Alpha Centauri or Die! / Legend of Lost Earth

by Leigh Brackett, G. McDonald Wallis

Ace Double paperback, 1963. Two science fiction tales.

In "Alpha Centauri or Die!" Bracket melds two of her older stories into one, using "Teleportress of Alpha C" (Planet Stories, Winter 1954-55) and"The Ark of Mars" (Planet Stories, September 1953).

"Legend of Lost Earth" is a planetary romance written by author and actress Hope Campbell. Set on the Dystopian planet of Niflhel (short for Niflheimr, the Hell of Norse mythology), whose rulers believe that any reference to the existence of Earth is part of a dangerous Mythology.

Genres: Science Fiction

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

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

[blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is for "Legend of Lost Earth", I reviewed Alpha Centauri or Die! under its own title.

In the ash-filled mining world of Niflhelm, the greatest threat to society are Earth Worshippers, lunatics who believe there's some other world called "Earth" that doesn't suck as bad. Which, of course, is preposterous. Our hero is, uh, I guess we'd say "blue-pilled" today and gets "red-pilled" by attending, on a lark, a meeting of earth worshippers.

I waffled on giving this four stars, almost, almost, almost, because Wallis does very well his character's increasing concern beyond himself. That was almost enough in itself to push over the book, but ultimately I stuck with three because:

-> There's little suspense, the story plays out kind of A-B-C
-> There are intimations of greater scope and explanation that actually don't go anywhere. Why our hero? Well, there's a surface answer but also a lot of coincidences that suggest larger forces (the author even says as much) but in the end, there's only the surface answer
-> Not just the hero, but the hero's girlfriend, his enemy, and the mysterious woman: why any of them?
-> The ending

I'm gonna theorize something. About 2/3rds of the way through, I figured out how the story could make sense, and my theory is that I did figure it out, and in fact, most readers would've figured it out. Realizing this, the author added a metaphysical ending which...I mean, it's not bad per se, I suppose, where a more "realistic" ending might have felt incomplete...but it felt a little "deus ex"y, IYKWIMAITYD.

[Dale Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alpha Centauri or die was a fun easy read about some people stealing away on a rocket trying to escape earth and what they find. It was good, you know in pulp sci-fi Ace Double kind of way.

Legend of Lost Earth - definitely the "B side" of this double. It is set on a sooty dark industrial mining kind of world, and the protagonist falls in with some "earth worshipping" society meetings. Not too bad, but the ending was kind of a disappointing surprise (I think it was supposed to be kind of uplifting and spiritual). I thought this one would adapt into a good movie with some fixes

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alpha Centauri or Die! -- A look at humanity facing the unknown

Legend of Lost Earth -- I think the tagline 'Only traitors talk of Terra' says it all. But, who are the traitors?

(Re-read after a few years. Now I want to visit a local used book store that has an entire bookcase of ACE including many double features.)