In this monthly series reviewing classic science fiction books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of science fiction; books about soldiers and spacers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
As the 20th Century unfolded, and explorers made their way to the furthest reaches of the Earth, it became increasingly clear that there were no lost civilizations or mysterious beasts lurking just around the corner. As a result, adventure stories that might have been set on the Earth in the past moved to the other planets of the Solar System, and the planetary romance genre was born. These tales were short on science, but long on adventure, battles, horror, and passion. One of the greatest practitioners in this genre was Leigh Brackett, and one of her greatest characters was the adventurer Eric John Stark.
Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars, which I encountered in the early 1980s, turned out not to be a novel, but consisted of two novellas, both of which first appeared as shorter tales in the magazine Planet Stories. They were then expanded, retitled, and appeared as front and back of an Ace Double in 1964. And finally, they were repackaged in 1982 under the title Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars. The stories were both set on a Mars full of dying cities and strange inhabitants. Their protagonist was an Earthman, but one with savage roots: an adventurer who had been raised by the aboriginal inhabitants of Mercury’s twilight region. Before we look at the tales themselves, however, it’s worth spending some time delving into where and how they first appeared. The magazine Planet Stories is not widely remembered these days, and the Ace Doubles, with their quirky format, are a rarity even in huckster rooms at SF conventions—but in their time, both were a big part of the science fiction field.
Planet Stories
The magazine Planet Stories was published from 1939 to 1955. It specialized in stories known as planetary romances, tales that focused on the exotic setting of another world rather than on the science of getting there. The magazine never appeared in my house while I was growing, which is too bad, because from what I have seen, I would have enjoyed it. I suspect that my dad, who subscribed to Analog and Galaxy, liked a little more rigor in his science fiction; I also suspect that the lurid covers would not have met with my mother’s approval.
Back in those days, there were still hopes that we lived in a solar system teeming with life, and there seemed to be a rough consensus about what conditions would be like on other worlds. On Mercury, at that time thought to be tidally locked, there might be a thin twilight belt between the molten and frozen sides where life could exist. Under the clouds of Venus, all sorts of strange civilizations could lurk. Mars could still have remnants of ancient cities, linked by a web of canals. The outer planets could have their own strange ecological niches. And the writers of Planet Stories imagined quite a few strange adventures occurring in those settings. Despite the lowbrow reputation of the magazine, work by many notable writers of the day, including Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Phillip K. Dick, appeared in its pages. One of the most prolific contributors was Leigh Brackett, whose stories for the magazine included the luridly-titled “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon of Mars.”
Ace Doubles
The Ace Doubles were an interesting adaptation—a reaction to readers’ changing habits. The pulp magazines had produced a significant body of work at shorter lengths, many in the novelette/novella range, while the increasingly popular paperback books were in a format that lent itself to longer works. The solution Ace came up with was to print books in a format called “tête-bêche,” putting two shorter works back to back; books that had two front covers, kind of a literary version of a Möbius strip. The covers were printed upside down from each other, so no matter which cover you started from, the spine was still on the left side. This gave booksellers two choices for displaying the book; if one cover didn’t generate sales, they could flip it and present the second cover instead. The format was successful enough that over 200 books were printed in this format from 1952 to 1973; the series then continued until 1978, with two works in a book, but without the distinctive double cover format. The format was briefly revived by Tor Books with their Tor Double Novels from 1988 to 1991.
In 1964, for their publication as an Ace Double, Leigh Brackett (possibly with the assistance of her husband Edmund Hamilton), expanded the story “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” into “The Secret of Sinharat,” and expanded “Black Amazon of Mars” into “People of the Talisman.”
