Female Fantasy Authors, November 2012

Often missed by readers is Leigh Brackett, but finding her takes a walk back into the '40s and '50s...and even to the theater screen. Brackett would take breaks in her science fiction output to pen screenplays, such as Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. Her novella Lorelei of the Red Mist was co-written with Ray Bradbury, but on her own she displayed an incredible imagination, exploring the devastating effects of colonialism within a martian landscape and the collision of various alien civilizations. It is a travesty that many of the early pioneers of the genre are forgotten, particularly those women who helped blaze the trail. Leigh Brackett is certainly one such woman and her work is worth hunting down.