Customer Reviews

The Planetary Adventures Of Eric John Stark

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Also known as "planetary romance" this was interplanetary SF before scientific reality got in the way, with a steamy jungle Venus and a dusty dying Mars. Leigh Brackett did this better than anyone. Only Burroughs could offer decent competition, but if Barsoom is interplanetary adventure by the author of Tarzan, this is interplanetary fiction by the author of some pretty good hard-boiled detective novels--a world with seductive and deadly women, dangerous men, degenerate rulers and plain well-meaning bureaucrats perhaps deadlier than any of them. No one can touch Brackett for description and dialogue, and this contains some of her best.

Included are "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" "Enchantress of Venus""Black Amazon of Mars" and "The Road to Sinharat." All are John Eric Stark stories except the last, which may be the best introduction to Brackett's Mars. Note that "Queen" was later expanded into THE SECRET OF SINHARAT and "Black Amazon" into PEOPLE OF THE TALISMAN, but there were changes. Reading the novel doesn't always tell you how the short story turns out.

Any one story worth the price.