Leigh Brackett

[J-Sun]

I've just started reading the FM Masterworks edition of "Sea Kings of Mars and Otherworldly stories" and so far completed the first two stories.

I can definitely see the similarities with Edgar Rice Burroughs and whilst I am quite enjoying the stories and I am as yet unsure how as to whether I will really love them. Whilst the characters are more realistic and her settings/stories more imaginative, so far I've found the plotting itself less driven by that relentless energy that Burroughs was able to inject his stories with.

I wouldn't hold that against her unless it just really the cardinal thing for you with these stories. She's influenced by ERB, but not trying to be him - I basically agree with your comparison and it's just a trade-off.

 

[Fried Egg]

I just read a rather good story called "The Moon that Vanished" that is the best in the collection so far.

I must admit that I'm finding many of these stories somewhat underwhelming, such as her collaboration with Ray Bradbury in "Lorelei of the Red Mist".

Next up though is the novel length story "Sea-Kings of Mars".

 

[clovis-man]

I just read a rather good story called "The Moon that Vanished" that is the best in the collection so far.

I must admit that I'm finding many of these stories somewhat underwhelming, such as her collaboration with Ray Bradbury in "Lorelei of the Red Mist".

Next up though is the novel length story "Sea-Kings of Mars".

You're way ahead of me. I've only read "The Sorcerer of Rhiannon" and then got sidetracked with a host of other reading projects. I was struck with the burroughs-like nature of that one. I do plan to go on.

 

[Fried Egg]

I just finished the title story, more like a novella really, "The Sea Kings of Mars". Very entertaining, a bit like a cross between "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" it seemed to me...

 

[Connavar]

I just finished the title story, more like a novella really, "The Sea Kings of Mars". Very entertaining, a bit like a cross between "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" it seemed to me...

Heh it sounds like a fun cross between Star Wars and Indiana Jones. But then again the stories i have read makes me think her as Science fantasy adventure as author first. Have not read her earth, more standard SFF stories of hers.

If i didnt feel guilty about my to read pile being big i would want to buy her first two Erik John Stark books. I think of that series, the stories i have read as REH style S&S in space which makes her very appealing to me

 

[Fried Egg]

Almost finished the collection now and I've really been enjoying the Eric John Stark stories. However, I just read "The Tweener" which was very different, more a kind of psycological horror and set on Earth rather than Mars (although it does feature a martian creature) and it had a nice, ambiguous ending.

One more story to go now and then I'm done.

 

[Connavar]

Heh i knew you would like Eric John Stark, my first story of his made me respect LB so much more

 

[Vertigo]

The latest Phoenix Picks free book of the month is her book The Big Jump. I don't think I've read her works before (though maybe in my early reading days) so it'll be interesting to try this one out.

 

[Extollager]

http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/red-mist/

 

[Randy M.]

She also was screen writer on Hatari.

[...]

Also script writer for Rio Bravo, one of John Wayne's better Westerns, and was also involved in what were essentially remakes of that movie, El Dorado and Rio Grande. In fact, note that Brackett was a screen writer for several movies by Howard Hawks, as was William Faulkner. Hawks was a man's-man kind of director -- maybe best known in these parts as the producer (and probably director) of The Thing (From Another World) and I kind of equate his status to the movies of the time with Heinlein's status to the s.f. of the time. Hawks was known for homing in on the talent that he felt was competent to do what he wanted done and returning to those actors/writers/etc. again and again.

I would love to know what Brackett and Faulkner talked about, if indeed they ever shared the same room while writing. Brackett also wrote some mysteries in her time, which might have been a fruitful topic for discussion -- besides a series of short stories featuring Gavin Stevens, of which one was a mystery and rest used mysteries as an entry to other kinds of stories, Faulkner wrote one mystery novel, Intruder in the Dust.


Randy M.

 

[J-Sun]

After reading Ben Bova's 90s hard SF Mars and before reading its sequel ("and now, for something completely different..."), I finally read Leigh Brackett's The Secret of Sinharat/The People of the Talisman, the duo of two Eric John Stark stories set on a very different Mars, which I bought about six years ago. It was worth the wait. If I'd read Conan (still also on the waiting list) I'd probably be reminded of it but it most reminds of three things: a lot of Burroughs and not just Barsoomian adventures, but Tarzan, too. Some of Leiber's Lankhmar in the sense that we have sort of grungy urban settings, in part, complete with a Thieves' Quarter in one of them. And something like, say, Jack Williamson's Golden Blood or any of a number of Weird Tales-like spooky demented almost-supernatural adventures. And, for four, maybe a dash of Moore's Northwest Smith stories. And, can she write.

