The following article by Jill Kosmensky was published in the premiere issue of Pulp Eternity, September 1998.

 FLASHBACK TO LEIGH BRACKETT 

     When last November arrived, a new page in my Star Wars Movie Poster Calendar beckoned to be revealed. I flipped the page up and looked at the "poster of the month" – the German version of The Empire Strikes Back. As I read down the credits, fortunately written in English, I spotted the name of Leigh Brackett who, along with Lawrence Kasdan, wrote the screenplay for this second installation of the Star Wars saga.
     Leigh Brackett was a prolific writer of science fiction from the early 1940's, long before she made a name for herself in the movie industry as a screenwriter for such films as The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, Rio Bravo, and The Empire Strikes Back – to name just a few. She dabbled in the mystery genre, as well, and has a western adventure novel on her long list of published works.
      Her best-known science fiction stories and novels are set on the planets Venus and Mars. From the late 1940's through the 1970's, when most of these stories were written, the amount of scientific facts known about our solar system was minuscule compared to the knowledge we have today. Unlike DaVinci's flying machine and Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, there is no possibility the science fiction of Ms. Brackett's Mars and Venus could ever come to be science fact. However, don't let that turn you away from the marvelous stories.
     Ms. Brackett had a gift with imagery and a simple, straightforward story-telling style. The sheer pleasure of losing yourself in the depths of Ms. Brackett's imagination as she brings these worlds to life is worth the trip to the used bookstore. Look at the beginning of her short story, "Enchantress of Venus," featuring Eric John Stark, which appeared in the Fall 1949 issue of Planet Stories:
 

The ship moved slowly across the Red Sea, through the shrouding veils of mist, her sail barely filled by the languid thrust of the wind. Her hull, of a thin light metal, floated without sound, the surface of the strange ocean parting before her prows in silent rippling streamers of flame.

Night deepened toward the ship, a river of indigo flowing out of the west. The man known as Stark stood alone by the after rail and watched its coming. He was full of impatience and a gathering sense of danger, so that it seemed to him that even the hot wind smelled of it.

     Not all of Ms. Brackett's science fiction took place off the home world. Her novel, The Long Tomorrow, considered by many to be her best work, is a gripping and frightening depiction of life on Earth following a nuclear world war. Ho hum, you say? Been there, read this kind before? Not likely. Ms. Brackett's vivid descriptions of what the people of this new Earth had to do to survive, and the struggle of a few to rise above the fear of technology will carry you along for a ride that will haunt you for a long, long time.
     Leigh Brackett passed away just a few days after turning in the script for The Empire Strikes Back. The world of science fiction suffered a great loss that day. However, from Earth to Mars to Venus and to a galaxy far, far away, the stories of Leigh Brackett will endure as long as we continue to imagine.