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Darrell Schweitzer lives in Philadelphia.
Works Consulted
Benet, Stephen Vincent. “By the Waters of Babylon.” In Thirteen O’Clock, Stories of Several Worlds. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.
Derleth, August (ed.). Far Boundaries. New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1951. (Contains the 1889 text of The Last American.)
Macaulay, David. The Motel of the Mysteries. Boston: The Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979.
Mitchell, J. A. The Last American. New York: The Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1902.
Nathan, Robert. The Weans. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.
Mike Barrett
Shadows of the Evening Star: Leigh Brackett’s Tales of Venus
In my article “Memories of the Red Planet” in NYRSF 286, I looked at Leigh Brackett’s series of Martian stories. However, Mars was not the only world to which she devoted her attention, and there were related tales based on or around other planets of the Solar System. These included Mercury and the moons of Jupiter, but Venus was her most favored alternative with a total of eleven tales making use of that particular background. These were patently placed in the same invented setting as Mars with specific references to that setting and one particular character who appeared in stories set on each of the two worlds.
As was the case with her portrayal of Mars, Brackett’s Venus has no relation to what we now know of the planet, or indeed what was known at the time the stories were written. Instead, it is a world of humid swamp and impenetrable jungle, high mountains and dark seas, bizarre creatures and hostile natives. Unlike Mars, Venus is a planet where the splendors of the past are all but forgotten. That past is never fully explored but is tantalizingly glimpsed; in “The Terror Out of Space” for instance, we are told of the lands that existed before the sea enveloped them
[O]nce upon a time this road had crossed a plain under a hot pear-grey sky . . . taking caravans from the seacoast . . . bales of spices and spider-silk and casks of vakhi from the Nahali canebrakes, and silver-haired slave girls from the high lands of the Cloud People, going along under sultry green liha-trees. . . . Now it crossed a plain of glowing sand under still black water.
But this was so very long ago that even the legends have all but faded from memory, and instead it is the present that matters.
In that present, the southern land mass has very much reverted to a frontier world where men from Earth are making their formidable presence felt by exploiting natural resources and indifferently driving indigenous opposition deeper into the dense forests. Northwards, the vast Sea of Morning Opals extends from the swamplands to the equator, where perilous currents and sudden storms guard the way to the Dragon’s Throat strait, which gives access to the Upper Seas. Here, weed-choked waters are home to strange reptilian creatures and little jewel-scaled sea-dragons as well as formidable and deadly Guardians; this is also where those who are prepared to risk all seek the power of the Moonfire, hidden amidst a maze of small islands. The Upper Seas are bordered to the north by the Mountains of White Cloud, all but impassable due to their height and the magnetic anomalies that prevent flight over them. These Mountains hide barely explored areas where the strange, gaseous Red Sea of Inner Venus conceals ancient sunken cities and sea-people; it is also where the anarchic port town of Shuurun is found as well as the fortresses of Falga and Crom Dhu, the bases of warring warrior realms.
This, then, is the Venus that Leigh Brackett first visited in “The Stellar Legion,” which appeared in the Winter 1940 issue of Planet Stories, it was was her third published story, following “Martian Quest” and “The Treasure of Ptakuth” the same year. It is set in the humid swamplands of southern Venus, where a ring of forts protects the fertile uplands from the ravages of the native Nahali. In one of these forts, two hundred men of the Stellar Legion await an attack, which they know will begin as soon as the rain begins to fall. The Earthman MacIan, once an officer but now an anonymous foot soldier, has his own secrets to keep and his own bleak agenda but ultimately saves the day and finds new purpose to his life in an effective, if minor, tale.
“The Demons of Darkside,” which appeared in Startling Stories, January 1941, is a secondary Venus story. While it starts on the planet, on the edge of the eastern swamp belt, within a few pages the action moves into space and towards Mercury and its perilous Darkside, from which no explorers have ever returned. It tells of a man seeking a wrecked ship which may provide him with what he needs to save his fiancé from wrongful execution and intriguingly incorporates the existence of a crystalline life form, its attempts to communicate with humans proving utterly destructive in a precursor of the later “Terror Out of Space.”
