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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : ( B ) : Brackett, Leigh
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Grimly Eric John Stark slogged toward that ancient Martian city -- with every step he cursed the talisman of Ban Cruach that flamed in his blood-stained belt. Behind him screamed the hordes of Ciaran, hungering for that magic jewel -- ahead lay the dread abode of the Ice Creatures -- at his side stalked the whispering specter of Ban Cruach, urging him on to a battle Stark knew he must lose!
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"Mercury is a lush, hot world. Mel Grey and a group of pioneers and prisoners are working hard to make the planet habitable for man kind. But there are those who would have the world all for themselves. Romance and adventure await Mel Grey on this savage planet!"
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No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in hte United States of America. Constitution of the United States Thirteenth Amendment. Two generations after the Destruction, rumors persisted about a secred desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plotted to revive the cities. Almost a continent away, Len Coulter heard whisperings that fired his imagination. Then one day he found a strange wooden box...
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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.
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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!
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Eric John Stark rides again! Leigh Brackett's unforgettable science-fantasy hero of The Secret of Sinharat and The Ginger Star cuts a red swath across the brutal planet Skaith Having killed the king-dog Flay in his quest to save an old friend and mentor, Stark now wanders the Worldheart in the company of nine ferocious canines that respond to his every command. Ruling the hounds of Skaith means tapping into the savagery of Stark's own mysterious past, and even a moment's hesitation could turn the pack against him!
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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.
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This Halcyon Classics ebook contains three works by screenwriter and novelist Leigh Brackett. Brackett (1915-1978) wrote dozens of works during a nearly forty-year career, including screenplays for The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Brackett was a versatile writer, penning space opera like BLACK AMAZON OF MARS, along with detective stories, westerns, and other works.
Much of her science fiction was set in a fictional Earth solar system with Mercury, Venus, and Mars all inhabited and earth-like to some degree.
This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.
Black Amazon of Mars
A World is Born
This unexpurgated edition contains the complete text, with minor errors and omissions corrected.
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Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker. Father vs. son. An amazing all-new novelization that will tie in with the blockbuster classic Star Wars DVD release.
Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker. Father vs. son. An amazing all-new novelization that will tie in with the blockbuster classic Star Wars DVD release.
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Erik John Stark is sent on a perilous mission into the Valkis and encounters the Queen of the Martian Catacombs.
Excerpt
The leader of the four men rode slowly toward the tor, his right arm raised.
His voice carried clearly on the wind. "Eric John Stark!" he called, and the dark man tensed in the shadows.
The rider stopped. He spoke again, but this time in a different tongue. It was no dialect of Earth, Mars or Venus, but a strange speech, as harsh and vital as the blazing Mercurian valleys that bred it.
"Oh N'Chaka, oh Man-without-a-tribe, I call you!"
There was a long silence. The rider and his mount were motionless under the low moons, waiting.
Eric John Stark stepped slowly out from the pool of blackness under the tor.
"Who calls me N'Chaka?"
The rider relaxed somewhat. He answered in English, "You know perfectly well who I am, Eric. May we meet in peace?" Stark shrugged. "Of course."
He walked on to meet the rider, who had dismounted, leaving his beast behind. He was a slight, wiry man, this EP C officer, with the rawhide look of the frontiers still on him. His hair was grizzled and his sun-blackened skin was deeply lined, but there was nothing in the least aged about his hard good-humored face nor his remarkably keen dark eyes.
"It's been a long time, Eric," he said.
Stark nodded. "Sixteen years." The two men s
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Attempting to make Venus safe for colonists turns out to be a very dangerous job for Tex and his partner Breska.
excerpt
Tex stirred uneasily where he lay on the parapet, staring into the heavy, Venusian fog. The greasy moisture ran down the fort wall, lay rank on his lips. With a sigh for the hot, dry air of Texas, and a curse for the adventure-thirst that made him leave it, he shifted his short, steel-hard body and wrinkled his sandy-red brows in the never-ending effort to see.
A stifled cough turned his head. He whispered, "Hi, Breska."
The Martian grinned and lay down beside him. His skin was wind-burned like Tex's, his black eyes nested in wrinkles caused by squinting against sun and blowing dust.
For a second they were silent, feeling the desert like a bond between them. Then Breska, mastering his cough, grunted:
"They're an hour late now. What's the matter with 'em?"
Tex was worried, too. The regular dawn attack of the swamp-dwellers was long overdue.
"Reckon they're thinking up some new tricks," he said. "I sure wish our relief would get here. I could use a vacation."
Breska's teeth showed a cynical flash of white.
