Customer Reviews

Lorelei of the Red Mist

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

~~Leigh Brackett writes, in her introduction to THE BEST OF PLANET STORIES #1 (Ballantine, 1975):

"...the story is as much Ray Bradbury's as it is mine--exactly as much. ... In late summer of 1944 I had finished about half of 20,000-worder for Planet. Suddenly lightning struck and (no one was more amazed than I) I had a job working on the screenplay for The Big Sleep, for Howard Hawks. Obviously I would not have time to finish the story, and I asked Ray if he would like to tackle it. He had nothing to go on but what I had down on paper. I never worked from an outline in those days (and often regretted it) and I had no idea where the story was going. Ray took the story and finished it, completely on his own. I never read a word of it until he handed me the manuscript, and I never changed a word after that. I'm convinced to this day that he did a better job with the second half than I would have done. Bradbury's section begins with the line, 'He saw the flock, herded by more of the golden hounds.' Ray did some of his best writing for Planet, and this was some of that."

Leigh Brackett wrote marvelous science fiction adventure stories, full of action, romance, poetic descriptions and well-visualized alien planets. This story is her only collaboration with Ray Bradbury; when she was hired as a Hollywood screenwriter in 1944, Brackett had to drop this story in the middle, and turn it over (reportedly without an outline) to fellow-Angeleno Bradbury (who was, at the time, writing mostly horror fiction for Weird Tales; he had yet to start on his Martian Chronicles). The story eventually appeared in Planet Stories in 1946. (I should mention that this story is of novelette length; it is not a full novel.)

Bradbury's conclusion to the story is very much in Brackett's style, though the unusual collaboration left a few seams showing (there is plenty of red mist in the story, but no character named "Lorelei"). The protagonist, Hugh Starke, seems to be an early draft of Brackett's series character John Stark, who first appeared in 1949. Early in the story, Starke's mind is moved by a Venusian sorceress into the body of a mighty warrior named "Conan," apparently intended by Brackett as a shout-out to Robert E. Howard. (By 1944, Howard's Conan stories of the 1930s had been pretty much forgotten by casual fans, and the great Conan revival was still years away.) "Lorelei" is not Brackett's best, but it is well worth reading for any of her fans, or any fan of classic science fiction. (For more by Brackett, try this excellent Kindle collection: Black Amazon of Mars and Other Works by Leigh Brackett (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)).