Since the hundredth anniversary of Leigh Brackett's birth
was earlier this week, I wanted to write about something of hers. So I read a
novella I'd never read in its original form (more on that later), "Queen
of the Martian Catacombs", which originally appeared in the Summer 1949
issue of PLANET STORIES and has since been reprinted numerous times.
Brackett was famous for a lot of things, of course, including her science
fiction. She contributed to the scripts for several iconic films, wrote some
well-regarded mystery and Western novels, and was married to another great
science fiction writer, Edmond Hamilton. Picking her best work out of a long
and splendid career is probably a matter of personal taste more than anything
else. A lot of people are fond of her science-fantasy (just like it sounds, a
mixture of science fiction and fantasy), and I'm one of 'em.
"Queen of the Martian Catacombs" is an important story in Brackett's
career because it introduced Eric John Stark, her most famous series character.
Stark is an Earthman, but he was orphaned at an early age and raised on Mercury
by a band of the primitive indigenous people who lived there. His Mercurian
name is N'Chaka, meaning Man Without a Tribe. It's a Tarzan-like origin that
serves as back-story here. Stark has become a pretty shady interplanetary
character, being mixed up with gun-running and smuggling and serving as a
mercenary soldier on several different worlds. (This is the old-style SF, where
several of the planets in the solar system are inhabitable and have their own
native races.)
In this one, Stark is drafted by an old friend who works for the Terran
government to infiltrate a rebel group planning to start a war on Mars. Some of
the barbarian tribes are about to rise, fueled by a leader who claims to have
the secret of the ancient Martian mind transference process. Stark is one of
the mercenary captains hired to lead them, but actually his job is to expose a
plot rife with double- and triple-crosses and prevent the rebellion.
In reading this novella, I was struck by how much the intrigue reminded me of
Robert E. Howard's El Borak stories. Brackett was influenced by both Howard and
Edgar Rice Burroughs, and you can sure see that in "Queen of the Martian
Catacombs". It races right along with beautiful women, blood feuds,
scientific mumbo-jumbo, sand storms, and some beautifully described settings.
Brackett often manages to be hardboiled and poetic at the same time. This is
just a wonderful story, one of the best pieces of fiction I've read this year.
"Queen of the Martian Catacombs" was expanded into the novel THE
SECRET OF SINHARAT, which was published as half of an Ace Double. According to
my friend Morgan Holmes, Edmond Hamilton did the expanding, which I guess makes
the novel version an uncredited collaboration between Brackett and Hamilton. I
read that version more than thirty years ago and remember nothing about it
other than that I liked it. But it's hard to imagine that it could beat the
original novella.
Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that I also read
Brackett's post-apocalyptic novel THE LONG TOMORROW, in which the United States
returns to an agrarian society following a nuclear war. I didn't care for it. I
thought it was slow and dated and I never really bought the premise. It's
certainly not terrible, but gee, "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" is so much better. This could well be
because at heart I'm still a 12-year-old boy (as if you haven't long since
guessed that, what with all the posts about monster movies and comic books and
pulps), and 12-year-old me would have gobbled down this Eric John Stark yarn in
one breathless gulp. At this late date, I doubt if I'm going to change...so I
might as well enjoy my lingering adolescence.