Leigh Brackett
Personal Information
Description
Leigh Brackett was born in in Los Angeles, California and raised near Santa Monica. She spent her youth as an athletic tom-boy, playing volleyball and reading stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard. She began writing fantastic adventures of her own, and her first published science fiction story was "Martian Quest", which appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Her first novel, No Good from a Corpse (1944), was a hard-boiled mystery novel. This novel inspired Hollywood director Howard Hawks to ask her to help William Faulkner write the script for the film The Big Sleep (1946). In 1946 she married science fiction author Edmond Hamilton, and after the release of The Big Sleep, returned to writing science-fiction writing, producing several novel-length science fiction works in addition to short stories. In 1955, as pulp magazines were folding and the market for short science fiction adventure stories was cooling, she began to work more for the film and television markets, although she still produced some science fiction, such as The Long Tomorrow (1955). She returned to fiction writing in the 1970s, producing The Ginger Star (1974), The Hounds of Skaith (1974), and The Reavers of Skaith (1976), collected as The Book of Skaith in 1976.
Books
Lorelei of the Red Mist
Picking up where Martian Quest: The Early Brackett left off, this volume collects 12 more tales of strange adventures on other worlds from the undisputed "Queen of Space Opera." Drawn from Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories pulp magazines, this tome revels in the 1946 titular collaboration with Ray Bradbury--who also contributes an original poem about Leigh Brackett as well as an essay about meeting & working with Brackett. Harry Turtledove, the modern master of "alternate history," provides the introduction and the book is adorned with Frank Kelly Freas' vintage illustrations from the 1953 reprint of "Lorelei of the Red Mist." In a review of Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, Paul di Filippo says "Plainly, Brackett was growing with every story she wrote, not yet 30 years old by the volume's end, with the best yet to come." Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances is where some of that "best" can found.
Star wars - the empire strikes back (illustrated screenplay)
Illustrated screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back
The Empire Strikes Back
No Good from a Corpse (Saturday Night Special)
No Good From a Corpse offers hard-boiled private eye Ed Clive, who gets involved with a dead girl, and suspects every one of her boyfriends--an ex-husband, a playboy, a blackmailer and a brute. There's a woman suspect as well, and a long chase through Sunset Strip.
The Reavers of Skaith
The Book of Skaith - Volume One: [The Ginger Star](/works/OL2046153W/) - Volume Two: [The Hounds of Skaith](/works/OL2046124W/) - Volume Three: The Reavers of Skaith A Fugitive on Skaith Safe at last, or so Stark thought. But before he could escape from the dying planet of the ginger star, he was betrayed by that treacherous Antarean Penkawr-Che. That villain among men intended to kill Stark, and this time there would be no escape. Or so Penkawr-Che thought. Abandoned by friends and besieged by enemies, Stark was a fugitive once more. Running from all those who hunted him, he embarked on a nightmarish journey through deadly jungles and acrossure tor-infested se asto risk his life for those who hungered for his death!
The Hounds of Skaith
Eric John Stark rides again! Leigh Brackett's unforgettable science-fantasy hero of The Secret of Sinharat and The Ginger Star cuts a red swath across the brutal planet Skaith Having killed the king-dog Flay in his quest to save an old friend and mentor, Stark now wanders the Worldheart in the company of nine ferocious canines that respond to his every command. Ruling the hounds of Skaith means tapping into the savagery of Stark's own mysterious past, and even a moment's hesitation could turn the pack against him!
The Coming of the Terrans
When earthmen came to Mars they found a world of dead sea-bottoms, lost civilizations, and secretive barbarian tribes who resented their intrusion on this ancient planet and sneered at the gleaming products of Terrestrial science. The Earthmen in turn looked down upon the crumbling Martian culture, laughed at the stories of invincible gods and magic still lingering in forbidden cities like Valkis, Jekkara, Barrakesh... But the dangers were real.
The Secret of Sinharat
Enter Eric John Stark, adventurer, rebel, wildman. Raised on the sun-soaked, savage world of Mercury, Stark lives among the people of the civilized solar system, but his veneer of calm masks a warrior's spirit. In the murderous Martian Drylands the greatest criminals in the galaxy hatch a conspiracy of red revolution. Stark's involvement leads to the forgotten ruins of the Martian Low Canals, an unlikely romance and a secret so potent it could shake the Red Planet to its core.
Shadow Over Mars
First published in the Fall 1944 issue of Startling Stories. Its first book publication was in 1951, by Sydney Pemberton. Later republished as "The Nemesis from Terra".
The Long Tomorrow
"No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America." --Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth Amendment Two generations after the Destruction, rumors persist about a secret desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plot to revive the cities. Almost a continent away, Len Coulter has heard whisperings that fired his imagination. And then one day he finds a strange wooden box...
The Big Jump
Stardrive! Access to the farthest reaches of the Galaxy! Ballantyne created and tested the new engines. Then he returned from the stars ... alone and dying of radiation. Arch Comyn must find out what happened -- and to do that he must make the perilous journey himself, and come face to face with the horrifying secret that awaits mankind.