Product Description
Legendary SciFi writer Leigh Brackett (who won a posthumous award for the screenplay to Empire Strikes Back), began her career as a writer trying to reach the pages of Black Mask. She was never successful in this, but her Chandler-influenced novel No Good From a Corpse was so impressive in its hard-boiled dialogue that Howard Hawks insisted its author, unseen, be brought in to work on the screenplay adaption of The Big Sleep (together with a fella by the name of Faulkner.) Though Hawks was stunned to discover that Leigh was a woman, she got the job, and worked on what was probably the best film adaptation of a Chandler novel.

No Good From a Corpse offers hard-boiled private eye Ed Clive, who gets involved with a dead girl, and suspects every one of her boyfriends--an ex-husband, a playboy, a blackmailer and a brute. There's a woman suspect as well, and a long chase through Sunset Strip. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A thoroughly enjoyable debut novel from a phenomenal writer
In this, her first novel, Leigh Brackett captures brilliantly the spirit of the noir fiction popular form the 1920s to the 1940s. Of course as with any first novel, this book has a few flaws, but we can overlook that because the overall story is engrossing and mesmerizing. Even this early in her career, Brackett had a fine grasp of her writing and definitely knew how to tell a story even if the plot in places could be a bit weak. Few writers can match her pulsepounding prose or her noteworthy attempts to bring her characters above the pulp archetypes they embody. Although Brackett would go on mostly to write science fiction and fantasy, she nonetheless continued to produce mysteries of even higher quality than this later in her life. Those lucky enough to read and enjoy her writing should definitely seek them out if they have not already done so.

Not a masterpiece, but it delivers.
The novel which sent Leigh Brackett to Hollywood.Written in fluent hardboiled, it's easy to see why Howard Hawks picked her for "The Big Sleep", and it's not difficult to imagine the book as a good vehicle for Warner Brothers' company of rogues, with Bogart a plausible lead. There are the usual components of this sort of novel: a not quite hopelessly complicated plot, femmes fatales, hostile cops, tough dialogue, and a number of sound thrashings for the hero (The Leaving the Hospital Before He's Recovered Scene: "Listen, Mr. Clive.You've taken a bad beating--" "All right.It's my beating, isn't it?I can do what I want with it."). Brackett does not try hard for atmosphere or characterization, or even dazzling repartee, but she does furnish a breathless pace and plenty of action, all delivered with an effortless panache for which modern noirists strive in vain.

The Blackmask edition (which does NOT contain the supplementary short stories mentioned in other amazon reviews) is afflicted with the numberless typos you'd expect from a cheap print-on-demand source, but one can usually figure out what Brackett actually wrote.

Good writing - demerits for publisher
This is a well-plotted, hard-boiled, page turner of a detective novel - exactly what one would expect from science fiction great Leigh Brackett.(I only just discovered she had also written in this genre!)

Unfortunately, the production values of "Blackmask Online" - the publisher - are atrocious.The book was obviously scanned and OCRed, and not very carefully proofed, afterward.Creative interpretation is required to correct or make sense of word choice."Clive" (the protagonist's name) is often turned into "dive", "time" often becomes "tune", "in" for some reason sometimes turns into "hi".Once you figure out what is going on, you can make sense out of most sentences (a few defy interpretation), but it is distracting and annoying.The pages are also formatted badly, with a hair's breadth of space between the top edge and the header text, no space between chapter headings and the following paragraph, other idiosyncrasies.It just looks ugly and amateurish.The overall impression is that this is a publisher who aims at turning a quick buck on a book in the public domain (there is no copyright information given), but who doesn't care much about doing a good job.I'm glad that they're making the work available - but having spent another person-day on editing wouldn't have killed them, either.

No Good For Avoiding Typos In Blackmask Edition
This is a marvelous piece of detective fiction that gives the reader a real hard-boiled hero and worthy bad guys and girls, but the edition on sale currently is so riddled with typos from start to finish that the publisher should pull it and reprint with the text corrected.

