Category Archives: Planet Stories

Jerome Bixby

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Jerome Bixby was born on January 11, 1923. He passed away on April 28, 1998.

Bixby was a short story writer who did most of his work in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best remembered for his short story “It’s a Good Life”, which was filmed as an episode on the original Twilight Zone and starred Billy Mumy.

If Bixby wrote any novels, the ISFDB doesn’t list them.

Four collections of Bixby’s work were published, two in his lifetime, one in 2011, and the final one in 2014. A number of his stories haven’t been collected.

Bixby went on to become a screenwriter and wrote four episodes of the original Star Trek: “Mirror, Mirror”, “The Day of the Dove”,  “Requim for Methusaleh”, and “By Any Other Name”. He also wrote westerns.

In addition to being a writer, Bixby also edited a few pulps before they died. He was editor of Planet Stories (1950=1951)  and Jungle Stories (1949-1951).

Blogging Brackett: “The Beast-Jewel of Mars”

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Today, December 7, is the birthday of Leigh Brackett (1915-1978). That’s big deal here.

For today’s birthday post, I’m going to look at “The Beast-Jewel of Mars”. It was first published in the Winter 1948 issue of Planet Stories. It is currently available in the ebook Martian Quest (not to be confused with the omnibus of the same name from Haffner Press. That one is out of print. Amazon lists one copy of the Haffner volume for $256.)

Burk Winters is a spaceship captain who has resigned. His fiance, Jill Leland, took a flier out into the desert. Her flier was found crashed, but her body is missing. He’s going to look for her. Burk has an unusual plan to do that.

There’s a Martian practice known as Shanga, the going-back. In it a person regresses to a more primitive state. It’s like a legalized drug. There are Shanga parlors, sort of like opium dens, but the experience is weak. Burk wants the full experience, which is technically illegal. Jill was a Shanga addict, and Burk is hoping to find her.

Here’s how Brackett describes what Burk sees when he goes to a Shanga parlor.

Their faces (the Earthmen’s) were pallid and effeminate, scored with the haggard marks of life lived under the driving tension of a super-modren age.

A Martian woman sat in an alcove, behind a glassite desk. She was dark, sophisticatedly lovely. Her costume was the aftfully adapted short rove of ancient Mars, and she wore no ornament. Her slanting topaz eyes regarded Burk Winters with professional plesantness, but deep in them he could see the scorn and the pride of a race so old that the Terran exquisites of the Trade Cities were only crude children beside it.

Burk goes to an ancient city on a canal, a city that was once a port on an ancient sea, now long dry. There he undergoes Shanga, and he finds a lot more than he bargains for.

Leigh Brackett

One of the pleasures of reading Brackett is that, like REH, she could describe action with poetry. She can set a mood with a few lines of description like few writers can. There is a strong undercurrent of anti-colonialism in this story. That’s something of a trend today in what’s being currently written. Brackett shows the effects of colonialism in this story, and she didn’t need a doorstop of a book to do it. And she does it without neglecting character or action.

Burk is like many of Brackett’s characters. He’s a hard, bitter man who is looking for a lost love. This is a theme that crops up often in Brackett’s work, and in her hands, it’s always fresh.

I found “The Beast-Jewel of Mars” to be an excellent story. I’m not going to give the ending away. I’ll let you read it for yourself. There’s something about Brackett’s work that speaks to me deep in my soul. Yeah, I know, that sounds pretty deep. But her work scratches an itch that few other writers can. You should check her out if you haven’t yet.

 

Retro Hugos: “The Jewel of Bas” by Leigh Brackett

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I did a post on this story a few years ago, which you can find here. I’m not going to write another review.  I did reread “The Jewel of Bas”, mostly in the waiting room while my son was having his wisdom teeth removed this afternoon. I’ll post a few thoughts on it below and try not to repeat what I wrote in the original post.

“The Jewel of Bas” was originally published in the Spring 1944 issue of Planet Stories. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be it on the cover or not. The man and the woman don’t look like the two principle characters in the story, but the rest of the illustration could be.

I said in the earlier post on this story that I didn’t think it was part of Brackett’s solar system but that it might could be. Having read the story again, I am going to back off of that position a little. I very well could be.

I also liked how Brackett  mentioned Cimmeria and Hyperborea, and made them a part of the world of the story. One thing I missed was that the god Bas said that he came from Atlantis and that the priests of Dagon there considered him a living blasphemy.  One of Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis stories was titled “The Spawn of Dagon”  Kuttner was a friend of Brackett’s and something of a mentor to her as she was beginning her career. An homage to Kuttner in this reference. I doubt we can know for sure at this late date, but I like to think so.

I really liked this story a lot.  There’s one more in the novella category left, and that’s Kuttner’s “A God Named Kroo”.  That will be the next in this series.

