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.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
The currents that converge into the Sea of Brackett, creating the salty savor of her prose, are many, and are both literary and extra-literary. Among the former, we can tease out her admiration for such writers as A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, Dashiell Hammett and a dozen other pulpsters who trafficked in over-the-top adventure. Fascinated equally by scenes of otherworldly beauty, civilized decadence, barbarian vigor and naturalistic lowlife criminality, Brackett was continually adjusting her personal equation of all these factors to produce stories showcasing varying ratios of these elements. In one tale, such as "Thralls of the Endless Night," decadence and half-remembered legends take precedence. "Terror Out of Space" verges toward Lovecraftian horror. "The Jewel of Bas" hews more toward sword and sorcery. And then some stories strike all the mingled notes perfectly, producing that unique Brackett fusion. My favorite in this volume is "The Veil of Astellar," which features spaceflight, immortality, an alien succubus, self-sacrifice and virginal innocence. As for extra-literary influences, the primary one is the cinema. Brackett was saturated with the products of Tinseltown, possessing a naturally cinematic narrative voice and sensibility. Like Will Eisner, who modeled many of his femmes fatales on Hollywood starlets, I'm convinced Brackett envisioned Humphrey Bogart as practically all of her leading men. We also have to consider the role of current events in her fiction. The 1940s arguably marked the last time our globe seemed to possess untouched exotic locales. Exploits of explorers such as Frank Buck, the animal collector, could still resonate. Orientalism still held sway. The notion of undiscovered lands seemed at least barely plausible. Brackett took these keenly felt romantic terrestrial notions and transplanted them to other worlds, in the process magnifying and bejeweling all that was alluring and mysterious about our own planet. In this sense, her seemingly outrageous fantasies resonated even more strongly on a subconscious level, as she fed her readers the outre environments that they sensed lurked just beyond America's borders, "beyond the fields we know." As always, a Haffner Press book is a sturdy, durable, delightful objet d'art, and a bargain, from its beautiful Freas cover and endpapers to the heavy stock of its pages. --Paul Di Filippo, SciFi Weekly, March 10, 2008
A couple of weeks back, I received Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances by Leigh Brackett. This is the second volume from Haffner Press collecting all of Brackett s shorter fiction into uniform volumes. Haffner Press books are real favorites of mine (along with Fedogan & Bremer and Midnight House/Darkside Press). The books are big, solid, and well made for a fair price. The font makes for easy reading, layout is good, the choice of art tasteful and not overwrought. The same reason I like the old Arkham House books (Donald Wandrei and August Derleth were real serious book people. ) Leigh Brackett was big fan of Robert E. Howard. The first Haffner Press collection, Martian Quest, included some early Brackett fiction wherein the Howard influence was easy to spot. The black haired barbarian named Crom who battles the space vampires in The Cube From Space is one of the most obvious examples. This volume finds Brackett at her peak of writing skills. This volume could just as easily be marketed as a Best of collection. Brackett s writing skills are honed and the influences are less obvious. The writing is both exotic and hard-boiled at the same time. You get to read classics such as The Moon That Vanished and the title story co-written with Ray Bradbury. Brackett wrote Lorelei of the Red Mist as an homage to Robert E. Howard. The Venusian barbarian Conan is very similar physically to the original Cimmerian. Leigh Brackett had to leave this story unfinished when Hollywood came knocking, so her youthful pal, Ray Bradbury, finished it. Interestingly, the Bradbury portion of the story is rather blood and thunder. A characteristic not associated with his fiction. Go out and buy this book. You won t regret it. This is among the finest writing in the pulp magazines of the 1940s. --Morgan Holmes, Robert E. Howard United Press Association, February 13, 2008
I just got Haffner Press's second Brackett collection (or third, if you count the collection that also reprinted some Edmond Hamilton). It's glorious. Soon all of Brackett's short science adventure stories will be in lovely hardbacks, courtesy of Haffner Press . . . a great way to introduce a new generation of readers as to why having hardback sets from the Queen of Space Opera is a must. The borders between sword-and-sorcery, science fiction, and fantasy all blur when you plop down with a Brackett story. All that really matters is how good the stories are. --Howard Andrew Jones, Managing Editor, Black Gate Magazine, January 9, 2008
A couple of weeks back, I received Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances by Leigh Brackett. This is the second volume from Haffner Press collecting all of Brackett s shorter fiction into uniform volumes. Haffner Press books are real favorites of mine (along with Fedogan & Bremer and Midnight House/Darkside Press). The books are big, solid, and well made for a fair price. The font makes for easy reading, layout is good, the choice of art tasteful and not overwrought. The same reason I like the old Arkham House books (Donald Wandrei and August Derleth were real serious book people. ) Leigh Brackett was big fan of Robert E. Howard. The first Haffner Press collection, Martian Quest, included some early Brackett fiction wherein the Howard influence was easy to spot. The black haired barbarian named Crom who battles the space vampires in The Cube From Space is one of the most obvious examples. This volume finds Brackett at her peak of writing skills. This volume could just as easily be marketed as a Best of collection. Brackett s writing skills are honed and the influences are less obvious. The writing is both exotic and hard-boiled at the same time. You get to read classics such as The Moon That Vanished and the title story co-written with Ray Bradbury. Brackett wrote Lorelei of the Red Mist as an homage to Robert E. Howard. The Venusian barbarian Conan is very similar physically to the original Cimmerian. Leigh Brackett had to leave this story unfinished when Hollywood came knocking, so her youthful pal, Ray Bradbury, finished it. Interestingly, the Bradbury portion of the story is rather blood and thunder. A characteristic not associated with his fiction. Go out and buy this book. You won t regret it. This is among the finest writing in the pulp magazines of the 1940s. --Morgan Holmes, Robert E. Howard United Press Association, February 13, 2008