“Interplanetary Reporter” (Startling Stories, May 1941) is another story that starts on Venus. Set in the twenty-sixth century, it is a slight tale about a hard-bitten reporter who intends to resign but finds himself involved in a war between the Jovian moons and Venus, a war that he discovers has actually been instigated by Mars.
“The Dragon-Queen of Venus” has a rather unusual history. It appeared in Planet Stories, Summer 1941, under the title of “The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter,” although there were inconsistently several references to Venus. It had originally been written as a Venusian tale but was clumsily changed by the editors of Planet Stories, the alterations apparently having been made to avoid there being two stories set on Venus in the same issue. When it was republished, all references to Jupiter were changed back to Venus.
It is about the beleaguered Fort Washington, occupying a key strategic position on the edge of the swamplands and resisting an onslaught from native warriors, albinos from the Sunless Land (although this in itself is a curious appellation as the whole of Venus is surely sunless, apart from the few high mountain tops mentioned in The Vanishing Venusians several years later). The natives use reptilian war-dogs and flying mounts that are half-bird, half-lizard, as well as flesh-eating scarlet beetles and poisonous green snakes with an immensely accelerated metabolism that feed on blood. The other apparently unbeatable enemy is the insidious humidity and the resultant rusting of metal weapons, but the final survivors of the attacks do find an unexpected solution.
“The Citadel of Lost Ships” (Planet Stories, March 1943) is an enjoyable adventure peripheral to the main Venus canon. The Kraylens are a crested aboriginal tribe of the Tehara Province, where (in an echo of the Black Hills and their gold) an abundance of coal, oil, and minerals are found. The Terra-Venusian Coalition Government decides to move the natives out and away to the cities. This is an abhorrent and soul-destroying course as far as the Kraylen are concerned, but the authorities care nothing for their feelings and are going to relocate them regardless. However, there is a place of refuge—the independent Gypsy world Romany, a huge artificial construction orbiting Venus that offers a haven for the dispossessed. The story becomes one man’s battle to save his adopted people from the ravages of an enemy civilization.
“The Blue Behemoth” (Planet Stories, May 1943) is a forgettable tale of a rundown galactic circus seeking out a mate for one of their prize exhibits, a cansin. These creatures are rare deep swamp dwellers, community minds controlled by the much smaller male, with an abiding hatred of all humanoid life forms. The story does give a glimpse of the planet’s nearly forgotten past, when “the cansins were once the wisest race on Venus. They were worshipped as gods by the little pre-human creatures of the swamp edges.”
“Terror Out of Space” appeared in the Summer 1944 issue of Planet Stories and was certainly the best Venus story to date as well as one of the longest. Just as it took several stories and four years for Brackett to fully develop her fictional Mars, it was much the same with Venus. The earlier tales had presented the planet as little more than a humid world of jungle and swamps inhabited by bizarre creatures and aggressive native life forms, but “Terror Out of Space” enlarges the geography of the planet to include “the black, still, tideless waters of Venus that cover so many secrets of the p
lanet’s past.” Subsequent stories built on the dark seas and sunken cities and became longer, all of novelette length, drawing together the disparate features of the earlier tales and presenting Venus as a convincing whole, a world that was both intriguing and fully formed.
Later in the same year, “Shadow Over Mars,” similarly widened the characteristics of Mars, and the two stories taken together can be seen as important landmarks in the delineation of Brackett’s worlds. Each heralded longer and more consequential works that were no longer limited to the basic framework of interplanetary fiction set in the Solar System, but which now incorporated varied elements that enabled its narrative scope to be significantly broadened.
