Tag Archives: Startling Stories

Back to Brackett

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On Leigh Brackett’s birthday (yikes! over a month ago now)  I said I was reading The Starmen of Llyrdis but wasn’t gong to be able to finiish it by her birthday.  I said I would finish it, and I finally did last week. Classes started last week, I had a writing assignment due over the weekend, and I’m just now getting to the review.

That’s the cover of the ebook, which is how I read it this time. The picture is a little misleading. There is a female character who serves as the love interest, but she is absent from much of the book.

This was one of the last stories Brackett wrote for the pulps. It was published in Startling Stories in 1951. Byu this time, she was working as a screenwriter in Hollywood. I’m not sure if she wrote this between assignments or if there was a writer’s strike or what.  Perhaps the death of the pulps and changing tastes in science fictoin had something to do with it. Continue reading →

Leigh Brackett and the Starmen

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Today is December 7, which is the birthday of Leigh Brackett (1915-1978).  I was planning on reading and reviewing her novel The Starmen of Llyrdis. I read it in high school and haven’t reread it since, although I’ve planned on rereading it for the last few years.

Unfortunately, I’m in the middle of final exams and only got one -third of the way through the book. I’ll do a detailed review when i get a chance to finisht he book.

The Starmen of Llyrdis was originally published in the March 1951 issue of Startling Stories.

The plot and themes are familiar to regular readers of Brackett’s work. The loner who doesn’t fit but is looking for a place to belong is at the core of the novel.

This book isn’t set in the same solar system as most of her work up to this time. The solar system of Eric John Stark, Loreli of the Red Mist, and the ancient cities of Mars. At least, if it is, there’s no evidence of it that I’ve seen so far. The story concerns a galactic civilization.

I said I read this book in high school. I won’t say how many decades ago that was. I have very little memory of the story. I just know I enjoyed it at the time.

The Starmen of Llyrdis was one of the last long pieces of scieince fiction Brackett would write. There were the Skaith novels in th e seventies, as well as The Long Tomorrow, which was set here on Earth.

Brackett was’t idle, though. She was busy writing screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo. That one starred an obscure actor named John Wayne. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

I’ll finish the book as soon as I get finals out of the way. I’ve got one set to grade and a second set to write and grade. That will all be done by the end of the week.

Kuttner

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Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was born today, May 5. He’s been my favorite science fcition and fantasy writer ever since I read “Mimsy were the Borogoves” in The Best of Henry Kuttner the summer before I started high high school.

I was going to read and review Lands of the Earthquake (thanks for sending me a copy, Deuce), but I’ve been on the road with one of the dayjobs most of the past week. It took me all week to read “The Brood of Bubastis” for the Robert Bloch post, and I was falling asleep over the keyboard as I wrote it. So, obviously, I didn’t get to it. I’ll try to read it and post something in the next few months. Continue reading →

Wearing The Mask of Circe

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The Mask of Circe
Henry Kuttner
ebook $7.99
Originally published in Startling Stories, May 1948

Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was one of the most prolific authors of the fantastic in the 1940’s.  Or rather I should say he was half of one of the most prolific writing duos, the other half being his wife, C. L. Moore.  Kuttner was born on this date, April 7.

(As an aside, I asked on Twitter if anyone had any suggestions as to what I should read for today, and the only response I got was “C. L. Moore”. And while pretty much everything they wrote after their marriage was a collaboration, for this birthday post, I’m focusing on things published under Kuttner’s byline.  I will be doing a post of Moore’s Judgment Night in the near future.)

Today we’re going to look at an example of Kuttner’s science fantasy.  The Mask of Circe was published in what was supposed to be a science fiction magazine, so there is some hand waving to keep it from being pure fantasy. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “The Last Days of Shandakor”

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startling_stories_195204“The Last Days of Shandakor”
Originally published in Startling Stories, April 1952

So here’s a Mars story, a planet we’ve not looked at yet in this series of posts on Brackett.  As cool as her Venus stories are (and we’re not done looking at them), Brackett’s stories of Mars are what made her reputation.

In this one, an ethnologist named John Ross is on Mars studying the various tribes and hoping to be awarded an endowed chair at a university on Earth for his work.  He’s sitting in a dive, waiting for the final preparations to be made for his caravan, when a man walks in.  Ross can see immediately there’s something different about this person.  Everyone pretends he’s not there.  When Ross asks his caravan master about the man, the caravan master tells him to forget about him.  Curiosity getting the better of him, Ross approaches the man and engages him in conversation.  He’ll wish he’d heeded the caravan master’s advice. Continue reading →

Blogging Kuttner: A Gnome There Was

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A Gnome There WasA Gnome There Was
Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)
Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 276 pg., $2.50
Cover drawing by Ed Cartier

I’ve got about half a dozen posts I need to write, including one for another blog, but with the blizzard, we’ve been cooped up in the house.  That means between my wife watching TV with the volume up too loud and my son monopolizing the laptop everytime I have to do something responsible, I’ve not gotten much done as far as reading, blogging, or writing is concerned.  I’m typing this after everyone else has gone to bed.

I started A Gnome There Was just before Thanksgiving.  I tracked down a copy some years ago simply because I was trying to find a copy of the short story “Jesting Pilot”, and this was the easiest way.  Turns out there is another story in it that I discovered last night has never been reprinted since this book was published.  At the time I thought “Jesting Pilot” was the only story I hadn’t read.

Anyway, I was getting tired of some of the stuff I was being sent to review, something I’ll discuss in my year end post in a day or so.  I decided to revisit some of my favorite Kuttner stories (something like literary comfort food).  Since many of them are in this book, that’s the one I chose.   Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “The Woman From Altair”

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Best of Brackett paperback“The Woman From Altair”
The Best of Leigh Brackett
Del Rey, 1977, 423, $1.95
Originally published in Startling Stories, July 1951

I was asked in the comments of a previous post what I thought of this story. I had only read it once when I first read The Best of Leigh Brackett, back in the fall of [redacted].  I liked all the stories, but this one didn’t have much of an impact on the 14 year-old me who read it, unlike some of the other selections in the book.

So I reread the story the other day.  Here are  my thoughts, spoilers included: Continue reading →