About the Author
Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) was a major voice in science fiction, but in the opinion of many, does not get the attention she deserves. The stories she chose to write were of the planetary romance and space opera varieties, sub-genres that did not get a lot of respect for many years. Her husband, Edmund Hamilton, a prolific author of space opera himself (including the adventures of Captain Future), has suffered a similar fate. Critics and historians of science fiction have traditionally tended to favor harder science fiction, and writers who did not care to fit their tales into John Campbell’s house style at Analog magazine were often looked down upon. Measuring planetary romance and space opera by the standards of Analog, however, is like criticizing a dolphin for not being able to run a footrace. Brackett’s stories, regardless of their setting, are compelling and full of mystery, suspense, and adventure. The prose is crisp and evocative, and the characters are interesting and unpredictable.
The genre was not friendly to female authors in the post-WWII era, but Brackett’s gender-ambiguous first name allowed her to write under her own name. In many ways, her writing is not drastically different from the male writers of her era, except for her female characters, who have more of what was back then called “moxie,” but now gets referred to as “agency.” These women do not just exist to be love interests, and when faced with danger would come out swinging, not simply waiting to be rescued. Brackett also wrote in other genres, such as mystery, and this led to a career in film writing. She was generous with other authors, and Ray Bradbury gave her a lot of credit for helping him develop his skills.
Her mystery writing gained her the attention of noted director Howard Hawks, who needed help on a script for The Big Sleep and reportedly asked someone to contact the “guy” named Brackett who had written No Good from a Corpse. She ended up sharing scriptwriting credit for that film with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman. She scripted several western adventure pictures for Hawks that starred John Wayne, and worked on other film and TV projects. It’s interesting to wonder what science fiction she would have produced during this years, had she not been working on film and TV projects.
Brackett’s most memorable creation was the adventurer Eric John Stark, a compelling and morally ambiguous character whose most notable adventures were set on Mars, and appeared in Planet Stories. In the 1970s, she returned to the character with a trilogy set on the exoplanet Skaith. Her most noted “serious” science fiction novel was The Long Tomorrow, a tale set in a post-apocalyptic America.
In the 1970s, one of Brackett’s science fiction books caught the attention of another Hollywood director, George Lucas, who contacted her to write the first draft of the script for the movie that came to be called The Empire Strikes Back. Apparently, when he contacted her, he had not yet connected her name with the person who had already done so much work in film. She died shortly after submitting her first draft, and while the final script was quite different, she is credited for developing many of the themes and scenes that ended up in the final film. This brought renewed interest in her work, and led to reprints of many of her works in the years after the film appeared.
Brackett had a fascinating life, and you can (as I did while writing this review) spend hours reading about her and her career on the internet—a good starting point is this article from io9 by Charlie Jane Anders, which is full of links to other sources.
Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars
The book Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars is pretty much the old Ace Double from 1964 printed in a traditional single cover format, with only the table of contents indicating that the volume contains two separate works. The volume does not have a very compelling cover, especially compared to those that appeared on the earlier incarnations of the tales. I bought it because I recognized Brackett’s name from the Skaith books, and from her work on The Empire Strikes Back.
“The Secret of Sinharat” opens with Stark losing ground to a group of pursuers as his mount fails. Stark has been summoned by a troublemaker named Delgaun of Valkis for a mercenary job, but it now appears he will not finish the journey. The pursuers, however, are led by interplanetary policeman Simon Ashton, the man who rescued Stark when the aboriginal tribe that raised him was murdered. Since then, Simon has been the closest thing Stark has had to a father. Ashton offers him a deal: Delgaun plans to upset the political order on Mars to plunder the cities and set himself up as ruler. Stark is facing charges and jail time, but Ashton offers him clemency if he disrupts Delgaun’s efforts. Had it been anyone else asking, I suspect that Stark would have refused. But he agrees, and heads on to join Delgaun and his followers.
Stark is introduced to Kynon, a man who claims to have rediscovered the ancient Martian device of the people known as Ramas—a device that can transfer a mind from an old person to a younger one. They “demonstrate” the device to their followers, but in private, Stark accuses them of being frauds, which they admit. Stark sees a mysterious woman, Berild, who is part of the cabal that is leading the uprising. Stark is sent to retrieve one of Delgaun’s minions from the local equivalent of an opium den, when he encounters Fianna, Berild’s attractive servant girl, who warns Stark that he is heading into a trap. The trap proves insufficient to defeat a man like Stark, however, and he returns with the minion slung over his shoulder.
