Leigh Brackett facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Leigh Brackett
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Brackett in 1941
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| Born | Leigh Douglass Brackett December 7, 1915 Los Angeles, California, US |
| Died | March 24, 1978 (aged 62) Lancaster, California, US |
| Occupation | Novelist, screenwriter |
| Genre | Science fiction, crime fiction |
| Notable works | Eric John Stark series |
| Spouse |
Edmond Hamilton
(m. 1946; died 1977) |
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Leigh Douglass Brackett (born December 7, 1915 – died March 24, 1978) was an American writer. She was famous for her exciting science fiction stories, earning her the nickname "the Queen of Space Opera." She also wrote many movie scripts, including well-known films like The Big Sleep (1946) and Rio Bravo (1959). She even worked on an early version of the script for The Empire Strikes Back (1980), a famous Star Wars movie.
In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever considered for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. In 2020, she won a special Retro Hugo award for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, which was first published as "Shadow Over Mars" in 1944.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Leigh Brackett grew up in Los Angeles, California. Her father died when she was very young. She was described as a "tomboy" who was "tall" and "athletic." She went to a private girls' school in Santa Monica, California. There, she enjoyed theater and started writing stories.
Career as a Writer
Fiction Writing
Brackett began publishing her stories in her mid-20s. Her first science fiction story, "Martian Quest," appeared in 1940. Her early years as a writer, from 1940 to 1942, were very busy. Some of her stories explored social ideas. For example, "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (1943) looked at how Earth's growing trade affected alien cultures.
Brackett's first novel was No Good from a Corpse (1944). It was a tough, hard-boiled mystery novel. This book helped her get her first big job writing for movies. After this, her science fiction stories became more detailed. Shadow Over Mars (1944) was her first full-length novel. It won a Retro Hugo award in 2020.
Brackett also wrote a novella called "Lorelei of the Red Mist." She wrote the first half before her friend Ray Bradbury finished it. This allowed her to go work on the movie script for The Big Sleep.
Brackett returned to science fiction in 1948. From 1948 to 1951, she wrote many long science fiction adventure stories. These included classic tales of her invented planets, like "The Moon that Vanished." Her novel Sea-Kings of Mars (1949) was later published as The Sword of Rhiannon.
In 1949, Brackett created the character Eric John Stark in "Queen of the Martian Catacombs." Stark was an orphan from Earth. He was raised by the people of Mercury. A Terran official saved and adopted him. When in danger, Stark would become like the wild "man without a tribe" he was on Mercury. Brackett featured Stark in three stories published in Planet Stories between 1949 and 1951.
Later, Brackett's stories became more thoughtful. They focused less on action and more on the mood and feelings of passing civilizations. Titles like "The Last Days of Shandakor" show this change.
After 1955, Brackett focused on writing for movies and television because it paid more. She briefly returned to her Martian stories in 1963 and 1964.
Brackett and her husband were special guests at the 22nd World Science Fiction Convention in 1965.
After another long break, Brackett returned to science fiction in the 1970s. She published The Ginger Star (1974), The Hounds of Skaith (1974), and The Reavers of Skaith (1976). These books brought Eric John Stark back for new adventures on a planet called Skaith, which was outside our solar system.
Brackett's Imaginary Worlds
Leigh Brackett was often called the "Queen of Space Opera." She also wrote planetary romance stories. Most of her planetary romances took place in her own version of our solar system. This included detailed, fictional versions of Mars and Venus as they were imagined in science fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s.
In her stories, Mars was a dry desert world with ancient, humanoid races. Venus was a wet jungle planet with strong, primitive tribes and reptilian monsters. Brackett's later world, Skaith, mixed elements of her other worlds with fantasy.
Brackett's Mars stories were influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs. However, her Mars was part of a world with space trade and competition. A main idea in her stories was the clash of different civilizations. She showed how colonialism affected cultures that were either older or younger than the colonizers.
After real space missions showed there was no life on Mars, Brackett stopped writing about her solar system. When she started writing planetary romance again in the 1970s, she created new solar systems far away from our own.
Screenwriter
Soon after she started writing science fiction, Leigh Brackett also began writing movie scripts. The famous Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by her novel No Good from a Corpse that he asked her to help write the script for The Big Sleep (1946). This film starred Humphrey Bogart.
After she got married, Brackett took a break from screenwriting. When she returned in the mid-1950s, she wrote for both TV and movies. Howard Hawks hired her to write or co-write several movies starring John Wayne. These included Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari! (1962), El Dorado (1966), and Rio Lobo (1970). Because of her work on The Big Sleep, she later adapted Raymond Chandler's novel The Long Goodbye into a movie script.
Working on The Empire Strikes Back
Brackett worked on the script for The Empire Strikes Back, the first sequel to Star Wars. This movie won a Hugo Award in 1981. Writing this script was a new challenge for Brackett, as all her previous science fiction had been novels and short stories.
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, asked Brackett to write the screenplay based on his story idea. Brackett finished a first draft of the script, called "Star Wars sequel." She gave it to Lucas shortly before she died from cancer on March 18, 1978. Her version was not used directly, and Lucas wrote new drafts. Later, Lawrence Kasdan helped rework some of the dialogue. Even though she wasn't involved in the final film, Brackett and Kasdan were credited for the screenplay as a tribute to her work.
Some people have said that Brackett's contributions to The Empire Strikes Back were not important. However, others point out that many of her basic story ideas and big moments ended up in the final movie. For example, her draft included a version of the Battle of Hoth, the wise words of a Jedi Master, exciting asteroid field chases, and the big duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
For many years, Brackett's original script could only be read in special libraries. It was officially published in February 2016.
Personal Life and Death
On December 31, 1946, when she was 31, Leigh Brackett married another science fiction writer, Edmond Hamilton. Their friend Ray Bradbury was the best man at their wedding. Brackett and Hamilton moved to Kinsman, Ohio.
Edmond Hamilton died in February 1977. Leigh Brackett died in March 1978, at age 62, from cancer.
See also
- Eric John Stark