“Terror Out of Space” tells of alien life forms involuntarily drawn to the planet out of a cloud of cosmic dust and cause madness in all who confront them. One of the aliens has been captured alive and is being brought back from the Mountains of White Cloud, but it infiltrates the minds of two crew members causing the spacecraft to crash when it then makes its escape. The sole human survivor finds himself stranded and sets out to recapture the alien. He finds himself in a strange world beneath the sea, a world of flesh eating flowers, sentient plant forms that inhabit a sunken city, and the predatory and cannibalistic Others. In this fascinating tale, we learn that the aliens are actually victims themselves, drawn to Venus against their will and slowly dying from the pressure of the planetary surface, unaware of the madness they are spreading but capable of sacrifice in an attempt to atone.
“The Vanishing Venusians” (Planet Stories, Spring 1945) is about a human armada with a dwindling population sailing the dark waters of the Sea of Morning Opals in search of a permanent home, their “Promised Land.” Their destination seems further and further away after various mishaps and disappointments and still their listless journey continues. Finally a possible home is found, high atop a mountainous island, but its inhabitants are far from welcoming.
This is an unusual tale in the Brackett canon. In her Martian fiction, the depiction of native life forms exhibited a compassion for their plight as the original inhabitants of a dying world who were now being pushed aside in the name of progress, their culture and history being casually trampled by uncaring Terran intruders. However, such sympathy for aboriginal populations is not at all apparent in “The Vanishing Venusians,” in which Matt Harker ruthlessly brings about the complete destruction of two entire groups of intelligent, plant-based life forms so that the Earth armada can have a peaceful island to settle on. Harker’s actions are justified as a means to enable undisturbed human settlement in a place of their choosing. The beings occupying the chosen island have mental powers that could be threatening, and therefore they need to be eradicated. There is no middle ground, and casual genocidal action is taken against the natives for the convenience of the colonists, without thought or scruple, a morally questionable course that is somewhat at odds with the attitudes reflected in for instance “The Citadel of Lost Ships.”
One of the best of the Venus stories is “Lorelei of the Red Mist” (Planet Stories, Summer 1946). The tale sheds more new light on Venus, further expanding its literary borders and showing that beyond the Mountains of White Cloud the planet had an aspect not hinted at previously, incorporating martial island nations and a science that to many seems sorcerous, including body-switching and the raising of the dead. Hugh Starke, pursued by the forces of Terro-Venus Mines after stealing a million credits, dares the Mountains of White Cloud and inevitably fails, crashing and close to death before his spirit is transferred into another body. This happened at the instigation of the exotically beautiful Rann, not for any compassionate reasons but to use Starke for her own ruthless ends. He finds himself inhabiting the body of Conan, a leader of Crom Dhu who betrayed his people to Falga and who has been consequently been shackled and tortured, losing his mind in the process. Starke comes to realize that there are more important things to him than the million credits that he has stolen. Given the chance to take the money and flee, he chooses to stay and finds the fulfillment that he had unconsciously been seeking all his life, culminating with him leading an army of the dead against their old enemies for a final confrontation with Rann.
“Lorelei of the Red Mist” is a very good story, forceful and vibrant, prefiguring the swashbuckling energy of such later titles as “Sea Kings of Mars.” Half of it had been written by Brackett before she was interrupted by her screenwriting commitments for The Big Sleep, and the story was subsequently completed by Ray Bradbury. The Bradbury part of the narrative—the second half of the novelette—maintains the gusto of the opening and leads to a good, well-rounded conclusion in a seamless transition from one author to another. Minor clarifications are needed as far as names are concerned: Hugh Starke is no relation to Eric John Stark, who had yet to make his debut; Crom Dhu is nothing to do with the Caer Dhu of “Sea Kings of Mars,” which again had yet to appear, and Conan is simply a name of Gaelic origin and not intended as a tribute or reference to Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero.