Stark and a friend speak:

Now, just before dawn, Camar the Martian spoke.
"Stark."
"Yes?"
"I am dying."
"Yes."
"I will not reach Kushat."
"No."
Camar nodded. He was silent again.

Take that Hemingway! That's how you write sentimental characters. Camar entrusts Stark with the completion of Camar's mission and we're off. And then there's stuff like this when Kushat prepares for a siege:

It was a waste of time, and Stark knew it. He thought that probably a fair number of men swarming up with them knew it, too, and certainly for the thieves at least it would have been much easier to simply slip away out of Kushat and avoid the inevitable. But he was beginning to have considerable respect for the people of Kushat. To his simple way of thinking, a man who would not fight to defend what was his did not deserve it and would not have it for long. Some people, he knew, professed to find nobility in the doctrine of surrender. Maybe they did. To him it was only making a virtue out of cowardice.

And then there are the innumerable passages of spooky weirdness and violent battles and narrow and clever escapes (and sometimes captures).

One story is 95 pages in my edition and the other's 128 and they both feel like full novels in a good way: they are not afraid of taking time for description or introspection but they never ever waste time either and pack a novel's worth of events into their short spans.

Granted, when these were written in '49 and '51 Brackett could claim she was writing SF because we didn't believe Mars was as forbidding as we now do but, really, this is adventure first, with a dollop of fantasy in science-fictional garb and almost no SF to it at all but, in this case, who cares? Fun stuff and not without depth. Highly recommended.

 

[Pratfall II]

I have been trying to get into Leigh Brackett because I recently watched the Robert Altman film "The Long Goodbye" (an adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel) for which she wrote the script. I loved her take on the Philip Marlowe character (portrayed by Eliot Gould in the film) and was delighted to find one of those rare female sf authors I'm always looking for...

 

[iansales]

I have been trying to get into Leigh Brackett because I recently watched the Robert Altman film "The Long Goodbye" (an adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel) for which she wrote the script. I loved her take on the Philip Marlowe character (portrayed by Eliot Gould in the film) and was delighted to find one of those rare female sf authors I'm always looking for...

Er, they're not rare. See SF Mistressworks.

 

[Pratfall II]

Yes. I saw your list and even shared it on facebook yesterday! I intend to delve into it at first convenience.

 

[iansales]

Thanks for the signal boost

 

[nomadman]

Probably my favorite S&S author (though quibblingly speaking she wrote S&P, aside from her other works). I think it's the balance she strikes between driving action propelled by strong characters, with that ethereal and sinister sense of wonder she evokes through her wonderful alien landscapes that makes does it for me. There's also that heart-aching melancholy that suffuses her work, and lends an added layer of pathos to her work once all the fighting's over and the dust has settled.

 

[Connavar]

Every time i finish a Stark novel this year i think Brackett is an author who should be known much more in SFF genre among today's fans. I love reading her dark hero, some of her passages are quite poetic that very few Science fantasy authors before or after could write like other than a few wordsmiths like Vance.

Im annoyed with the fact her SF is much harder to get in print over here. I dont want old second hands of her SF books,collections. That is publishers underrating this legend.

 

[nomadman]

A lot of her stuff was recently released under the Paizo Planet Stories banner, including her excellent Skaith trilogy.

I agree with you that she's an underrated wordsmith. There's a lean, supple feel to her work that succeeds in being both poetic and hard edged. Sort of Dashiell Hammett meets Clark Ashton Smith. Very good plotter as well. Maintains tension throughout, rarely foreshadows anything, eschews contrivance for the sake of easy resolutions.

 

[Connavar]

Thanks to Paizo planet i have read most of Stark,Skaith books and i meant her straight SF stories, short story collections are hard to find.

I wanted to get The Long Tommorow and finally there is a real use for Gollancz SF Masterworks that isnt just popular list of classic, modern books that dont fit classic quality but are choosen because of the author is famous name.

The Long Tomorrow (S.F. MASTERWORKS): Amazon.co.uk: Leigh Brackett: Books

I cant wait for the january 2014 reprinting by them of The Long Tommorow!