Dr Simon Reads Appendix N Part Three: Leigh Brackett

Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N: Leigh Brackett

This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.

This time around, I have reached the works of:

Leigh Brackett

She’s perhaps not a household name among pulp authors, but many readers may have come across Leigh Brackett as the woman who wrote the first draft screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back shortly before her death in 1978. There’s some controversy over how much of her original remains in Lawrence Kasdan’s final version, but even a cursory study of her work shows her to be a master of the “planetary romance” style that shines through, of which more shortly. (On a side note, recall that Lucas originally wanted to make the film of Flash Gordon, but Dino de Laurentis got the rights before him. But observe how Empire features “Frigia” (Hoth), “Arboria” (Dagobah) and the hawk-men’s Sky City (Cloud City).

Brackett in my opinion deserves more widespread recognition; the first woman to win a Hugo and the screenwriter of The Big Sleep, her stories, written from 1940-1976 veer from well-written pulp to deeper social commentary; I’ve barely scratched the surface with my reading here. Born in California in 1915, she lived and died in the state and amongst her authorial achievements also set up a sci-fi magazine imprint purely for stories by women.

There are no suggested stories in the original Appendix N, so I selected the first anthology that came up in my search, Black Amazon of Mars (and Other Tales from the Pulps), and The Long Tomorrow which is under the SF Masterworks imprint. Turns out that the 5^th Edition bibliography suggest The Long Tomorrow but also The Sword of Rhiannon (aka Sea Kings of Mars), which I didn’t read but I suspect is similar in tone to Black Amazon of Mars.

Black Amazon of Mars

 The titular story in the collection, and the longest, concerns “Earthman Eric Stark” who is a John Carter kind of character. The whole setting is somewhat remniscient of Burroughs’ Barsoom, but more on that when we get to him. Unlike Carter, Stark isn’t blessed with relative superhuman strength compared to the native Martians; he’s more like one of Burroughs’ other characters, Tarzan, in that he was raised as an orphan on Mercury by semi-sentient beings and is a mix of civilised and savage. He’s one of those typical pulp heroes that never hesitate to act, usually on his instincts and impulses, and so the story is always carried along by action.

The story itself has some great elements that could be incorporated into an RPG campaign. Following the dying wishes of a friend, Stark must carry an amulet that has religious significance to a city on the edge of the northern polar ice cap of Mars. He’s pursued by the armies of a savage nomadic warlord in black armour who turns out to be a fiery redhead, the eponymous Black Amazon.

As Stark reaches the city, the warlord lays siege, but there is a deeper threat to both parties that the city was originally built to protect against, dangerous beings of light that are trapped in an ancient prison. And the amulet given to Stark is key to the whole thing.

There’s some great action, intrigue, romance (inevitably between Stark and Ciara, the Black Amazon) and some inventive settings that, as I said, would provide a good adventure background. Brackett’s Mars is less fantastic in many ways compared to Burroughs’ Barsoom; the Martians in this are largely the same as humans (no Green Martians), no flying ships, no Ninth Ray and so on, but in many ways that makes it easier to port into other settings.

The other two stories – A World is Born and Child of the Sun are shorter and less immediately usable. A World is Born is in many ways a similar kind of planetary romance but also obviously not set in the same milieu as Eric Stark as it seems more technologically advanced.

In it, Mercury is a prison world, the prisoners working mines in fissures deep into the planet’s surface with a complex “lightning net” keeping out the dangerous solar effects. It centres aaround a combination of jail break with political power play, both of which get short shrift in the end due to the short length of the story. It feels  more like it ought to be the opening chapter to a longer novella. Less Burroughs, this one, and more like Niven or Heinlein or Vance. Again, the setting is a great idea, the characters here are a bit more one dimensional; archetypes more than people.

Finally Child of the Sun is also set in a Solar System spanning civilisation, but again one that feels different to those in the previous two stories. It mainly centres on ideas about sentience and the meeting between humans and a completely alien planet-sized awareness. Once again the ideas are good, but I didn’t find this as memorable.

The Long Tomorrow

This longer story was published in 1955, a few years after Black Amazon, but as well as the general length shows a marked departure from the pulp style of the stories in Black Amazon.

Crudely, one could call it “Huckleberry Finn After The Bomb”. The setting is a post atomic war America, but rather than a wasteland of savage mutants, it’s largely composed of peaceful agrarian societies. The concept is that with the destruction of modern civilisation and all that supports it, the survivors are those who already knew how to live without technology; the Amish, Mennonites and other similar religious groups.

Coupled to this is a fear of the big cites (which are, although we never see one, the radioactive wastelands). It was, goes the reasoning of the people in Brackett’s tale, the fact that cities got too big that brought their destruction, so settlements are limited in size by ruthlessly enforced laws, as is the acquisition and development of technology beyond what they already have, animal, man and wind-powered.

We follow the adventure of two adolescent boys, Len and Esau, as they become fascinated by the notion of forbidden technology and the mysterious Bartorstown, somewhere spoken of in hushed tones like a technological Xanadu.

Disgusted by the lynching of a trader accused of carrying forbidden technology (which he does, the boys steal a radio from him), they set off on a journey that carries them through a series of events where they see for themselves what fear and prejudice can do. As well as the lynched trader, a man in a trading town is killed because his plans to build a new warehouse would take the town beyond the legally mandated number of buildings and, worse in the eyes of the townsfolk, risk bringing destruction upon them.

It’s a coming of age tale as well; the two boys both meet girls and must deal with their changing feelings, but it’s also a coming of age in a broader sense as they are brought to a greater understanding of the world that they live in. The fabled Bartorstown, when they finally reach it, is a scary place full of supernatural (to the boys) terrors, and it turns out that the people of Bartorstown are no less fractious and superstitious, in their own way, as their own people.

It’s a great tale of being careful what you wish for, and the general lack of technology means that although it sounds like, say, a Gamma World adventure, it could easily be adapted to a fantasy setting, particularly one in which there was once a an older age of greater magical power destroyed by a cataclysm.

Two tonally very different works, and looking at her biography I think Brackett has produced several different waves of ideas throughout her life; definitely somebody I would read more from.