Red Mist)
  • "The Moon That Vanished"
  • Queen of the Martian Catacombs (1949; first Eric John Stark)
  • The Long Tomorrow (1955) (post-nuclear holocaust)
  • The Sword of Rhiannon (1949; first published in 1949 as Sea-Kings of Mars)
  • The Last Days of Shandakor
  • Shannach -- the Last
  • Last Call from Sector 9G
  • "The Road to Sinharat"* "Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon"
  • The Ginger Star (1974)
  • The Hounds of Skaith (1974)
  • The Reavers of Skaith (1976)

Short fiction

1940-1941

1942-1944

1945-1950

1951-1955

After 1955

  • The Other People (novelette; Venture Science Fiction Magazine March 1957) - also published as The Queer Ones
  • All the Colors of the Rainbow (novelette; Venture Science Fiction Magazine November 1957)
  • The Road to Sinharat (novelette; Amazing Stories May 1963)
  • Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction October 1964)
  • Come Sing the Moons of Moravenn (The Other Side of Tomorrow, 1973)
  • How Bright the Stars (Flame Tree Planet: An Anthology of Religious Science-Fantasy, 1973)
  • Mommies and Daddies (Crisis, 1974)
  • Stark and the Star Kings (2005), with Edmond Hamilton (in the collection of the same name)

Novels

  • Shadow Over Mars (1951) - first published 1944; published in US as The Nemesis from Terra (1961)
  • The Starmen (1952) - also published as The Galactic Breed (1955, abridged), The Starmen of Llyrdis (1976)
  • The Sword of Rhiannon (1953) - first published as Sea-Kings of Mars (1949)
  • The Big Jump (1955)
  • The Long Tomorrow (1955)
  • Alpha Centauri or Die! (1963) - fixup of The Ark of Mars (1953) and Teleportress of Alpha C (1954)
  • The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman (1964) - expansions of Queen of the Martian Catacombs (1949) and Black Amazon of Mars (1951) respectively, packaged back-to-back as an Ace Double novel; republished under one title as Eric John Stark, Outlaw of Mars (1982)

Skaith novels

  • The Ginger Star (1974) - first published as a two-part serial in Worlds of if, February and April 1974
  • The Hounds of Skaith (1974)
  • The Reavers of Skaith (1976)

Collections

  • The Coming of the Terrans (1967)
    • Includes The Beast-Jewel of Mars, Mars Minus Bisha, The Last Days of Shandakor, Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon, and The Road to Sinharat.
  • The Halfling and Other Stories (1973)
    • Includes The Halfling, The Dancing Girl of Ganymede, The Citadel of Lost Ages, All the Colors of the Rainbow, The Shadows, Enchantress of Venus, and The Lake of the Gone Forever.
  • The Book of Skaith (1976) - omnibus edition of the three Skaith novels
  • The Best of Leigh Brackett (1977), ed. Edmond Hamilton
    • Includes The Jewel of Bas, The Vanishing Venusians, The Veil of Astellar, The Moon that Vanished, Enchantress of Venus, The Woman from Altair, The Last Days of Shandakor, Shannach — The Last, The Tweener, and The Queer Ones.
  • Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (2000)
    • Includes all of Brackett's early short stories published up to March 1943.
  • Stark and the Star Kings (2005), with Edmond Hamilton
    • Includes Queen of the Martian Catacombs, Enchantress of Venus, Black Amazon of Mars, Stark and the Star Kings (collaboration with Hamilton)
  • Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories (2005) - Volume 46 in Gollancz's Fantasy Masterworks series
    • Includes The Sorcerer of Rhiannon, The Jewel of Bas, Terror out of Space, Lorelei of the Red Mist, The Moon that Vanished, Sea-Kings of Mars, Queen of the Martian Catacombs, Enchantress of Venus, Black Amazon of Mars, The Last Days of Shandakor, The Tweener, and The Road to Sinharat

As editor

  • The Best of Planet Stories No. 1 (anthology; 1975)
  • The Best of Edmond Hamilton (collection; 1977)

Other genres

  • No Good from a Corpse (crime novel; 1944)
  • Stranger at Home (crime novel; 1946) - ghost-writer for the actor George Sanders
  • An Eye for an Eye (crime novel; 1957) - adapted for television as Markham (1959-60; CBS)
  • The Tiger Among Us (crime novel; 1957; UK 1960 as Fear No Evil), filmed as 13 West Street (1962; dir. Philip Leacock)
  • Follow the Free Wind (western novel; 1963) - received the Spur Award from Western Writers of America
  • Rio Bravo (western novel; 1959) - novelization based on the screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett
  • Silent Partner (crime novel; 1969)

Notes

  1. ↑ In Search of Wonder, 2d Ed., p.262
  2. ↑ Quoted in introduction to Leigh Brackett story in The Space Opera Renaissance, ed. Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell (2006), pp. 93-94).

Further reading

  • Dave Truesdale with Paul McGuire III, "Interview with Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton", Tangent, No. 5 (Summer 1976) (available online at http://www.tangentonline.com/). Reprinted in Science Fiction Review, v.6, n.2 (May 1977), pp.6-15; reprinted again in Tangent (new print incarnation), v.1, n.4 (Jan./Feb. 1994).
The Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton interview was first published in Tangent No. 5, Summer 1976 and can be found, as of December 7, 2009, at Tangent Online (www.tangentonline.com) at the Interviews link. Interviewers are Dave Truesdale with Paul McGuire III. The interview was then reprinted in Science Fiction Review for May, 1977, then again in the new print incarnation of Tangent (Vol. 1, No. 4, Jan/Feb, 1994).
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