"No Good" Is Great; The Rest Cannot Quite Match Up.
I began this review months ago, I really did, just after I began reading this compilation. It stirred me so much that I could barely wait for the next page. You see, hard-boiled detective fiction is to me as good as it gets. Not from johnny-come-lately postmodernists typing on laptop computers from houseboats, but the true-blue mean-street 40's dime detective stuff of Hammett and Chandler and Woolrich. But especially Chandler.
I had known of Leigh Brackett from her science fiction contributions, knew she could crack wise with the best of them from her movie scripts such as Rio Lobo (and of course, The Big Sleep). But I had never read any of her noir writing. Desperate for some California crime gothic, I bought this book.
I will say Brackett is the only person I know of to have sections of dialogue as good as Raymond Chandler without slavishly imitating him. I had a smile on my face all the way through the title story. But remember how I said I began this review months ago? It has taken me this long to get through the short stories which follow.
Far from being bad, yet not approaching classic status either, they suffer mostly from lacking a single, distinctive voice. Hammett's Continental Op was an untouchable man speaking in clipped phrases. Chandler had Marlowe and his romantic cynicism as a unifying presence in his canon. The title story of this book had a Marlowe-like character. But the others in No Good From a Corpse are all over the map.
Brackett lacks the pure descriptive power of Chandler; in the last story Brackett spoke of the protagonist's "hard green eyes" what seemed like twenty times. There are also none of the quiet moments when we learn how Marlowe feels, some of his fallen-star philosophy, which are why Chandler's books are novels and these are pulp stories. In place of true feeling are scenes where characters who know one another very well each go on at length about various possibilities, then beat each other senseless. The fights are well done, but it seems a little like Brackett's trying too hard to be too hard-boiled.
With Chandler we could kind of tell who was lying because they clammed. In Brackett stories, the guilty are as likely to offer postulates as the cops. In fact, they likely have a frame-up or two plotted in case their first alibi doesn't take.
When she does try to actually imitate Chandler's style, it doesn't work. Here's an example: Chandler might say a gunsel's shoulder's were "a little narrower than City Hall." Brackett says in this book: "a little narrower- but not quite- than City Hall." It's as if she did not trust her readers to grasp the hyperbole; and when you think about it, hers is the more hyperbolic statement anyway.
What else? Brackett's heroes get beat up. A lot. They seem never to be in control of a situation in the way Marlowe or Spade or the Continental Op or even Hammer were.
These stories also rely on coincidence and happenstance to the point of flabbergasting a reader. Cars crash when they are needed to crash; people fall when they are needed to fall, that sort of thing.
Still, who cares? These are minor quibbles, and I list them only to show why this is deserving of four stars instead of five. This is the genuine article, 40's noir, hard-bitten as it gets, with great titles from a bygone era, like "The Misfortune Teller." Oh, happy happy. If you are a fan I would recommend snapping this up, because who knows how long it will be before these stories see print again? ... Read more

Product Description
Eric John Stark, Outlaw of Mars, travels beyond the solar system for exciting science fantasy adventures on the planet of Skaith, a lawless sphere at the edge of the known universe. Raised as a savage on the hostile planet of Mercury and honed into a fearless warrior in the low canals of the Red Planet, Stark is one of science fiction's greatest adventurers and is Leigh Brackett's most famous character. In The Ginger Star, Simon Ashton, Stark's foster father, has been kidnapped by the Lords Protector, and only Stark can rescue him! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The opening to Leigh Brackett's final work and magnum opus
In The Ginger Star, Leigh Brackett revives her favorite hero from decades earlier, Eric John Stark, to travel across the galaxy to find his foster father, Simon Ashton, on the dying world of Skaith. On Skaith, Stark meets intrigue complete with genetically engineered monsters, a beautiful traitress, psychic packs of wild dogs, and a secret cabal of men determined to keep Skaith separated from the rest of the world, even if it means the death of everyone on the planet. Stark may or may not be the fulfillment of a prophecy of the Dark Man who will liberate Skaith, but his major concern is overcoming the obstacles in his path to find Ashton. Despite its clear nods to the planetary romance genre that had flourished decades before Brackett conceived and wrote this series, the Skaith trilogy avoids a lighthearted narrative and skewers Marxist economic ideas in a way few SF writers had done before. Like its sequels, this book is dark, bleak, and sad, but that doesn't prevent us from cheering for Stark to achieve his goals. The Ginger Star and the series it spawned are a fine capstone to Leigh Brackett's life and work and a fitting representation of her dark vision of the universe.