UPDATE: I saw after I posted this review that the Retro Hugo winners had been announced. I wasn’t expecting that for a couple of days. I had gotten the impression they were going to be announced Saturday.  I’ll still do the Kuttner post, but I may not break m y neck to get it up tomorrow.

 

Retro Hugos: “And the Gods Laughed” by Fredric Brown

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So the next few Retro Hugo posts are going to be focusing on the short stories that I haven’t already looked at.  I covered “Far Centaurus” for A. E. van Vogt’s birthday, and a scheduling slip-up resulting in my post on “The Wedge” by Isaac Asimov going live before I finished the novelettes.

Today we’re looking at “And the Gods Laughed” by Fredric Brown. It was first published in the Spring 1944 issue of Planet Stories.  It is currently available in hardcover in From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown from NESFA Press and in electronic format in The Second Fredric Brown Megapack from Wildside Press.

Planet stories is remembered today as a pulp with lots of sword and planet tales and space opera from the likes of Leigh Brackett and Poul Anderson, full of exotic adventure. But it also published more laid back stories as well, albeit usually at shorter lengths.

“And the Gods Laughed” is one of these. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “Black Amazon of Mars”

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“Black Amazon of Mars” appeared in its original form in Planet Stories, March 1951. It was later expanded into the short novel The People of the Talisman (1964). This post will review just the original version. I’ll save comparison of the two for another day.

The story starts with Eric John Stark accompanying a Martian companion, Camar, home to the city of Kushat just south of the northern polar ice cap. Camar is dying and wants to return a sacred talisman he stole. The talisman was left by the legendary Ban Cruach to protect the city from a danger in a canyon to the north known as the Gates of Death.

Camar dies in the opening scene of the story, but not before Stark promises to fulfill his quest. The talisman is a jewel. Stark puts it against his temple, sees strange visions that come straight from Ban Cruach’s mind, and takes it off. He hides the talisman in his belt and sets off for Kushat. It isn’t long before he runs into trouble. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “The Dragon-Queen of Venus”

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“The Dragon-Queen of Venus”
Originally published as “The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter”
Planet Stories, Summer 1941

This one is an early tale by Brackett, one of her first. And while it isn’t as polished as some of her later work, and certainly doesn’t have the depth of her longer and better known stories, you can still see the writer she would become.

The story concerns a group of soldiers manning a besieged outpost in the early days of Terran settlement on Venus.  They’re running low on everything:  food, fresh water, ammunition, personnel.  They’re sort of a French Foreign Legion in space; at one point the commander makes a statement that no one knows anyone else’s real name.  The viewpoint character is from Texas, and of course everyone calls him Tex. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “Enchantress of Venus”

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Planet Stories Fall 1949“The Enchantress of Venus”
Originally published in Planet Stories, Fall 1949

I first read this story in high school in the SFBC edition of The Best of Leigh Brackett.  It was my first introduction to Eric John Stark, arguably Brackett’s greatest creation.  In my opinion it is arguably her best work at shorter lengths.

Stark is an Earthman, raised by a tribe of aboriginals in Mercury’s twilight belt.  (The astronomy geek in me is compelled to point out this story was written before Mercury’s 3:2 rotational/orbital resonance was discovered.  Mercury doesn’t have a twilight belt because it doesn’t keep the same face towards the Sun.)

Stark is black, although whether he’s of African descent or permanently burned by the Sun, Brackett never explicitly says anywhere (that I can recall).  His tribal name is N’Chaka, which implies the former rather than the latter. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “Shannach – the Last”

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Planet Stories - November 1952“Shannach – the Last”
Originally published in Planet Stories, Nov. 1952

Another longer work, this time set on Mercury.  Brackett’s Mercury is a twilight world of valleys surrounded by mountains that pierce the shallow atmosphere.  From what I understand, life only exits in valley’s along a twilight zone along the terminator.  Since this story refers to the Sun rising and setting, either I’m missing something or there’s a slight wobble in the planet’s orbit which creates the day and night effect.

None of which stopped me from enjoying this adventure tale.  Trevor is a prospector whose ship has crashed.  There’s no life in the valley where he crashes, and he can’t get over the mountains because he doesn’t have a pressure suit.  (Don’t ask me why.)

He’s trying to find a way to another valley through a system of caves when he is swept away by an underground river.  He ends up in a large valley with a city in the distance.  And that’s when his troubles really start. Continue reading →

Blogging Leigh Brackett: “The Vanishing Venusians”

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imagesThis was the second Leigh Brackett story I ever read.  How do I remember that detail?  Easy, it’s the second story in The Best of Leigh Brackett, which was the first Brackett book I ever read (in the SFBC edition you see there).  And in those days, I read anthologies and collections in order.  This was still a few years before I went through my read-anthologies-backwards phase.