"If they don't come soon, it won't matter. At that, starving is pleasanter than beetle-bombs, or green snakes. Hey, Tex. Here comes the Skipper."
Captain John S
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Few men have gone beyond that barrier, into the vast mystery of Inner Venus. Fewer still have come back.
Excerpt
The ship moved slowly across the Red Sea, through the shrouding veils of mist, her sail barely filled by the languid thrust of the wind. Her hull, of a thin light metal, floated without sound, the surface of the strange ocean parting before her prow in silent rippling streamers of flame.
Night deepened toward the ship, a river of indigo flowing out of the west. The man known as Stark stood alone by the after rail and watched its coming. He was full of impatience and a gathering sense of danger, so that it seemed to him that even the hot wind smelled of it.
The steersman lay drowsily over his sweep. He was a big man, with skin and hair the color of milk. He did not speak, but Stark felt that now and again the man's eyes turned toward him, pale and calculating under half-closed lids, with a secret avarice.
The captain and the two other members of the little coasting vessel's crew were forward, at their evening meal. Once or twice Stark heard a burst of laughter, half-whispered and furtive. It was as though all four shared in some private joke, from which he was rigidly excluded.
The heat was oppressive. Sweat gathered on Stark's dark face. His shirt stuck to his back. The air was heavy with moisture, tainted with
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It was driving men to madness… they had managed to capture it, but for how long?
Excerpt
Lundy was flying the aero-space convertible by himself. He'd been doing it for a long time. So long that the bottom half of him was dead to the toes and the top half even deader, except for two separate aches like ulcerated teeth; one in his back, one in his head.
Thick pearly-grey Venusian sky went past the speeding flier in streamers of torn cloud. The rockets throbbed and pounded. Instruments jerked erratically under the swirl of magnetic currents that makes the Venusian atmosphere such a swell place for pilots to go nuts in.
Jackie Smith was still out cold in the copilot's seat. From in back, beyond the closed door to the tiny inner cabin, Lundy could hear Farrell screaming and fighting.
He'd been screaming a long time. Ever since the shot of avertin Lundy had given him after he was taken had begun to wear thin. Fighting the straps and screaming, a hoarse jarring sound with no sense in it.
Screaming to be free, because of It.
Somewhere inside of Lundy, inside the rumpled, sweat-soaked black uniform of the Tri-World Police, Special Branch, and the five-foot-six of thick springy muscle under it, there was a knot. It was a large knot, and it was very, very cold in spite of the sweltering heat in the cabin, and it had a nasty habit of yanking itself tight every few minutes, causing Lundy to jerk and sweat as though he'd been spiked.
Lundy didn't like that cold tight knot in his belly. It meant he was afraid. He'd been afraid before, plenty of times, and he wasn't ashamed of it. But right now he needed all the brains and guts he had to get It back to Special headquarters at Vhia, and he didn't want to have to fight himself, too.
Fear can screw things for you. It can make you weak when you need to be strong, if you're going to go on living. You, and the two other guys depending on you.
Lundy hoped he could keep from getting too much afraid, and too tired—because It was sitting back there in its little strongbox in the safe, waiting for somebody to crack.
Farrell was cracked wide open, of course, but he was tied down. Jackie Smith had begun to show signs before he passed out, so that Lundy had kept one hand over the anesthetic needle gun bolstered on the side of his chair. And Lundy thought, the hell of it is, you don't know when It starts to work on you. There's no set pattern, or if there is we don't know it. Maybe right now the readings I see on those dials aren't there at all . . . .
Down below the torn grey clouds he could see occasional small patches of ocean. The black, still, tideless water of Venus, that covers so many secrets of the planet's past.
It didn't help Lundy any. It could be right or wrong, depending on what part of the ocean it was—and there was no way to tell. He hoped nothing would happen to the motors. A guy could get awfully wet, out in the middle of that still black water.
Farrell went on screaming. His throat seemed to be lined with impervium. Screaming and fighting the straps, because It was locked up and calling for help.
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Here is a collection of some of the finest short fiction penned by one of “fathers” of modern science fiction.
These stories were selected (and edited) by his wife Leigh Brackett, an author and a screenwriter. Her screen-writing credits include works on such films as The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
This collection spans nearly half a century of Edmond Hamilton's work and was selected from a repository of hundreds of stories that he had written over that period.
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Pendleton's quiet voice was grave. "Mars is old and tired and torn with famine. Venus is young, but her courage is undisciplined. Her barbarians aren't suited to mechanized warfare. And Earth . . . ." He sighed. "Perhaps if we hadn't fought so much among ourselves . . . ."