Gritty fantasy under Old Sun
The Ginger Star is the first book in the Skaith trilogy, covering the further adventures of Eric John Stark after Secret of Sinharat/People of the Talisman.Stark now finds himself on a barren world orbiting a failing star, searching for his foster father.There has been a prophecy made about this "dark man without a tribe" however, and so Stark is hindered in his search by those wishing him both weal and woe.Despite all this, Stark grimly continues his search, just wishing to find his father and get off-planet (possibly with a love interest at his side).But things are never easy.

Written in the 1970's, this book has echoes of the Dying Earth mileau created by Jack Vance.There is a dying world under a dimming sun, and a mixture of fantasy and science fiction which is wholly unsurprising to the characters: prophecy is real and taken (very) seriously, there are dark gods requiring human sacrifice, and fighting is done with swords, tooth and claw rather than laser pistols.But in all that there are starships and aliens, genetic manipulation and remnants of a greater civilisation fallen into decay.In fact, the crux of the story is not so much Stark's search for his father, as the response of Skaith to the arrival of spaceships in the last dozen years, and the effect this has had on social order and power structures.

This is a great book to read - the characters are lifelike, the dialogue crackles, and the story well plotted and told.Scenes are memorable - the introduction of Gerrith, the cave of the Skaith-Children, the first meeting with a Wandsman.Brackett was a great storyteller, and she created a wonderful world here to enjoy. This book should be more widely read and loved, as it is a shame that somehow the Skaith stories were lost in the epic fantasies of the 80's.

Great Reading, & a buying option
These are terrific stories, the three books Bracketts form a very enjoyable trilogy which I've read and reread over the years.

There is an option to buying the three paperbacks: The Book of Skaith (Doubleday 1978) was an SF Book Club edition containing all three of the novels and is available as a used book for as little as $1 plus shipping.

Either way you go, these are a fun read. Recommended!

Outstanding science fiction
I knew that Leigh Brackett wrote the initial story for The Empire Strikes Back, but I did not know that she had written The Ginger Star in 1974. I admit that I was not reading much science fiction in those days, so I first became aware of the book and the Stark series when I read recently that an upcoming volume would have an introduction by George Lucas. That got my attention, and I decided to give the books a try. I am certainly glad that I did.

This book is an epic science fiction tale. The hero Eric John Stark travels to the planet of Skaith, a terrible place at the edge of the known universe, in an effort to save Simon Ashton, his foster father. Stark's biological parents were killed when he was very young, and he was then raised for a number of years by aborigines before coming under the influence of Ashton. All of these influences turned him into the warrior he is in this story.

The basic plot of Ms Brackett's book is that Simon Ashton goes missing on Skaith and Stark goes after him in the face of overwhelming odds. When Stark arrives on Skaith, he learns that he apparently is the key figure in a mysterious prophecy about the Dark Man. This does not simplify his mission. In his search for Ashton, Stark is accompanied by a small band of heroes that he picks up along the way. He runs into extremely memorable evil characters and manages to survive a number of perilous situations.

The characters in the book will grab your attention. The descriptions of the land through which he passes are memorable, and the action is excellent. I found the book to be one that I did not want to put down. I am very pleased that there are further books to read in the Stark series. I also want to give full credit to Paizo for publishing their Planet Stories books. Their objective is to introduce classic or possibly overlooked science fiction books to a new audience, and I think they will be successful. The books are in a nice trade paperback format with slightly lurid covers. (Note: The correct cover for the book is the one shown in the customer image on Amazon.) I look forward to reading about Stark's next adventure.

Swashbuckling Planetary Romance
From the beginning this brisk adventure hooked me and kept me hooked, as the main character Stark barrels through all who would block his quest to save the life of the man who had saved his own humanity. The alienness of the world of Skaith and its inhabitants is a palpable bed in which the plot's action swiftly flows. There are no false notes in Brackett's prose, and the dominance of action does not crowd out the carefully placed details that give the narrative its richness. Thence the cultures convey verisimilitude and the characters retain a sense of individuality (the latter seeming to be particularly difficult for many in this genre). On a perhaps less important, though personally valued, detail, Brackett is one of those writers with the knack for making up fantasy names that feel right, thus adding to rather than distracting from the narrative. Further setting it apart from many works in the genre, there is a subtext (the theme of the nature of humanity) that adds a depth of interest, without grating or coming across as special pleading.