The rebels head out in a caravan, and during a sandstorm Stark is again betrayed, and ends up stranded in the desert with Berild. They suffer greatly, but she shows an uncanny ability to navigate the lost cities they encounter. Stark starts to wonder if ancient legends might be true. After the treachery he has seen, he has no aversion to disrupting Delgaun’s plans, and soon all concerned will find that the ancient legends of Mars are not to be scorned, and that the old powers might still be stirring.
“The People of the Talisman” opens with a dying friend entrusting Stark with a talisman hidden in a belt buckle. The talisman reputedly can protect the city of Kushat by bringing a mysterious force through the ominously named Gates of Death. The dying man makes Stark promise to return it. Stark finds that holding the talisman opens his mind to unsettling images and voices. He is soon captured by an army led by the enigmatic Lord Ciaran, who always appears in full armor and enclosed helmet, carries a giant axe; the army is heading to attack Kushat. They torture Stark for information, but he breaks free, and after an epic battle where his savage nature comes to the fore, he makes his escape.
Stark arrives at Kushat to find a city in turmoil. The authorities are hiding the fact that the talisman is missing, although many in the city already suspect the truth. Stark is taken to well-meaning but ineffective military leaders, who ignore his warnings of an invading army. He doesn’t trust them enough to turn over the talisman, and they are considering jailing him when a woman called Thanis vouches for him, and offers to take him in. It turns out that she and her brother are friends to Stark’s late companion, and eventually he trusts them enough to reveal the talisman.
The attack comes just as Stark had warned, and there is a brutal battle for the city. Stark meets Lord Ciaran and during their combat, he knocks off the ever-present helmet to reveal a secret: Ciaran is a striking woman with flowing red hair. As that reveal is spoiled by the Planet Stories cover and title of “Black Amazon of Mars,” I suspect many reading this review have already figured that out. Stark and Ciaran are separated by the fighting, and soon Stark and his friends find that only the talisman can save the city. But the secrets lurking beyond the Gates of Death prove to be a danger to everyone, and soon enemies become allies in a desperate struggle for survival…
Final Thoughts
These two stories are fine examples of the planetary romance sub-genre; there is a sense of menace and mystery throughout. Brackett has a knack for writing characters and settings that feel real and well-rounded with very little description, giving readers just enough detail to bring them to life in their minds. The twists and turns of the narrative feel natural and unforced, but are also full of surprises. The battle scenes are exciting, and feel real and immediate. Stark is a grand character, and comes across as a force to be reckoned with: larger than life and morally complex, with a complicated and layered personality. You feel what he feels as you read the story, and experience the immediacy of his pain, fury, hunger, affection, and horror.
And now, as always, I turn the floor to you. If you’ve read the stories, I’d be interested in hearing your opinions—and also anything you might have to say about Leigh Brackett and her career in general.
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure. He is also a retired reserve officer with a background in military history and strategy.
I’ve read not nearly enough Brackett, but what I have read has been frankly magnificent. Most recently, I read Black Amazon of Mars in Paula Guran’s new (and highly, highly recommended) sword & sorcery anthology Swords Against Darkness. I’m also a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books (an obvious influence) — I’d say Burroughs was more Technicolor, while Brackett was much more noir.
Edited to add: Also, I think that Brackett could write rings around Burroughs, just at a prose level. Here’s a gorgeous and evocative bit from Sea-Kings of Mars/The Sword of Rhiannon:
These stories are a fine pair of adventures which I first read when they were reprinted by Paizo in their revival of the Planet Stories brand, though I think The Sword of Rhiannon just edges into the lead as her best Mars novel overall. If her work is not amenable to the preferred biases of certain critics then the fault lies with them rather than with her.
