The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

Eerie, fascinating tales from one of Science Fiction's foremost authors. This big, new collection by one of science fiction's best-known and well-loved talents is sure to take you into worlds far beyond the one you know...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space Opera, Pulp

351 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1955

About the author

Leigh Brackett was born on December 7, 1915 in Los Angeles, and raised near Santa Monica. Having spent her youth as an athletic tom-boy - playing volleyball and reading stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard - she began writing fantastic adventures of her own. Several of these early efforts were read by Henry Kuttner, who critiqued her stories and introduced her to the SF personalities then living in California, including Robert Heinlein, Julius Schwartz, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton - and another aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury.

In 1944, based on the hard-boiled dialogue in her first novel, No Good From a Corpse, producer/director Howard Hawks hired Brackett to collaborate with William Faulkner on the screenplay of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

Brackett maintained an on-again/off-again relationship with Hollywood for the remainder of her life. Between writing screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari!, and The Long Goodbye, she produced novels such as the classic The Long Tomorrow (1955) and the Spur Award-winning Western, Follow the Free Wind (1963).

Brackett married Edmond Hamilton on New Year's Eve in 1946, and the couple maintained homes in the high-desert of California and the rural farmland of Kinsman, Ohio.

Just weeks before her death on March 17, 1978, she turned in the first draft screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back and the film was posthumously dedicated to her.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

February is a short month. I participated in a short challenge in honor of all things Februarian. One task was to read a short story collection, and this was my choice. I promise this will be a short review.

I had read a couple of titles by Brackett last year, both featuring our man John Stark, so I was interested to see how she handled stories about other characters and other places. There was one John Stark offering here, Enchantress Of Venus, and I have to say that it was the best of the Stark stories I've read so far. When Brackett puts her hero somewhere besides Mars, you don't notice the Burroughs influence quite so much.

Of the seven other stories here, my favorites were The Halfling, set in a galactic carnival, with strange creatures, a beautiful dancing girl, and a determined assassin. The Dancing Girl Of Ganymede featured another beautiful dancing girl, this one with an unusual secret.

I think the most intense story was All The Colors Of The Rainbow, which told how two green aliens dealt with the racial prejudice they encountered while going around the United States on a government approved mission. (There is frequent use of the 'n' word here, as in 'green n'. Just so you will know.) I very much hope that should this type of situation ever arise someday in the future in real life, people would not be as ignorant and crude as they were here.

The Shadows was cleverly creepy or creepily clever, whichever you prefer. Just what are those dark shapes following the newly landed men around the planet? How can there be shadows when there is nothing to make them?

Overall, a very entertaining collection. I think I will treat myself to more of Brackett's titles as soon as I can tweak the budget. I might even give up chocolate for a little while so I can place an order soon. Really!

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Halfling - 3.5/5 - A sort of mystery science fiction novella surrounding an interplanetary carnival populated by various alien creatures and half-humans. I say "sort of mystery" because due to the length of the story the mystery is solved fairly quickly. There is also a love story that is way too quick and cliche of the stories in this time period

The Dancing Girl From Ganymede - 2.5/5 - The second story where a character falls in love with another one instantly and the whole story wouldn't even happen otherwise. There are some interesting ideas but many are so well tread that I just never cared

The Citadel of Lost Ages - 2/5 - A science fantasy story of a man who has lost his memory but is being held by beastmen called Numi because he has the memory of this Citadel locked in his lost memory. Adventure ensues with him breaking out and joining a band of other men to find the Citadel and then fight for it. The minor problem is that at no point does the Citadel seem that important despite being the end goal of man and Numi alike and is just a Macguffin. The major problem is that the story is dull

All the Colors of the Rainbow - 3/5 - Earth has begun the process of space travel so a federation of aliens has come down to help them in various ways. One alien couple are driving to a new job when they come across a racist town of white people who refuse them service, call them racial slurs, and then commit acts of violence against them. It's very on the nose and lacks anything to make it stand out beyond a "racism = bad" story. Really the most interesting thing is that it predates Star Trek but had a few ideas that ended up in the show (basically the stuff that didn't involve the racism)

The Shadows - 4.5/5 - Excellent story about a small planetary expedition that encounters some alien beings that exist purely as shadows. Reads like a science fiction horror for most of the book and gives us an excellent and unexpected backstory for the shadows themselves

Enchantress of Venus - 4/5 - A science fantasy novella where a man has a heroic adventure through a run-down crime ridden city on Venus overlooked by an inbred slave driver family. Does feel a bit dated like an old school fantasy adventure but still pretty fun

The Lake of the Gone Forever - 4/5 - A man travels to a distant planet that his father had originally visited and has never been visited by humans otherwise. An interesting story about how inherent childhood trauma can lead to an obsession later in life. First half of the story feels much deeper than what is on the surface and it's unfortunate the ending is somewhat predictable and standard. Still good but falls short of great

The Truants - 4.5/5 - A first contact story set in a country town. Reads a bit like a horror story and is one of those novellas you wish was a full novel because it could have been even better with more room to breathe. Great stuff

[S.E. Martens · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was high time I read something by the "Queen of Space Opera." These short stories were originally published between 1943 - 1957, the tail end of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction."