Those of us whose introduction to the world of pulp fantasy/sci-fi came even after its silver age, and is therefore spotty at best, owe an ongoing debt of gratitude to Erik Mona for his salvage and rescue operation. He has recovered gems of the past I otherwise would have likely never enjoyed, and Brackett shines among them.
... Read more

Product Description
Martian Quest: The Early Brackett is a collection of the twenty earliest stories by the undisputed "Queen of Space-Opera."

On a Venus that never was, on a Mars that can never be (but should have been), Leigh Brackett’s early stories laid the foundation for her later classic adventures, The Sword of Rhiannon, The Nemesis from Terra, and the "Eric John Stark" series.

Other stories in this collection draw inspiration from such diverse sources as the lost-race novels of H. Rider Haggard, the lush fantasies of A. Merritt, and the planetary romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs. With an appreciation for Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, Brackett’s prose is a unique display of vigorous swashbuckling adventure tempered with a harsh, hard-boiled economy.

Martian Quest: The Early Brackett also features a revealing introduction by acclaimed author Michael Moorcock, recent recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very Good Collection
This book features Leigh Brackett's first 20 short stories. They vary in quality but what some lack in skill, they make up for in imagination. ... Read more

Product Description
Greed pulls the archaeologist Matt Carse into the forgotten tomb of the Martian god Rhiannon and plunges the unlikely hero into the Red Planet's fantastic past, when vast oceans covered the land and the legendary Sea-Kings ruled from terraced palaces of decadence and delight.Talented enough to co-write The Big Sleep film with William Faulkner and imaginative enough to pen the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, Leigh Brackett is a giant in the science-fiction field, and The Sword of Rhiannon is one of her most popular adventure tales. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Exhilarating
This is Leigh Brackett's finest evocation of the classic Mars of the pulp fiction magazines of a century ago. Originally Sword of Rhiannon appeared in the pulps under the title Sea Kings of Mars in the late 1940s during Brackett's most productive period of writing before being printed in book form under the current title. Brackett does many things in this novel, ranging from giving a vivid description of the second-best Mars after Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom to showing her love of things Celtic in the nomenclature of the characters to simply providing a wonderfully enjoyable, wholly engrossing read. There are some interesting plot twists along the way, and Matt Carse, the hero of the tale, is definitely intended to be grittier than most pulp heroes. Unfortunately after this novel, Brackett would largely move away from the solar system as a venue for her writing (although she would still pen the occasional short story in this vein two decades later would write the masterful Skaith trilogy in an effort to transport her seemingly favorite genre of writing to places still acceptable to science.) The book is hardly deep, but it doesn't need to be. It is enjoyable and contains just enough darkness to avoid making the plot boring. As with anything written by Brackett, Sword of Rhiannon is a treat to be savored and revisited.

Corny at first, yet vivid and memorable
I just read the 1953 paperback of The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett.Like her other work in this vein you have to suspend your disbelief, as themeans of getting into this fairy-tale world is corny (in the same way thatStar Trek is or will be one day.) But if you go along with it you find thestock characters trying a bit harder than most to convince you they are forreal. The hero is Carse, mercenary, educated treasure hunter who gets mixedup with the disembodied Rhiannon. The woman, Ywain, enslaves him but thetables are soon turned.Rhiannon will finally get control of Carse's bodybut not before Carse manages to upset the whole careful balance of society.So who gets the girl? c'mon, read the book.

Brackett admitted thatplotting was the hardest aspect for her, but for her efforts she foundlogical circumstances to back up the formulas.

Classical old style.
If you like to read old books even when their ideas are now completeobsolete you would like the book. It is old science fiction, with alienhumanlike species in Mars, an adventurer looking for treasure and a travelin time. All the ideas are topics now, but the book was good and is stillgood. I like it a lot, but it is not for you if you are looking for actualscience fiction and new ideas or thoughts. It is now like a fantasyadventures book. ... Read more

Product Description
He is Eric John Stark, known far and wide around the galaxy because of his many exploits and unparalleled fearlessness. But he is also called N’Chaka, Man-Without-a-Tribe. Born and raised in the savage surroundings of Mercury, and then reclaimed by his fellow Earthmen after they have destroyed his tribe and home, Stark spends his life wandering, not staying in one place for long, yet ever and always leaving his mark.