I just got Haffner Press's second Brackett collection (or third, if you count the collection that also reprinted some Edmond Hamilton). It's glorious. Soon all of Brackett's short science adventure stories will be in lovely hardbacks, courtesy of Haffner Press . . . a great way to introduce a new generation of readers as to why having hardback sets from the Queen of Space Opera is a must. The borders between sword-and-sorcery, science fiction, and fantasy all blur when you plop down with a Brackett story. All that really matters is how good the stories are. --Howard Andrew Jones, Managing Editor, Black Gate Magazine, January 9, 2008
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 A. 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.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Good (Old) Stuff,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances (Hardcover)
THIS is the one you need to buy. It's a collection of Brackett's "Planetary Romances" including a dozen tales of dying sandy Mars and young swampy Venus with Brackett's trademark hard-bitten heroes and heroines. Intro by Turtledone, Foreward by Bradbury--who wrote half of the title story--illustrations by Frank Kelly Freas. The stories run from 1943 to 1950 with the bonus of a 1944 article for WRITER'S DIGEST on "The Science -Fiction Field." This is part of a three-volume collection of Brackett's short fiction, so order MARTIAN QUEST and SHANNACH--THE LAST FAREWELL TO MARS at the same time. Then go looking for her novels.
If you haven't done "planetary romance" yet, this is a good place to start. It's set in a Solar system much as astronomers imagined it prior to modern telescopes and space probes, and set in a time of interplanetary travel, but also a time in which a man took good care of his riding beast, and swords and crossbows coexist with the ray guns. If Edgar Rice Burroughs filled such worlds with Victorian men and women, Brackett's people have been around the block. Brackett scripted some classic film noir, and it shows in plot, character and dialog. But it's time for me to get back to reading--and time for you to order the book.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A 'must read' by the legions of Leigh Brackett fans.,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances (Hardcover)
The late Leigh Bracket (December 7, 1915 to March 17, 1978) was on of the first and most successful professional writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She was of the generation of writers (that included such luminaries as Robert A. heinlein, Jack Williamson, and Ray Bradbury) who were to elevate Science Fiction and Fantasy to the status of a respectable and commercially successful literary genre. Just weeks before her death, Leigh Brackett authored and turned in the first draft of the screenplay for 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Now thirteen of her original stories have been anthologized in "Loreleigh Of The Red Mist" from Haffner Press and will well serve to introduce a major literary talent to a whole new generation of appreciative readers. In addition to the title piece (which she co-wrote with Ray Bradury), the stories include The blue Behemoth; Thralls of the endless Night; The Jewel of Bas; The Veil of Astellar; Terror Out of Space; The Vanishing Venusians; The Moon That Vanished; The Beast-Jewell of Mars; Quest of the Starhope; The Lake of the Gone Forever; The Dancing Girl of Gannymede; and The Science-Fiction Field" (a non-fiction article written for the July 1994 issue of 'Writer's Digest' magazine). Enthusiastically recommended for academic and community library Science Fiction & Fantasy collections, "Loreleigh Of The Red Mist" should be considered as a 'must read' by the legions of Leigh Brackett fans.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An old master at the genre,
This review is from: Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances (Hardcover)
Contents (copied directly from the Haffner Press website):
The Blue Behemoth Thralls of the Endless Night The Jewel of Bas The Veil of Astellar Terror Out of Space The Vanishing Venusians Lorelei of the Red Mist (with Ray Bradbury) The Moon That Vanished The Beast-Jewel of Mars Quest of the Starhope The Lake of the Gone Forever The Dancing Girl of Ganymede I'm ordering it; my rating is based on my liking Brackett's writing and my memories of having read a number of these works in the past. I always liked her work for its openly escapist, suspend-disbelief feeling and a kind of haunting other-world feeling (your mileage may vary). It's expensive - a bit of an irony, since these are "pulp" stories for which the author once got only pennies per word. But there's a totally different feel to SF works written over a half-century ago, compared to today's works, and the reality is that the price of collections of old stories usually bears no relationship to the price of the original, individual works. Based on my ownership of Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (this book's predecessor), you get good paper and good bindings in a smallish print run -- not a lot of economies of scale to be had here.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