I found the story to be powerful, with the image of snow capped mountains in the distance to be a powerful one.  I still find the story powerful today.

Note:  there will be spoilers after the “Read More” break. Continue reading →

Henry Kuttner’s Prince Raynor: The Citadel of Darkness

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Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories
$12.95, trade paperback, 224 pgs. 

This is the second and final tale of Prince Raynor that Kuttner wrote.  I don’t think it’s quite up to the standards of “Cursed be the City”, which I discussed earlier in the week.  But it’s still a good yarn.

The story opens with Raynor and his Nubian servant Eblik coming upon a dying archer in the forest.  He’s part of a group of refugees they, along with the warrior maid Delphia, had put together after the close of the previous story.  Prince Raynor’s horse had gone lame the previous day, and he and Eblik had fallen behind the group.  The archer is the only survivor except for Delphia, who has been kidnapped.  Raynor and Eblik set out in pursuit.

While waiting for the moon to rise, they are approached in the forest by an old man in a robe.  From his description, he sounds a lot like Gandalf, and his name, Ghiar, isn’t that far off.  Only this story predates The Lord of the Rings by a number of years. 

Ghiar tells them Delphia has been kidnapped by Baron Malric and gives them a talisman by which they can recover the girl.  There’s a lot of talk about the zodiac, but it’s a different zodiac from the one today.  The signs are different, and there are only seven of them.

Raynor and Eblik go to Malric’s castle and in the commotion of rescuing Delphia, Ghiar shows up and takes off with her.  Seems he needs her for a sacrifice in order to renew his youth.  Things get nicely weird when they arrive at Ghiar’s castle, which is on an island surrounded by black flowers.  Of course they’re the kind that induce sleep.  It’s only the thought of Eblik in danger that enables Raynor to overcome their effects. 

Once inside there are several fights and eventually they overcome Ghiar.  The manner is a little unconventional in that both magic and strength are used.  Ghiar’s motivation and actions don’t always make a lot of sense unless you remember his early speech about signs of the zodiac and which ones are in ascendance.

I liked the weird elements in this one, especially the battle with the serpent inside Ghiar’s castle and the consequences of that.  The black flowers were a nice touch, if not particularly original.  Both of these elements reminded me of Robert E. Howard (which is probably why I liked them).  It’s an established fact that Kuttner was influenced by Howard, and many of his early stories show the influence Howard as well as other writers in their contents.  Still, if you’re going to copy another writer, always copy from the best.

While the influence of Howard is definitely here, Kuttner by this time was too good of a writer to simply cut and paste another author’s style.  Kuttner shows a greater depth in the interactions between Raynor and Eblik than in “Cursed be the City”.  Early in the story Raynor calls him a fool and orders him about, something that would be entirely appropriate for a prince to do to a servant.  Still, when Eblik needs his aid, Raynor manages to find the motivation to save him where he wasn’t finding the motivation to save himself.

Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

The Raynor stories were both published in Strange Stories in 1939, which implies, given the delays between composition that were common in the pulps in those days, that the first of the two had to have been written in 1938.  Kuttner was beginning to transition at this time to science fiction, where he would ultimately write in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore some of the great classics of the field such as “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”, “The Twonky”, “The Proud Robot”, and “Vintage Season.”  Just to name a few.  We’ll look at some of these in an in-depth post I’m working on.

It’s easy, and perhaps oversimplifying things, to say that Kuttner wrote no more Prince Raynor stories because the market folded.  Strange Stories only ran for 13 issues between 1939 and 1941.  But Weird Tales was still going strong.  I’ve seen somewhere, and I don’t recall where or I would say, that Dorothy McIlwraith didn’t like the Elak stories and wouldn’t buy any when she became editor of WT.  If I’m recalling correctly, the author of that statement was offering it as speculation.

I have a different idea.  Kuttner was trying to establish a professional writing career.  Weird Tales had a reputation, much deserved, for being slow in paying.  And not always paying that well.  There were a lot more science fiction markets than there were fantasy.  Kuttner didn’t restrict himself to just fantasy and science fiction, but also wrote weird menace and mysteries, and he continued to write fantasy for a number of years, especially for Unknown.  However, he had his greatest success in science fiction.  It seems to me, and this is just speculation, that Kuttner began to focus on writing more science fiction because he could make a better living at it.  The timing of the two heroic fantasy series ending coincides with an increase in Kuttner’s science fiction output and makes the possibility one that should be considered.

“The Citadel of Darkness” ends with the three companions, Raynor, Eblik, and Delphia, riding off together, one supposes to have more adventures.  It’s a shame Kuttner never recorded them.