Another point is Brackett’s reception in British fandom, where during her lifetime I think she might have been more lauded than in her home country. Quite a few authors, particularly those affiliated with the New Wave such as Michael Moorcock and John Brunner, had greater affinity for her combination of Homeric heroics and cool Californian noir than with the material routinely published in the more outwardly-“respectable” SF markets. (To this day, Moorcock has no regrets about swapping his first-edition set of The Lord of the Rings for half-a-dozen old issues of Planet Stories.)
@1: I am eternally grateful to Burroughs for inspiring some of my favourite authors but I think I should have read his actual fiction when I was younger and less cynical.
I love these novellas.
Stark is a very different character than Conan, but Brackett got the barbarian aspect of Conan in a way that de Camp and Lin Carter did not (although I enjoy their own takes on sword and sorcery).
It’s no surprise she wrote noir. Her grasp of pacing, narrative tension, story structure, etc. is magnificent. And, yes, she is a superb stylist.
Was Brackett the last great sword and planet writer?
Of perhaps particular interest to the readers here, I found that the aliens at the end of People of the Talisman remind me a lot of the Aelfinn and Eelfinn from The Wheel of Time. A guy who wrote seven Conan novels obviously read a lot of sword and sorcery/planet.
@2 — Yes, I was fortunate enough to discover Burroughs somewhere around 7th grade. Well, that’s not entirely true — I think I’d already read some Tarzan novels, but Dad gave me a copy of A Princess of Mars (with the D’Achille cover) and that pretty much hooked me for life.
And at around the same time I was idiotic enough to never actually pick up the Skaith books when I saw them on the paperback spinners in the public library, although I’m not sure if I’d have had the same appreciation for her then as I do now.
Leigh Brackett’s work is clear evidence that space opera and planetary romance does not have to be schlocky or badly written. The Black Amazon is clearly meant to be a fun, entertaining adventure story, but at the same time, it’s carefully and skillfully written, with some very sly jabs taken at the sexist tropes of the genre. I think she remains very readable for a modern audience in comparison to some of her contemporaries. In some ways the fantastical story elements work in her favor, keeping the stories timeless. By contrast hard science fiction often starts looking dated quite quickly.
@1 and 2,
A big problem with Burroughs may be that he not only had his imitators who sullied his name with crap, but imitators who exceeded his work entirely. I kind of think of Brackett along those lines. But she may not be the most natural of successors to Burroughs, even though she wrote sword and planet.
Burroughs had a pretty incredible imagination, but any writer can lift ideas. Who encounters Burroughs today without having seen so many of his ideas elsewhere already?
(To be fair, I’ve only read Amtor and Pellucidar stories, not Barsoom or Tarzan.)
@6 — That’s certainly a possibility. Myself, I’d recommend at least the first three Barsoom books — there’s a significant jump in quality between the first & second, but the first is short and does lay a lot of the groundwork.
These days, I’m honestly not sure if I could recommend Tarzan or not; at least not without caveats by the caselot. Brackett has certainly aged better.
Dear Alan,
When Leigh got the call to work on The Big Sleep, she was in the middle of a novelet for Planet Stories. She gave the portion to an LA fan/would-be writer to finish. The story was Lorelai of the Red Mist and came out (correctly) under both names, hers and that of the fan: Ray Bradbury.
(She wasn’t positive of where she’d quit and Bradbury took up when I talked to her in 1976, but she thought it was at the point the Hounds swim toward them though veils of bubbles.)
Incidentally, she was still furious about what had happened to Dragon Queen of Jupiter, which I’ll tell you about if were ever in the same place at the same time..
All best,
Dave Drake
@5: No subgenre has to be schlocky or badly-written; that depends on whether the readers let the authors get away with it…
@6: I recall Amtor is 30’s Burroughs and past-his-peak: I think @7’s suggestions are good.
@8: I’ll understand if you don’t want to post about it here but is the “Dragon-Queen” issue the one related to the title change?