Excerpt
MacVickers stopped at the brink of the dark round shaft.
It was cold, and he was stark naked except for the silver collar welded around his neck. But it was more than cold that made him shiver and clamp his long bony jaw.
He didn't know what the shaft was for, or where it led. But he had a sudden feeling that once he went down he was down for good.
The small, round metal platform rocked uneasily under his feet. Beyond the railing, as far as MacVickers could see to the short curve of Io's horizon, there was mud. Thin, slimy blue-green mud.
The shaft went down under the mud. MacVickers looked at it. He licked dry lips, and his grey-green eyes, narrow and hot in his gaunt dark face, flashed a desperate look at the small flyer from which he had just been taken.
It bobbed on the heaving mud, mocking him. The eight-foot Europan guard standing between it and MacVickers made a slow weaving motion with his tentacles.
MacVickers studied the Europan with the hating eyes of a wolf in a trap. His smooth black body had a dull sheen of re
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Eric Falken couldn't run any more. At least he'd led the Hiltonists away from the pitiful starving holes where his people hid, on the outer planets and barren asteroids and dark derelict hulks floating far outside the traveled lanes.
Excerpt
Eric Falken stood utterly still, staring down at his leashed and helpless hands on the controls of the spaceship Falcon.
The red lights on his indicator panel showed Hiltonist ships in a three-dimensional half-moon, above, behind, and below him. Pincer jaws, closing fast.
The animal instinct of escape prodded him, but he couldn't obey. He had fuel enough for one last burst of speed. But there was no way through that ring of ships. Tractor-beams, criss-crossing between them, would net the Falcon like a fish.
There was no way out ahead, either. Mercury was there, harsh and bitter in the naked blaze of the sun. The ships of Gantry Hilton, President of the Federation of Worlds, inventor of the Psycho-Adjuster, and ruler of men's souls, were herding him down to a landing at the lonely Spaceguard outpost.
A landing he couldn't dodge. And then . . . .
For Paul Avery, a choice of death or Happiness. For himself and Sheila Moore, there was no choice. It was death.
The red lights blurred before Falken's eyes. The throb of the plates under his feet faded into distance. He'd
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A huge amount of money for a simple job. The deal seemed too good to be true…
Excerpt
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He knocked over the pitcher of thil, but it didn't matter. The pitcher was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute." I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. He says I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in Space, plastered so thick with attachments..."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey! I've wetnursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down! Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it is Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his grey green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earthblood Martian girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I..."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled pleasantly and said, very gently: "Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if he was a lousy bill-collector; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
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The Kraylens are a dying tribe, a scrap of old Venus, but Campbell is determined to help those that had helped him!
excerpt
"Roy Campbell woke painfully. His body made a blind, instinctive lunge for the control panel, and it was only when his hands struck the smooth, hard mud of the wall that he realized he wasn't in his ship any longer, and that the Guard wasn't chasing him, their guns hammering death.
He leaned against the wall, the perspiration thick on his heavy chest, his eyes wide and remembering. He could feel again, as though the running fight were still happening, the bucking of his sleek ship beneath the calm control of his hands. He could remember the pencil rays lashing through the night, searching for him, seeking his life. He could recall the tiny prayer that lingered in his memory, as he fought so skillfully, so dangerously, to evade the relentless pursuer.
Then there was a hazy period, when a blasting cannon had twisted his ship like a wind-tossed leaf, and his head had smashed cruelly against the control panel. And then the slinking minutes when he had raced for safety—and then the sodden hours when sleep was the only thing in the Universe that he craved.
He sank back on the hide-frame cot with something between a laugh and a curse. He was sweating, and his wiry body twitched. He found a cigarette, lit it on the second try, and sat still, listening to his heartbeats slow down.
He began to wonder, then, what had wakened him.
It was night, the deep indigo night of Venus. Beyond the open hut door, Campbell could see the liha-trees swaying a little in the hot, slow breeze. It seemed as though the whole night swayed, like a dark blue veil.
For a long time he didn't hear anything but the far-off screaming of some swamp beast on the kill. Then, sharp and cruel against the blue silence, a drum began to beat.
It made Campbell's heart jerk. The sound wasn't loud, but it had a tight, hard quality of savagery, something as primal as the swamp and as alien, no matter how long a man lived with it.
The drumming stopped. The second, perhaps the third, ritual prelude. The first must have wakened him. Campbell stared with narrow dark eyes at the doorway.
He'd been with the Kraylens only two days this time, and he'd slept most of that. Now he realized that in spite of his exhaustion, he had sensed something wrong in the village.
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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.