From dry and arid Mars with its vampiric Ramas, to red and lush Venus with its psychotic Lhari, and back again to the cold and cruel winter region of Mars and the Gates of Death, Stark fulfills overwhelming deeds of heroism, creating friendships and discovering love, yet still remaining true to his namesake–N’Chaka, Man-Without-A-Tribe.
... Read more

Product Description
Leigh Brackett may be best known for her screenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back," but her lush tales of interplanetary adventures were thrilling readers long before "Star Wars." Collected here are the short novel "Black Amazon of Mars" (the final magazine appearance of her hero, Eric John Stark), as well as "A World Is Born" and "Child of the Sun." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Now, Leigh Brackett could write STORIES!
This is a set of science fiction stories written by Leigh Brackett, collected and edited by her husband, Edmond Hamilton. (Brackett edited a similar collection of his best stories.) The book was sent to me by a friend, when I started talking about trying to read some of the earlier SF writers.

This is a marvelous book. Ms. Brackett was such a skilful story writer. I would start a new story, thinking, "I'm not sure I'm really interested in this," and by the time I was done I'd be thinking, "That was so! good! I'm so sorry it's over!"


The stories are a little dated, since they are set on a Mars, Venus, and Mercury that were imagined before humanity actually got to those planets to discover what's really there. (For example, Venus is a very humid world, with vast oceans encircling its few land masses.) But this is, after all, science fiction, so that doesn't matter very much. One might use the term "speculative fiction" instead, if it feels more comfortable.

The point is that these are Real Stories. They have a beginning, middle, and end. They start with a problem, have a protagonist, and work through to a conclusion. They are not, as another friend has called them, "mere vignettes," which is what a lot of short stories are these days. I don't mind the "vignettes" too much, but sometimes it's good to get back to stories that really go somewhere and have a point.

Aside from that fact -- that they're Real Stories -- there are the plots themselves. One forgets just how many things there are to speculate about, in science fiction. What a mind Ms. Brackett had, to conceive of so many scenarios, so many different creatures with such believable histories.

I think that's one thing that's often missing from current science fiction. In the earlier writing, the sky was truly the limit -- and it was limitless. Even when an individual story ended sadly, the whole genre was about possibility. It wasn't nearly so pessimistic as everything is today.

This was real Adventure. You finish these stories feeling invigorated.

I'm so glad I read this. Now I'm going to hunt down as much more Leigh Brackett material as I can find.
... Read more

Product Description
Picking up where Martian Quest: The Early Brackett left off, this volume collects 12 more tales of strange adventures on other worlds from the undisputed "Queen of Space Opera." Drawn from Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories pulp magazines, this tome revels in the 1946 titular collaboration with Ray Bradbury--who also contributes an original poem about Leigh Brackett as well as an essay about meeting & working with Brackett. Harry Turtledove, the modern master of "alternate history" provides the introduction and the book is adorned with Frank Kelly Freas' vintage illustrations from the 1953 reprint of "Lorelei of the Red Mist." In a review of Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, Paul di Filippo says "Plainly, Brackett was growing with every story she wrote, not yet 30 years old by the volume's end, with the best yet to come." Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances is where some of that "best" can found. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Good (Old) Stuff
THIS is the one you need to buy. It's a collection of Brackett's "Planetary Romances" including a dozen tales of dying sandy Mars and young swampy Venus with Brackett's trademark hard-bitten heroes and heroines. Intro by Turtledone, Foreward by Bradbury--who wrote half of the title story--illustrations by Frank Kelly Freas. The stories run from 1943 to 1950 with the bonus of a 1944 article for WRITER'S DIGEST on "The Science -Fiction Field." This is part of a three-volume collection of Brackett's short fiction, so order MARTIAN QUEST and SHANNACH--THE LAST FAREWELL TO MARS at the same time. Then go looking for her novels.
If you haven't done "planetary romance" yet, this is a good place to start. It's set in a Solar system much as astronomers imagined it prior to modern telescopes and space probes, and set in a time of interplanetary travel, but also a time in which a man took good care of his riding beast, and swords and crossbows coexist with the ray guns. If Edgar Rice Burroughs filled such worlds with Victorian men and women, Brackett's people have been around the block. Brackett scripted some classic film noir, and it shows in plot, character and dialog. But it's time for me to get back to reading--and time for you to order the book.

