At some point in the 1960s, science fiction finally realized how big and interesting a topic gender and social change could be. Ursula Le Guin was the first woman to win a Hugo for Best Novel in 1970 for The Left Hand of Darkness, and then female authors won the award 4 times in the following 10 years. The late 1960s was when lots of female authors started breaking through, like Anne McCaffrey and James Tiptree, Jr.. Even more than the increasing prominence of female authors, gender became part of science fiction itself—compare the extremely dated traditional gender roles in Robert Heinlein’s “Red Planet” (1949) with his “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” (1966). There were important female writers before the 1960s, of course, and contemporary publishers have done great work to bring the works of such sword-and-sorcery writers as C.L. Moore.
But it astonishes me how much of Leigh Brackett‘s swashbuckling planetary science fiction is out of print. Leigh Brackett was one of the most prolific female authors working in science fiction prior to the New Wave. Leigh Brackett was a well-published and well-regarded pulp science fiction and film writer in the 1940s and 1950s. Cinephiles will recall many of her film credits, and Charlie Jane Anders had a great post on her script contributions to “The Empire Strikes Back”, with a link to Brackett’s original script. Yet Brackett’s Eric John Stark and Skaith novels are nearly her only works in print, novels that came at the end of her writing career. There have been anthologies of her earlier stories published once or twice over the last few decades, but these are currently out of print and with exorbitant prices on the used market on Amazon. But…there are eBooks these days! There’s no reason for old books to not be in print! It boggles my mind.
I’ve only read the novel Black Amazon of Mars, thanks to the public domain; it’s available from Project Gutenberg and LibriVox. One of the most striking things about it, besides its anachronistic and adventure-filled view of the solar system, is how well-developed its fictional universe is, full of references to alien societies developed over more than a decade or writing. It’s the original stories that established and developed the Brackettverse that are not in print. Certainly, the science in these stories is dated—Mercury, Venus, and Mars all have native biospheres teeming with dangerous creatures and alien civilizations that threaten settlers and adventurers. But what I read the pulps are not their hard-science portrayal of extraterrestrial life, but their weird monsters, lurid societies, and general craziness. We still re-read Edgar Rice Burroughs not for Mars, but for Barsoom—for the Tharks, kaldanes, rykors, and jetan. I expect the Brackettverse will be worth reading for some of the same reasons the Barsoomverse is.
Fortunately a lot of the pulps have been digitized and put online. For many of these stories, there’s no need to wait for an anthology to be reprinted. I love reading projects: reading every Hugo-winning novel, reading Fritz Leiber’s Nehwon stories in publication order, or reading every Earthsea book in 2019. Here’s a list of Leigh Brackett’s planetary stories in publication order (from her Wikipedia page), tagged with information from her ISFD page. Maybe eventually someone will go ahead and bring these to the wider reading public, but hopefully I’ll have time over the next year(s) to read and review these.
- “Martian Quest” ( Astounding Science Fiction, February 1940 )
- “The Treasure of Ptakuth” ( Astounding Science Fiction, April 1940 )
- “The Stellar Legion” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1940 )—Venus
- “The Tapestry Gate” ( Strange Stories, August 1940 )
- “The Demons of Darkside” (Startling Stories, January 1941) [Mercury]
- “Water Pirate” ( Super Science Stories, January 1941 & )
- “Interplanetary Reporter” (Startling Stories, May 1941)—Venus
- “The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1941 )—Venus
- “Lord of the Earthquake” (Science Fiction, June 1941)
- “No Man’s Land in Space” ( Amazing Stories July 1941 & )—Asteroid Belt
- “A World is Born” ( Comet Stories July 1941 )—Mercury
- “Retreat to the Stars” ( Astonishing Stories, November 1941 & )
- “Child of the Green Light” (Super Science Stories, February 1942)
- “The Sorcerer of Rhiannon” (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1942)
- “Child of the Sun” ( Planet Stories, Spring 1942 )
- “Out of the Sea” ( Astonishing Stories, June 1942 )
- “Cube from Space” ( Super Science Stories, August 1942 )
- “Outpost on Io” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1942 )
- “The Halfling” ( Astonishing Stories, February 1943 )
- “The Citadel of Lost Ships” ( Planet Stories, March 1943 )
- “The Blue Behemoth” ( Planet Stories, May 1943 )
- “Thralls of the Endless Night” ( Planet Stories, Fall 1943 )
- “The Jewel of Bas” ( Planet Stories, Spring 1944 )
- “The Veil of Astellar” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spring 1944 )
- “Terror Out of Space” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1944 )
- “Shadow Over Mars” ( Startling Stories, Fall 1944 )
- “The Vanishing Venusians” ( Planet Stories, Spring 1945 )
- “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, with Ray Bradbury ( Planet Stories, Summer 1946 )
- “The Moon That Vanished” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948 )
- “The Beast-Jewel of Mars” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1948 )
- “Quest of the Starhope” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949 )
- “Sea-Kings of Mars” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1949 )
- “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1949 )
- “Enchantress of Venus” ( Planet Stories, Fall 1949 )
- “The Lake of the Gone Forever” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949 )
- “The Dancing Girl of Ganymede” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1950 )
- “The Truants” ( Startling Stories, July 1950 )
- “The Citadel of Lost Ages” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1950 )
- “Black Amazon of Mars” ( Planet Stories, March 1951 )
- “The Starmen of Llyrdis” ( Startling Stories, March 1951 )
- “The Woman from Altair” ( Startling Stories, July 1951 )
- “The Shadows” (Startling Stories, February 1952)
- “The Last Days of Shandakor” (Startling Stories, April 1952)
- “Shannach – The Last” (Planet Stories, November 1952)
- “The Ark of Mars” ( Planet Stories, September 1953 )
- “Mars Minus Bisha” ( Planet Stories, January 1954 † )
- “Runaway” ( Startling Stories, Spring 1954 )
- “Teleportress of Alpha C” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1954/1955 )
- “The Tweener” ( The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1955 )
- “Last Call from Sector 9G” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1955 )
- “The Other People” ( Venture Science Fiction Magazine March 1957 )
- “All the Colors of the Rainbow” ( Venture Science Fiction Magazine, November 1957 )
- “The Road to Sinharat” ( 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”, with Edmond Hamilton (2005 anthology)
It’s interesting how often Leigh Brackett got top billing in these magazines, how many of the ads targeted women, and how metal some of these covers are.
panglott 