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Del Rey, USA. September 1977. First paperback edition, preceded only by the SFBC hardcover. A collection of ten memorable sf stories, an 8-page introduction supplied by Brackett's husband, sf author Edmond Hamilton, and a fascinating 9-page afterword by Leigh Brackett, the Queen of Mars. A VERY FINE COPY. AS NEW ============================================================================ = Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 March 18, 1978) was an American science fiction writer called "the Queen of Space Opera."[1] She was also a screenwriter known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before the film went into production. She was the first woman shortlisted for the Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars" (Startling Stories, Fall 1944). Leigh Brackett was born December 7, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, and grew up there. On December 31, 1946, at age 31, she married Edmond Hamilton in San Gabriel, California, and moved with him to Kinsman, Ohio. She died of cancer in 1978 in Lancaster, CaliforniaBrackett first published in her mid-20s; the science fiction story "Martian Quest" appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Her earliest years as a writer (1940 42) were her most productive. Some of her stories have social themes, such as "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (1943), which considers the effects on the native cultures of alien worlds of Earth's expanding trade empire. At the time, she was an active member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), and participated in local science fiction fandom by contributing to the second issue of Pogo's STF-ETTE, an all-female science fiction fanzine (probably the first such).[3] The Brackett-Bradbury collaboration "Lorelei of the Red Mist" took the cover of Planet Stories in 1946. Brackett's first detective story, "Murder in the Family", was published in Mammoth Detective in 1943. Brackett's first novel, No Good from a Corpse (1944), was a hard-boiled mystery novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler The book resulted in her getting her first big screenwriting assignment. After this, Brackett's science fiction stories became more ambitious. Shadow Over Mars (1944) was her first novel-length science fiction story; though rough-edged, it marked the beginning of a new style influenced by the characterization of the 1940s detective story and film noir.[4] It won a Retro Hugo for best novel in 2020. In 1946, Brackett married fellow science fiction author Edmond Hamilton (fellow LASFS member Ray Bradbury served as best man). Planet Stories published the novella "Lorelei of the Red Mist", in which the protagonist is a thief called Hugh Starke. Brackett finished the first half before turning it over to her close friend[5] Bradbury, so that she could leave to work on the screenplay of the movie The Big Sleep. Brackett returned to science fiction writing in 1948 after her movie work. Between 1948 and 1951, she produced a series of science fiction adventure stories that were longer than her previous work, including classic representations of her planetary settings as "The Moon that Vanished" and the novel Sea-Kings of Mars (1949). The latter was later published as The Sword of Rhiannon. In "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (1949), Brackett created the character of Eric John Stark. Stark, an orphan from Earth, is raised by the semi-sentient aboriginals of Mercury, who are later killed by Earthmen. He is saved by a Terran official, who adopts and mentors Stark. (Wikipedia).
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