The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman (Ace Double M-101, 1964). Covers by Ed Emshwiller

Leigh Brackett (1915 – 1978) is my favorite from among the second generation of Sword & Planet writers (S&P). Many people I meet recognize her name from her association with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, for which she wrote the initial script. Or for the script to The Big Sleep, which she also wrote. Or, for several western movies she wrote the scripts for.

Those don’t mean anything to me, though. I know her from her Space Opera and S&P books, particularly the series featuring Eric John Stark.

[Click the images for stark versions.]

Although Stark is born on Mercury, he’s an Earthman in a future in which the planets have been colonized by Earth. His parents are miners and are killed on Mercury, leaving Stark to be raised by local aborigines. He adapts to that life but is captured later by Earthmen and raised by one of them. This reminds one quite a bit of Tarzan’s origins, and Brackett was, of course, very familiar with ERB.

Stark never quite conforms to the restrictions of the civilized solar system, and his sympathies are always with the underdogs, particularly with aboriginal populations on the planets who are displaced and exploited by humans. This puts him into frequent conflict with the forces of the law.

The first published Stark story was “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” in 1949. “Enchantress of Venus followed”, also in 1949, and then “Black Amazon of Mars” in 1951. These stories were later revised and published in two novels, The Secret of Sinharat, and People of the Talisman, and these two were collected together in a Del Rey book called Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars (1964), which is how I first read them.

Later, I acquired a hardback book called Stark and the Star Kings, which reprinted the three original stories and added a fourth, “Stark and the Star Kings.” Leigh Brackett was a favorite of mine and, as I note below, Stark’s adventures didn’t conclude with those Martian tales.

Leigh Brackett was married to author Edmond Hamilton, who was a prolific writer of SF and space opera, as well as some S&P fiction. I’m going to talk about Hamilton later so I won’t say more here, except to mention that — while I like both of them as authors — Brackett is the better writer in my opinion.

While both of them could write headlong adventure, Brackett did a better job at creating exotic and alien settings and characters. Part of that is her poetical prose, which rolls beautifully off the tongue and really conjures the exotic. I often read passages of Brackett out loud to myself to enjoy her use of language.

Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars (Del Rey, September 1982) and The Starmen of Llyrdis
(Ballantine Books, January 1976). Covers by Steve Ferris and Dean Ellis

Another element that raises Brackett’s level of prose, however, is her characterization. She creates fully rounded characters, even among her villains, and lets the story grow around them rather than creating the story and forcing the characters to fit it. This combination makes Stark one of the most memorable characters in SF/Fantasy history.

Between 1974 and 1976, Brackett returned to Stark and wrote a trilogy of new S&P adventures for him, set on a planet called Skaith, which is circling a dying sun. The tales are called:

The Ginger Star
The Hounds of Skaith
The Reavers of Skaith

I picked them up in a compendium volume called The Book of Skaith from the Science Fiction Book Club, which I’ve been a member of now for around 40 years. In fact, the Skaith stories were my first introduction to Eric John Stark, and only later did I find the earlier Martian stories.

The Sword of Rhiannon (Ace, August 1975). Cover artist unknown

Brackett wrote one more Sword & Planet novel that needs mentioning. This is The Sword of Rhiannon, which features a hero named Matt Carse. Carse is on a dry and desolate Mars but ends up getting tossed a million years into the past when Mars was a wet world. And he is possessed by the spirit of Rhiannon, a super intelligent being from that past Mars.

Again here, we have the beautiful prose mixed with lots of action and characters who we connect to emotionally.

The Best of Planet Stories #1, edited by Leigh Brackett (Ballantine Books, January 1975). Covers by Kelly Freas

A special note needs to be made about an S&P short story Brackett wrote in collaboration with Ray Bradbury, who she mentored. I read it in The Best of Planet Stories #1, shown above . It’s called “Lorelei of the Red Mist” and it is quite enjoyable.

Brackett wrote many other SF and fantasy works that don’t fit the Sword & Planet mold. This article includes are a few from my collection. She also wrote westerns.

Outside of the S&P stories, I very much enjoyed a collection of her work called The Best of Leigh Brackett, which was edited by her husband Edmond Hamiliton.

Hamilton also wrote an introduction for the collection in which he revealed that Eric John Stark was Leigh Brackett’s favorite character of her own creation. She had good taste.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was a look at Sword & Planet from DMR Books.