Tag Archives: Leigh Brackett

Back, and in Time for Leigh Brackett’s Birthday

No, I’m not dead, and I’ll post an update within the next few days. It’s been a hectic few months that have involved a lot more travel than I was expecting. Hopefully, I’ll post more regularly. Things are starting to get into a routine.

Leigh Brackett

But today, I want to mention Leigh Brackett (1915-1978). I’ve not read anything by her for this post, but I didn’t want to let her birthday pass.

As I’ve stated in numerous other posts, Brackett is one of my favorite writers. Her space opera is some of the best around. She often managed to blend it with a hardboiled tone.  It’s worth seeking out if you can find it. I’ve noticed that other than the Skaith trilogy, which I started rereading earlier this year, she’s pretty hard to find in paper.

So, I’ll raise a glass to her memory before I go to bed and hope I dream of a solar system like the one she created.

Leigh Brackett and Eric John Stark

Today is December 7 as I write this, and on this day in 1915, Leigh Brackett was born.

Brackett is a major favorite here at Adventures Fantastic. I’m not going to let her birthday go by unacknowledged.

Normally for these birthday posts, I read and review something by the author in question. I’m up to my armpits in alligators, writing deadlines, and trying to get ready for final exams (which start tomorrow).

So, that’s clearly not going to happen this year.

I also have been thinking about what to review. I’ve reviewed most of the short fiction that I consider to be my favorites. I’m not going to repeat myself. Also I don’t have time to comb through the rest of Brackett’s work and find something.

So I’m going to cheat. Continue reading

Leigh Brackett Birthday Post Placeholder

Today, December 7, is the birthday of Leigh Brackett  (1915-1978). I’ve read a couple of her stories, but I’m not up for a post tonight. I’ve spent the evening finishing grading final exams and responding to student inquiries as to why their lab grade isn’t an A. (“You have multiple zeroes. Try attending all the labs next time. “)

I’ll post something of substance sometime in the next few days. But I didn’t want this day to pass without mentioning it.

Blogging Northwest Smith: “The Tree of Life”

C. L. Moore (1911-1987) was born on this date, January 24. Shen  was one of the greatest writers of the fantastic in the 20th Century.

For today’s post, I’m going to continue the series I’ve been doing on her character Northwest Smith. Smith is frequently regarded as a Han Solo prototype.

In “The Tree of Life” he’s on his own, without his Venusain partner Yarol.

The opening of the story could have been written by Leigh Brackett, and I had to remind myself that this story is set on a different Mars than the one Brackett wrote about. Continue reading

Blogging Brackett: “The Beast-Jewel of Mars”

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.

 

Reflections on the Retro Hugos

Leigh Brackett

I’ve decided I’m not going to do a post on Henry Kuttner’s “A God Named Kroo” for the Retro Hugos.  I reviewed it a few years ago here. I’ve got too much Real Life stuff going on, and the winners were announced yesterday. At least I saw a notice last night after posting about Brackett’s “The Jewel of Bas“.  That was the one I was hoping would win.  Brackett did win in the novel category (which I might review because Brackett) and Best Related Work.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the other categories. I’m not a member of Worldcon and am not likely to be anytime in the foreseeable future. So it was entertaining to see the reactions on Twitter today.

Seems the wrong people won some of the awards. Continue reading

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

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: Final Thoughts on the Short Stories

So just to recap, here is the shortlist in the short story category for the Retro Hugos:

  • The Wedge”, Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction 10/44)
  • I, Rocket”, Ray Bradbury (Amazing Stories 5/44)
  • And the Gods Laughed”, Fredric Brown (Planet Stories Spring ’44)
  • Desertion”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 11/44)
  • Huddling Place”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 7/44)
  • Far Centaurus”, A.E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction 1/44)

Links are to the posts of the individual stories. While I enjoyed all of these stories and will probably reread them at some future date, I didn’t find them all equally good. This is simply my not so humble opinion; your mileage may vary.

“The Wedge” was the weakest of the stories here. In part, I think, that’s because it’s part of a bigger story arc. I suspect it’s on the final ballot in part due to the reputation of the Foundation series and the author. Ditto for the Bradbury minus the series angle. I could say the same about the two Simak stories as the Asimov except that these are in my mind the two strongest tales on the list.

As for the Brown and Van Vogt entries, they are both examples of their author’s best work at this length. I tend to favor the Brown a bit over the Van Vogt, but that might be because it was one of only two stories (the other being “I, Rocket”) that I hadn’t read before and was therefore fresher.

As for which which of the Simak I think was the strongest, that’s a tough call. I would probably go with “Huddling Place”, although I can easily convince myself that “Desertion” is the better of the two. Some I’m going to compromise and declare a tie.

And just a sidenote of possible interest.  DAW books began publishing a series of anthologies in somewhere around 1980 (I’m too lazy to look it up) entitled Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories. Each volume collected what Asimov , with the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg, considered the best stories of the year.  The first volume covered 1939, and the series ran for 24 volumes, with a 25th published by NESFA Press and edited by Robert Silverberg after Asimov’s death. The sixth volume covers 1944, the year of the current Retro Hugos.

That volume contains 13 stories, Eight of them are on the Retro Hugo ballot. One which isn’t is Leigh Brackett’s “The Veil of Astellar”, which should be on the novelette ballot. Don’t get me started. After the Retro Hugos have been awarded, I will probably reread the rest of the stories. I read this book in high school, and I don’t remember some of the stories.

I’ll start on the novellas I haven’t already covered in the next post. The story will be “Killdozer!” by Theodore Sturgeon. That story was revised for book publication, so I’m reading it in, you guessed it, The Great SF Stories 6,

Thoughts on the Retro Hugos and a Question

The nominees for the Retro Hugos were announced yesterday.  If you aren’t familiar with them, they are given for the best science fiction or fantasy for the previous year, only for a year 75 years prior. In this case, it’s the 1945 Retro Hugos for the works from 1944.  Here are the fiction nominees.  I’m not going to worry about editors, artists, fanzines, or any of the other categories.  I’ll have a few things to say below the list, as well as a question for you. Continue reading

Something Old, Something New

Or Those Who Fail to Study History…

This is gonna be a rant, just so you know.

So over the weekend, a controversy got started on Twitter. Like when doesn’t a controversy get started on Twitter, right?

Anyway, this one involved someone saying that if you want to be published, you should read at least one book published in the last five years so you would know the trends in publishing. I think the word “beg” may have been used. Continue reading