A 'must read' by the legions of Leigh Brackett fans.
The late Leigh Bracket (December 7, 1915 to March 17, 1978) was on of the first and most successful professional writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She was of the generation of writers (that included such luminaries as Robert A. heinlein, Jack Williamson, and Ray Bradbury) who were to elevate Science Fiction and Fantasy to the status of a respectable and commercially successful literary genre. Just weeks before her death, Leigh Brackett authored and turned in the first draft of the screenplay for 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Now thirteen of her original stories have been anthologized in "Loreleigh Of The Red Mist" from Haffner Press and will well serve to introduce a major literary talent to a whole new generation of appreciative readers. In addition to the title piece (which she co-wrote with Ray Bradury), the stories include The blue Behemoth; Thralls of the endless Night; The Jewel of Bas; The Veil of Astellar; Terror Out of Space; The Vanishing Venusians; The Moon That Vanished; The Beast-Jewell of Mars; Quest of the Starhope; The Lake of the Gone Forever; The Dancing Girl of Gannymede; and The Science-Fiction Field" (a non-fiction article written for the July 1994 issue of 'Writer's Digest' magazine). Enthusiastically recommended for academic and community library Science Fiction & Fantasy collections, "Loreleigh Of The Red Mist" should be considered as a 'must read' by the legions of Leigh Brackett fans.

A keeper
Hard boiled science-fiction noir by a writer who, in my opinion, was the best of the very few who could successfullypull off these kind of stories. This book has a permanentspot in my library.

An old master at the genre
Contents (copied directly from the Haffner Press website):
The Blue Behemoth
Thralls of the Endless Night
The Jewel of Bas
The Veil of Astellar
Terror Out of Space
The Vanishing Venusians
Lorelei of the Red Mist (with Ray Bradbury)
The Moon That Vanished
The Beast-Jewel of Mars
Quest of the Starhope
The Lake of the Gone Forever
The Dancing Girl of Ganymede

I'm ordering it; my rating is based on my liking Brackett's writing and my memories of having read a number of these works in the past. I always liked her work for its openly escapist, suspend-disbelief feeling and a kind of haunting other-world feeling (your mileage may vary). It's expensive - a bit of an irony, since these are "pulp" stories for which the author once got only pennies per word. But there's a totally different feel to SF works written over a half-century ago, compared to today's works, and the reality is that the price of collections of old stories usually bears no relationship to the price of the original, individual works. Based on my ownership of Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (this book's predecessor), you get good paper and good bindings in a smallish print run -- not a lot of economies of scale to be had here. ... Read more

Product Description
A World is Born is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Leigh Douglass Brackett is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Leigh Douglass Brackett then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Free SF Reader
A Science Fiction Story


Prison authority hostage escape.

3.5 out of 5 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Short book, long read - 2 1/2 stars
I know this story is revered by many, which is why I read it. It just didn't move me. It started promisingly enough, but I quickly lost interest. Other than the lack of science in society, nothing much about the world is revealed. The fact that the nuclear facility is undiscovered for so long is troubling. The boys in the story quickly become uninteresting when they get older, and their "adventure" after leaving home is dull. Perhaps you have to be a fan of this kind of story to appreciate it, which I am apparently not.

this classic of 50's SF deserves a wider audience
Leigh Brackett (1915 - 1978) was a productive writer of SF and fantasy novels, short stories, and screenplays. For all but the final 10 - 15 years of her life she was one of the relatively few woman continuously active in the field of SF.Brackett never labeled herself a `feminist' writer, and most of her works focus on male protagonists. In this respect her contributions and skills as a writer have been marginalized by the SF community, particularly in comparison to consciously `Feminist' authors like Alice Sheldon and Joanna Russ, who (in my opinion) are inferior writers, but nonetheless garnered outsized attention in the late 60s - early 70s simply for being regarded as Feminist authors.

`The Long Tomorrow' (1955) is one of Brackett's best novels and displays her skills at setting, characterization, and dialogue. The story takes place some decades after a nuclear war has devastated the US in the early 1950s. Civilization has reverted to an agrarian society akin to that of the mid-nineteenth century. Various politico-religious sects, such as the New Mennonites, are determined to stifle any technological progress in order to avert a repeat of the cataclysm. The main character is Len Colter, son of a New Mennonite farmer, whose curiosity about the Olden Times and their forbidden sciences brings him into conflict with his staid and pious family.

Len rebels against the strictures of his rural life and embarks on a journey to find Bartorstown, the rumored last bastion of pre-devastation technology. His search for Bartorstown brings him into a variety of conflicts smoldering around the former US, sparked by dissension between advocates for progress, and those opposed to its dangers. In the latter portion of the novel Len finds himself forced to make a fateful decision between his childhood aspirations, and the unsettling reality of genies re-loosed from their bottles.