These stories contain interstellar travel, human-like aliens, androids, and other fun staples of the pulp science fiction genre. Unfortunately, there is a sameness to many of these short stories. I understand grouping stories with similar themes together for a collection, but it got quite repetitive. For instance, Brackett really seems to like bland male characters who fall in love with mysterious women who turn out to be something other than human.

The Halfling
Circus ringmaster Jade Greene finds himself smitten with his new dancer, the mysterious Laura. The circus is home to aliens, such as the cat-man from Callisto. The Callistans aren't supposed to interact with humans - except to kill them - but sometimes, they become addicted to human goods like coffee and leave their people behind.

The Dancing Girls of Ganymede
Once again: a man sees a beautiful woman dancer and instantly falls for her. Something is strange about this woman, as dogs instinctively hate her and the planet's original inhabitants are terrified of her. The man does not heed these warnings and finds himself embroiled in a violent conflict with a side of existentialism.

The Citadel of Lost Ages
An amnesiac man finds himself trapped in a cell. He is rescued by a beautiful, mysterious woman who turns out to be half-Numi. The Numi are humanoid lion-like beings who conquered the Earth and enslaved humanity. The amnesiac man somehow has the secret location of the "Citadel," which is said to hold all humankind's knowledge, buried in his lost memories.

All the Colors of the Rainbow
In my opinion, this was the strongest story in the collection. It doesn't follow the same mold as the others, and it's anti-racism message is sadly still as relevant now as it was in the 1950s. A pair of alien scientists come to Earth as officials from a galactic federation to impart new technology to the people of Earth. They have green skin and encounter horrific racism in small-town America. This story is very visceral and will purposefully make you feel both sickened and angry.

The Shadows
In a sharp change of pace from the previous entry The Shadows is a science fiction/horror story with a fun twist. A group of explorers on an alien planet are hunted by living shadows.

Enchantress of Venus
Maybe I would appreciate this one more if I was familiar with the main character, Eric John Stark, who is a character that Brackett featured in many of her stories. An "Earthman" raised on Mercury, frequently described as a "wild man." This is pure Golden Age pulp, which can be fun, but I found the characters very dull and one-dimensional. Stark travels to Venus to track down a missing friend and becomes embroiled in a conflict against the cruel alien overlords. The red gaseous "sea" was interesting.

The Lake of the Gone Forever
Rand Conway has inherited his father's obsession with a strange lake on the frozen alien world of Iskar. He is convinced that he can make a fortune if he finds the lake and has convinced some business partners with promises of trade possibilities and studying an alien civilization. He tells no one about the lake that haunts his nightmares. This story was okay, though the treatment of the female characters is awful with no real point.

The Truants
An alien-invasion story with a twist. Bright creatures with fiery wings land in a spaceship in the woods beside a farm and begin to draw the local children to them. Told from the point of view of the father one of the kids, as he slowly realizes what is happening. This one began with a creepy tone but - like The Shadows - ends up being a rather upbeat story.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Halfling and Other Stories" gathers together eight tales, of varying lengths, that Leigh Brackett, the so-called "Queen of Space Opera," wrote between the years 1943 and '57. The collection initially appeared as an Ace paperback in '73, but it was the second edition, released in '83, that this reader was fortunate enough to lay his hands on. This is a generous collection of over 300 pages of Brackett's work, and for the most part, the stories reveal Brackett at the very peak of her form.

The anthology, however, does not begin with its strongest selections. "The Halfling" itself, a novelette (7,500 – 17,500 words) that first appeared in the February '43 issue of "Astonishing Stories," is a minor but colorful tale that conflates both the worlds of sci-fi and film noir. Here, Jade Greene, the owner of an interplanetary circus/carnival, hires the exotic Laura Darrow to be his new cooch dancer. Her advent is followed by a string of vicious murders at the circus, but is Laura to blame? Or, as seems to be the case, is it the catlike performer Laska, from Callisto, who always goes berserk when given a little coffee? (Caffeine enthusiasts should just love this java-addicted character!) "The Halfling" is distinguished by its noirlike femme fatale Laura, some equally noirlike dialogue ("She had a disposition like three yards of barbed wire…"), and its remarkable final sequence, in which all of the circus' bizarre, interplanetary animals run amok. Good fun, to be sure, but as I say, minor stuff.