According to Ms. Brackett’s introduction to The Best of Planet Stories, #1 (Ballantine, 1975) (there never was a #2, alas), Ray Bradbury’s half of “Lorelei of the Red Mist” begins with the line, “He saw the flock, herded by more of the golden hounds.” You might also want to mention the Haffner Press three-volume set of Brackett’s planetary romances, Martian Quest (2002, introduced by Michael Moorcock), Lorelei of the Red Mist (2007, introduced by Harry Turtledove), and Shannach, the Last (2011, introduced by Anne McCaffrey), totaling over 1500 pages of the best of the best. My favorite Brackett story is also the first I ever encountered, in an old Ace anthology called Swordsmen in the Sky, a tale set on Venus called “The Moon That Vanished.” That we now know neither Mars nor Venus (nor Mercury, for that matter) are really like they were in these magical tales takes nothing from the stories themselves, which remain as full of shadows, sorrow and wonder as ever.
@10 — Yes, those Haffner volumes are glorious. Most (if not all?) of Brackett’s genre stuff is also available in a number of collections at the Baen ebooks site. As is a fair bit of Hamilton, for that matter.
Leigh Brackett’s planetary romances are great. The John Stark stories are notable because Stark is a person of color, his skin ‘burned almost black by Mercury’s sun’, and he is largely motivated by his hatred of the exploitation of aboriginal populations by Terran commercial interests.
I’m currently reading Brackett’s The Coming of the Terrans, having recently finished the ‘Stark’ novella The Enchantress of Venus. I think I prefer her Mars tales, the sense of antiquity, decadence, and eldritch weirdness really comes through.
One minor quibble with the post- her husband’s first name was Edmond, not Edmund.
+1 to the (long_ list of authors I have to read some day.
(Non sequitur: seeing the name Eric John Stark made me want to shout “The King in the North! The King in the North!”)
~lakesidey
I really like Leigh Brackett. I’d never heard of her until I read this article that’s mostly about her screen writing, which I thought was really interesting.
https://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2014/05/adventures-in-screen-writing-the-amazing-leigh-brackett-rio-bravo-el-dorado-the-long-goodbye-the-empire-strikes-back-the-big-sleep-hall-of-famer-jake-hinkson
The first line in that article:
“Pop quiz: What do The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Long Goodbye, and The Empire Strikes Back have in common?
Answer: They were all written or co-written by the same woman, the amazing Leigh Brackett.”
@1 and @2 I am definitely going to have to seek out the Sea Kings of Mars, aka The Sword of Rhiannon, based on your recommendations, and those I found during my research for this article. I will definitely have my eyes peeled the next time I visit my favorite used book store.
@8 During my research, I found many kind words from Ray Bradbury regarding Ms. Brackett and the mentoring she provided him. She helped set quite a career in motion! And if we cross paths, I would be very interested to hear your story about “Dragon Queen of Jupiter.”
And lots of folks mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs, so I thought I would let you know that his turn in the barrel is coming up soon, when I review my favorite Tarzan book, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core.
I imagine that this thread would appreciate a long list, so here’s Paizo’s inspirational media pages from their Starfinder game: Brackett’s Stark novels are included.
Interesting list; a lot of my favorites on the list.
Brackett is the best known “unknown” SF writer I know of. I picked up the Ace double when it came out, and I still have it. She was much better at plot and character than ERB, and I like her a lot better than her husband. Perhaps that’s because I was younger when I read her work. Perhaps the planetary romance setting works better with highly dubious science than space opera does. The handwaving in the latter has to be at least remotely plausible, while in the former it really doesn’t matter. I was ecstatic when Ballantine published the 3 Skaith novels with those great Steranko covers. I got the SFBC hc omnibus as well so I could reread them without touching the Ballantines again. The Long Tomorrow is one of the great works in the genre.
A very good introduction to Leigh Brackett and her works.
I am a little surprised that no one has mentioned that Brackett revived Eric John Stark in the 1970s …and took him interstellar! By that time it would have required a terminal suspension of disbelief to set more stories of Stark’s adventures on Mars or Venus so she sent him to “Skaith, dying planet of a dying star far out in the Orion Spur.” Simon Ashton, Stark’s foster father, (now an agent of the Galactic Union) has vanished on Skaith under mysterious circumstances. Stark goes to find him.