Brackett never provides the reader with a pat declaration for one side or the other in these conflicts; instead, the narrative often shows some ambivalence about technology and its liabilities when wielded by humans clouded by their fears, beliefs, and yearnings.

The narrative is fast-moving and engaging. While she wrote with an economy and skill that are the hallmarks of an experienced author, Bracket was also able to portray her characters with depth and imbue them with distinctive and memorable personalities. The world of the post-apocalyptic USA of `The Long Tomorrow' is entirely believable, and one of the best presentations of such a scenario in what is a very heavily-mined area of the genre.

`The Long Tomorrow' isa classic of SF, and a great read for both young people and adults.

Some books should never go out of print!
This is simply amazing. If you are like me and enjoy well-written post-apocalyptic yarns then this is going to be quick favorite. There has been a backlash and the United States has turned its back to technology and all of its citizens live a rural Amish type lifestyle. Or have they? Solid writing and great concept. To bad this winner is out of print.

Some books should never go out of print!
This is simply amazing. If you are like me and enjoy well-written post-apocalyptic yarns then this is going to be quick favorite. There has been a backlash and the United States has turned its back to technology and all of its citizens live a rural Amish type lifestyle. Or have they? Solid writing and great concept. To bad this winner is out of print.

Some books should never go out of print!
This is simply amazing. If you are like me and enjoy well-written post-apocalyptic yarns then this is going to be quick favorite. There has been a backlash and the United States has turned its back to technology and all of its citizens live a rural Amish type lifestyle. Or have they? Solid writing and great concept. To bad this winner is out of print. ... Read more

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE is the first crime novel penned by prolific science fiction, western, and detective writer Leigh Douglass Brackett.Brackett (1915-1978) enjoyed a career spanning nearly forty years, writing dozens of books and short stories and gaining a reputation as a screenwriter in Hollywood.Brackett worked on the scripts for The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

From the jacket:
Laurel Dane was no angel. She'd changed men as often as she'd changed her hair color, and there was plenty in her past she'd like to forget. But no one deserved to be beaten to death, and private eye Ed Clive didn't believe that her boyfriend had killed her. Pursuing her own lonely trail, he found out just how easily jealousy and twisted rage could turn a human being into a monster of violence.

This ebook is DRM free.
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This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages. Day of the Druid is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Knut Enferd is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Knut Enferd then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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A Classic western!
Beckwith was known far and wide as a runaway slave, a renegade, a horse thief, and a fearsome warrior who had taken over a hundred scalps, among other things. But the real James Beckwith was even bigger than his mythic persona. Beckwith was as wild and untamed as the land he loved and conquered. Fiercely proud and bitterly stubborn, he seemed to enjoy making enemies with his displays of harsh courage. ... Read more

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This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Novels by Leigh Brackett, Screenplays by Leigh Brackett, Star Wars Episode V: the Empire Strikes Back, Rio Bravo, the Secret of Sinharat, the Big Sleep, the Long Goodbye, People of the Talisman, Rio Lobo, El Dorado, Hatari!, the Long Tomorrow, the Starmen, Gold of the Seven Saints. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 American space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. The screenplay, based on a story by George Lucas, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. It was the second film released in the Star Wars saga, and the fifth in terms of internal chronology. The film is set three years after the destruction of the Death Star. The villainous Darth Vader and the elite forces of the Galactic Empire are in pursuit of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia Organa, and the rest of the Rebel Alliance. While Vader chases Han and Leia across the galaxy, Luke studies the Force under Jedi Master Yoda. Vader uses Luke's friends to set a trap for him, leading to a fierce confrontation between the black-armored Sith and the young Jedi which ends with a shocking revelation. Following a difficult production, The Empire Strikes Back was released on May 21, 1980, and initially received mixed reviews from critics, although it has since grown in esteem, becoming one of the most popular chapters in the Star Wars saga and one of the most highly rated films in history. It earned more than US$538 million worldwide over the original run and several re-releases, making it the highest grossing film of 1980. When adjusted for inflation, it is the 12th highest grossing film of all time. Despite their victory over the Galactic Empire with the destruction of the Death Star, the Empire'...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=53964 ... Read more