The novelette "The Dancing Girl of Ganymede" ("Thrilling Wonder Stories," 2/50) is up next, another fun but lesser affair. Here, Tony Harrah (a great moniker, right?), a space wanderer who is roaming the streets of the titular Jovian moon, befriends a woman who seems to be a pariah to the rest of the townsfolk of Komar. In an opening scene strongly reminiscent of C.L. Moore's classic 1933 story "Shambleau," Harrah defends the woman against the disgust and disdain of the others. But the woman, Marith, is not a life-sucking vampire, a la Shambleau, but rather...well, perhaps I'd better not say. Harrah falls in love with the woman and falls in with a plot that she and her three "brothers" are cooking up, in this lively and colorful outing, capped off by a surprisingly downbeat ending.

The collection shifts into very high gear with its next offering, "The Citadel of Lost Ages" ("Thrilling Wonder Stories," 12/50), in which Fenway, a man of the futuristic year 1987, wakes up with no memories on an Earth 1,200 years later than that; an Earth that has stopped spinning, and whose one side is in perpetual darkness. Fenway manages to escape from the temple where he is being held prisoner and engages in a quest to cross the continent, enter the Great Dark zone, and win his way to the ice-entombed New York City, where, a shred of memory has suggested, salvation may be found in the long-hidden "Citadel." Fenway's attempts to locate the Citadel, regain his memory, and deliver the frozen Earth from the hands of the feline Numi who currently lord over it, make up the bulk of this outstanding novella (a story of 17,500 – 40,000 words). The scene in which Fenn (as he is called by his newfound allies) sees the nighttime stars for the first time is highly reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's classic 1941 story "Nightfall"; a memorable moment of cosmic wonder and revelation. In all, a marvelous piece of work from Brackett.

Up next is a novelette that might be deemed a minor masterpiece. "All the Colors of the Rainbow" ("Venture Science Fiction," 11/57) gives us the story of Flin and Ruvi, a newlywed alien couple from the planet Mintaka. A specialist in weather control, Flin has been sent to Earth by Galactic Center to teach our newly contacted world the rudiments of his science. But during a pleasure drive through rural U.S.A., the couple encounters hostility, threats and violence from the locals, who refer to them as "green niggers." Ultimately, Brackett's story is a fairly scathing indictment of racial prejudice, segregation and intolerance, and demonstrates how such bigotry can have disastrous consequences for both sides. It is a beautifully written story, and Flin and Ruvi make for a warm and winning couple. The reader's sympathies are squarely with them, even when Flin takes a violent vengeance on his tormentors. As I said, some truly great work here from Ms. Brackett.

In the short story "The Shadows" ("Startling Stories," 2/52), a galactic survey ship from Earth lands on a dead, unnamed world, and a small team of men explores the immediate area. They soon encounter the shadowy beings of the story's title, which hover and swoop around them menacingly, and then enter the crewmen's corporeal bodies! In this taut and exciting tale, Brackett once again shows the reader the unfortunate consequences of jumping to hasty conclusions about alien life forms. This story, unlike "All the Colors of the Rainbow," ends on a lovely note, however; one that all pet owners might truly appreciate.

"The Halfling" collection next offers up the superb novella "Enchantress of Venus" ("Planet Stories," Fall '49), the second story that Leigh wrote featuring her most famous character, Eric John Stark. I have already written at some length regarding this classic story under a separate heading on this site, so will just say now again that it is an unquestionably great piece of Golden Age sci-fi, and a bravura piece of work.

In the curiously titled novelette "The Lake of the Gone Forever" ("Thrilling Wonder Stories," 10/49), we encounter a spaceman named Rand Conway, whose father had visited the asteroid Iskar many decades before and later committed suicide, with the words "I can never go back to Iskar, to the Lake of the Gone Forever" on his lips. Rand is obsessed to find out what his Dad had discovered on that frozen world, and ultimately organizes a party to go there. He encounters a walled-in city whose inhabitants lead a barbaric existence, and does indeed learn the secret of his father's final words. This is still another highly colorful, imaginative, exciting tale from this gifted author; a story that wraps up with a satisfying yet somewhat sad denouement.

To round out the collection, we have "The Truants" ("Startling Stories," 7/50), a novelette whose title, as it turns out, has quite a double meaning. The story transpires in the northeast corner of Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border; not too far from where Brackett and her husband, pulpmaster Edmond "The World Wrecker" Hamilton, lived in Kinsman. Here, family man/dairy farmer Hugh Sherwin is disturbed when his little girl, Janie, reports seeing a strange craft land in the woods behind their house. In the days to come, Janie and her pals befriend the fiery, angelic-looking beings from said craft and begin playing hooky from school, to their parents' great consternation. But when Janie is gifted with an unusual crystal toy that allows her to see other planets, and when the local schoolhouse mysteriously disappears (!), the parents decide to take arms in hand to combat the otherworldly menace. Once again, Brackett demonstrates the inadvisability of leaping to conclusions when facing the alien unknown, while the story--which certainly does manage to elicit that elusive "sense of wonder"--concludes on a sweet, surprising note; one that might be especially appealing to all fans of the "Star Trek" episode "The Squire of Gothos."