Now all too often when an author brings back a beloved character after a long retirement the result is…disappointing. Not so with Leigh Brackett’s “Skaith” books. I think they are as good as anything she ever wrote. It helps that the three books in this series form a complete story arc. I will spare you my full on geek rant about all the things I like about these books (sighs of relief are heard around Tor.com). However, I will quote my favorite line from these books (which heads a private collection of similar passages that I think of as “Splendid Defiances”). It comes from the climax on the first book in the series “The Ginger Star”. Stark is alone in an Arctic wilderness and is confronted by a long foreshadowed menace. He is under a telepathic attack that is destroying his civilized mind and leaving him paralyzed and waiting for death. But as his mind goes he reverts to his identity as “N’Chaka”, the child rescued and raised by semi-human savages in Mercury’s Twilight Belt. He snarls back: “I am N’Chaka. I do not die! I kill!”.
The titles of the Skaith series (for those wanting to seek them out) are: “The Ginger Star”, “The Hounds of Skaith” and “The Reavers of Skaith”. There was also an omnibus edition published as “The Book of Skaith”. By the way, the original Ballatine Books paperbacks had great cover art by Steranko.
19, indeed, the Skaith books had some very interesting qualities, though perhaps just as preposterous in some way. I was perhaps a bit amused at how the one city was conquered, and instead of beautiful females secluded in a harem, they encountered disgusting slug-like monstrosities. Tragic, but perhaps a bit on point.
@19 I did mention the Skaith books in the article, but it was one of those “blink and you will miss it” kind of mentions. Those books were my first encounter with Stark; reading the original stories came later.
AlanBrown @21, so you did. My mistake. I also first encountered Stark in the Skaith series and they prompted me to look for other work by Brackett. I still think her stories are some of the best set on the old Mars: a dying world clinging to its canals, lost cities and ancient, decadent peoples.
May I say that I very much enjoy your excellent reviews and hope that my occasional nit-picking is taken in good part.
@22 Nitpick away! Part of the fun of being a geek is having a good discussion. I agree with you, some of Brackett’s best work is set on Mars.
And thanks for the kind comments, I’m glad you enjoy the reviews.
This is mainly my praise for The Sword of Rhiannon which I read first in an Ace Double Book, backed by Robert E Howard’s Conan the Conqueror, in my mother’s extensive science fiction library, a mish mash of Gnome Press, Ace Doublebooks, 35 cent paperbacks from all over, and I’m not sure now what else. I was delighted when I came to find out that many of my favorite writers were women hiding under “men’s names” [Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett] or just their initials [C.L. Moore]. I loved both halves of that double book mostly for the same reason, their authors’ great descriptive writing that dragged me into the worlds that had risen from their minds. Matt Carse’s trip through a time worm hole to ancient Mars where the oceans still existed where he met the Sea Kings along with three races of “halflings”, flyers, swimmers, and the third the evil serpent race, the villains of the story, propelled me right along with him into her world. Howard’s descriptions of Conan’s sword and sorcery world that existed 10,000 years in our world’s past did the same for me. When I was young, I read what today would be called Genre Fiction: sci fi, mysteries, exciting books with satisfying endings by writers who knew how to bend my language to their bidding. I went to the University of California, Davis for both B.A. and M.A. in English Language and Literature because of the love of reading and writing I got from the sci fi I read in my teens. I was glad to find at least 50 years after I first read The Sword of Rhiannon that Baen Books Library had it available in an e-pub edition under its other name The Sea Kings of Mars. So it has come to join my other Ebooks about Conan, Tarzan, John Carter, Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni, Heinlein’s Lazarus Long and friends, John D Macdonald’s Travis McGee, Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, and too many others to count. I’m glad I found this Tor.com blog where people discuss science fiction, fantasy, planetary fiction, and who knows what else I’ll find.