“The Moon That Vanished” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948) is an inventive and exciting adventure set far to the north. The persisting legend of the planet’s lost moon incorporates the fact that somewhere in the Upper Seas there is an island that is home to the Moonfire, a power that can bring dreams to life and which can make any man a god. Few people have attempted the hazardous journey, and only one has returned—he is David Heath, broken in spirit and seeking solace in alcohol and drugs. Tolerated by the Children of the Moon until they finally decide he must die for sacrilege, he reluctantly heads back to the Moonfire at the behest of the warrior, Broca, and Alor, an ex-handmaiden of the Moon. A tense chase ensues but they finally reach the Moonfire, where they find that the legends are fundamentally true, although the cost to be paid for divinity is high. In a pleasing conclusion, Heath exorcises the ghost that has held him in thrall for so long, not by assuming godhood but by embracing humanity.
“Enchantress of Venus” (Planet Stories Fall 1949) was the second story to feature Eric John Stark, following “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” earlier in the same year. It starts with Stark searching for a friend who went missing in Shuruun, an isolated and lawless port on the shores of the Red Sea, beyond the Mountains of White Cloud. Captured by the Lhari, the last few survivors of a degenerate family of the Cloud People exiled from the High Plateaus, he becomes one of the “Lost Ones,” slaves who are forced to excavate the ruins of an ancient city in search of the secret buried there, a secret hidden by an earlier reptilian race far in the past. Jealousy and hatred amongst the Lhari enable Stark to escape and lead a successful slaves’ rebellion, although that triumph is tempered by his sombre reflection on the many lives lost.
“Enchantress of Venus,” the longest of all the Venus tales, is a flowing and well-paced adventure with a driving narrative force enhanced by some good characterizations. Here we have the venal and treacherous Malthor, the innocent and trusting Zareth, and the crippled Treon, last of the Lhari and a man who has foreseen the approaching end of his dissolute family but who ultimately finds dignity and grace in his passing. It also further develops the nature and personality of Stark, who became one of the author’s enduring creations and who dominates the plot with his aggressive persona of barely repressed violence.
Brackett did not revisit Venus after “Enchantress of Venus,” although there were still a number of Martian stories to be told, and Eric John Stark made a return not only to Mars in “Black Amazon of Mars” (1951) but also to worlds far beyond the Solar System in the Skaith series of 1974–76 and in “Stark and the Star Kings” (2005, but written in the early 1970s in collaboration with her husband Edmond Hamilton). Towards the end of her life, Brackett returned to the writing of screenplays—amongst others, she had previously cowritten such classics as The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo for Howard Hawks—and wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. (It does not, however, appear that much of her draft was used in the final version of the
film, although it does credit both Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan with the script, perhaps as a final epitaph to her.)
Leigh Brackett continues to be a much admired storyteller with many of her titles in print at the present time. Her fiction has not significantly dated, as is the case with many of her contemporaries, and the worlds she created so well still endear her to readers seeking out vigorously told adventures with exotic backgrounds. While her portrayal of Venus is perhaps not as evocative or extensive as her depiction of Mars, it is still a planet that holds mysteries and literary pleasures, a planet that never was and never will be, but which has a firm place in the regard of lovers of imaginative fiction.
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Mike Barrett lives in Wilmington, Kent.
Leigh Brackett’s Tales of Venus
“The Stellar Legion” (Planet Stories, Winter 1940)
“The Demons of Darkside” (Startling Stories, January 1941)
“Interplanetary Reporter” (Startling Stories, May 1941)
“The Dragon-Queen of Venus” (Planet Stories, Summer 1941) aka “The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter”
“The Citadel of Lost Ships” (Planet Stories, March 1943)
“The Blue Behemoth” (Planet Stories, May 1943)
“Terror Out of Space” (Planet Stories, Summer 1944)
“The Vanishing Venusians” (Planet Stories, Spring 1945)
“Lorelei of the Red Mist” (Planet Stories, Summer 1946, with Ray Bradbury)
“The Moon that Vanished” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948)
“Enchantress of Venus” (Planet Stories, Fall 1949) aka “City of the Lost Ones”
Graham Andrews
Popcorn Poe: Roger Corman’s Poe Films and Tie-In Books
NYRSF #291 Page 5