Thus, whether short, medium-length or longish, the eight stories in "The Halfling" collection all manage to satisfy and entertain. Read in conjunction with three other Brackett collections--"The Best of Leigh Brackett," "The Coming of the Terrans" and "The Best of Planet Stories, #1"--an unavoidable conviction of the author's mastery of the shorter form will surely be formed. And now, I find that I need to get my hands on Haffner Press' recent 504-page, hardcover anthology entitled "Martian Quest: The Early Brackett," which collects 20 of the author's earliest tales, from 1940 – '43. Sadly enough, this $40 whopper seems to be out of print at the moment. But at least you all know now what to buy me for my next birthday, right?

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most excellent destination for all fans of Leigh Brackett....)

[Gert De Bie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leigh Brackett kan schrijven, dat is niet het probleem en het is de voornaamste reden dat we verder zijn blijven lezen: sommige verhalen wisten ons echt wel mee te slepen. Maar we vonden de meeste personages van bordkarton en de pointes of plots weinig subtiel.

Haar "No Good From a Corpse" staat al jaren op ons cultleeslijstje, dus de kans is reëel dat we die nog een kans geven, maar The Halfling and other stories lieten alvast geen te beste geloofsbrieven na.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

the Halfling and other stories were written in a more simple time, and some of the stories do show their age. All of the stories, however and very good to read and enjoy. Many of them focus on our ability to love another person, human or not. There is one "Stark" story, rather good. Overall I enjoyed the book.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several of the stories in this collection are typical Brackett: hardboiled, with protagonists struggling on lost worlds for a fabulous prize only to discover the game isn't worth the candle. That would include "Lake of the Gone Forever," "Citadel of Lost Ages," and the Eric John Stark story "Enchantress of Venus" (there's also the extremely hardboiled story of space carnies, "The Halfing."). Others are less typical, though still good: The Zenna Henderson-esque "The Truants," "The Shadows" (starts half-boiled then twists into something almost upbeat) and "All the Colors of the Rainbow," a very biting story of racism that hit me in the gut when I was in my teens. 4.5 stars.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the title story, The Halfling, was the weakest of the bunch. The stories within range from little twisty things like the Truants and the Shadows to topical stories like All the Colors of the Rainbow, about closed-minded Ameri-humans greetings aliens in just the way you might expect, to magnificent sword-and-planet adventure The Enchantress of Venus and Citadel of Lost Ages... some of the best pulp adventure stories I have ever read.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

True rating: 4.5 stars.

[Shane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm... the first two were good, I really enjoyed them, but the rest, I'm afraid, just didn't hold my attention at all. It may have been down to the fact that I was in the mood for more space based stories and these were very much sword and planet style.

I've since read reviews that say this isn't one of her better collections anyway.

I'll try some more at a later date.

[bluetyson]

The Halfling and Other Stories by Leigh Brackett (1973)

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

'All the Colors of the Rainbow'... Need I say More?

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good group of short stories...

[Fantasy Literature]

Eight marvelous tales from the Queen of Space Opera.

http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite stories:
"All the Colors of the Rainbow"
"The Shadows"
"Enchantress of Venus"

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to "The Halfling", "The Dancing Girl of Ganymede", "The Shadows". It's so very good...

[Dee Eisel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this as a gift from my husband at the holidays, when it’s a tradition to go to the incredible Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore and grab some used books. I didn’t go because of my oath not to buy for myself, so he grabbed it for me. It took me a while to dig into it, but I’m glad I did.

Brackett might be best known for her work on the script for The Empire Strikes Back. That’s a shame, because while her stories show the sexism you’d expect from 40s and 50s SF, her plots are entertaining. She doesn’t hesitate to make characters bleed or feel emotional pain in the same way that Melanie Rawn isn’t afraid, and it shows.

That’s not to say I couldn’t see where the story was going. I could, every time, but that’s because that’s what was selling at the time. Brackett was one of the people who laid down the tropes. It’s a shame she’s not better known.

In the volume, the first two stories are the weakest. It picks up very well in “The Shadows,” and “The Truants” is a satisfying must-read for anyone with kids. “All The Colors Of The Rainbow” is the best story in the volume because here Brackett is taking the intolerance by white people of people of color and extrapolates that to alien visitors. I recommend it highly!

Five of Five stars, for old SF that still satisfies and deserves to be better known.