Martian Quest

by Leigh Brackett

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.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories

504 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 2002

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

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is only for the short story, "Martian Quest."

Read as part of the 1941 Retro-Hugos Voter Packet.

Perfect wish fulfillment for early sci-fi fans, as the nerdy science geek saves the day and gets the girl, ending up saving the brawny he-man.

Martin Drake has been unable to find success on Earth, where population is high and unemployment is rife. Keenly feeling the disappointment he's been to his family, he signs up for an emigration program, even though the whole venture is rumored to be a failure and it's an option of last resort for most everyone who's agreed to go.

The settlement program is on Mars. Tracts of barely-arable terraformed land and a bare minimum of supplies allocated to each new settler for farming. Drake knew life would be hard - but what he didn't know was that the main threat would come in the form of destructive, man-killing lizards that munch crops right down to their roots.

Although Drake's no farmer, his science knowledge and ingenuity will come to the rescue.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

As per the subtitle, a collection of Leigh Brackett's early fiction -- all magazine stories from the early 1940s; mostly interplanetary stuff but one contemporary story ("Out of the Sea", a slightly jarring reminder that WWII was just beginning; or, at least, American involvement in WWII). They're definitely of their time -- pretty much every planet or large moon in the Solar System has a breathable atmosphere and natives of one sort or another; Mars is a dying desert world of wind-swept ruins; Venus is covered with beast-haunted swamps. And plenty of needle-, heat- or ray-guns to hand when necessary.

The heroes are by-and-large on the wrong side of the law -- hard-bitten scoundrels who may or may not have hearts of gold. The stories are mostly planetary romance but with a distinctly hard-boiled edge -- instead of John Carter or Douglas Fairbanks our heroes wandering down the Martian canal-side or through the Venusian jungles are Philip Marlowe or Humphrey Bogart.

And while her version of the Solar System may no longer hold up to close scrutiny, her prose is just as strong today as it was in the pages of Astounding or Amazing Stories, and definitely worth at least sampling.

[Norman Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Martian Quest" 10 pages.
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (1940)
A group of colonists must fight some antagonistic Martian life forms. Will they be able to save themselves in time? This was a fairly forgettable story - 2.5 stars.

"Stellar Legion" 11 pages.
Retro Hugo Award Finalist (1940)
This is a typical story of space soldiers that were the rage in the golden age of science fiction. Lots of aliens, lots of fighting, and a main character with a mysterious background. A solid story, but probably not an award winner - 3.5 stars.

It's telling that neither of these stories have been reprinted much at all; not in The Best of Leigh Brackett, not in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction 2. This was very early in Brackett's writing career, and I think that these nominations are based more on retrospective lifetime achievement than on actual merit.

[Jay Barnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This contains a mix of some of Brackett's earlier works when she was less polished as a writer, as well as some later works that are classics of the genre... but sadly, too often unknown by newer readers. Yes, these all take place (at least in part) on Mars, and assumes Mars is a dying planet of ancient civilizations. Most of the stories were written before this kind of speculation fell out of fashion. For me, that doesn't matter. These are riveting tales, sometimes thrilling, sometimes heartbreaking, and often a bit more cerebral than pulp usually gets credit for.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the stories were just okay. The outstanding one, for me, was "The Halfling," which you can read as if Bogart was doing the voiceover. Brackett invented Space Noir, and the early beginnings of it are here.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Martian Quest and The Stellar Legion for the Retro Hugos. They are enjoyable enough, although about the same. One takes place in a settlement and the other in a more military setting. Both are about having to figure out how to kill some indigenous life in order to preserve human lives. They would probably not be written today.