Download or read book Queen of the Martian Catacombs written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-12-10 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Erik John Stark is sent on a perilous mission into the Valkis and encounters the Queen of the Martian Catacombs.ExcerptThe leader of the four men rode slowly toward the tor, his right arm raised.His voice carried clearly on the wind. "Eric John Stark!" he called, and the dark man tensed in the shadows.The rider stopped. He spoke again, but this time in a different tongue. It was no dialect of Earth, Mars or Venus, but a strange speech, as harsh and vital as the blazing Mercurian valleys that bred it."Oh N'Chaka, oh Man-without-a-tribe, I call you!"There was a long silence. The rider and his mount were motionless under the low moons, waiting.Eric John Stark stepped slowly out from the pool of blackness under the tor."Who calls me N'Chaka?"The rider relaxed somewhat. He answered in English, "You know perfectly well who I am, Eric. May we meet in peace?" Stark shrugged. "Of course."He walked on to meet the rider, who had dismounted, leaving his beast behind. He was a slight, wiry man, this EPC officer, with the rawhide look of the frontiers still on him. His hair was grizzled and his sun-blackened skin was deeply lined, but there was nothing in the least aged about his hard good-humored face nor his remarkably keen dark eyes."It's been a long time, Eric," he said.Stark nodded. "Sixteen years." The two men studied each other for a moment, and then Stark said, "I thought you were still on Mercury, Ashton.""They've called all us experienced hands in to Mars." He held out cigarettes. "Smoke?"Stark took one. They bent over Ashton's lighter, and then stood there smoking while the wind blew red dust over their feet and the three men of the patrol waited quietly beside the Banning. Ashton was taking no chances. The electro-beam could stun without injury.Presently Ashton said, "I'm going to be crude, Eric. I'm going to remind you of some things.""Save it," Stark retorted. "You've got me. There's no need to talk about it.""Yes," said Ashton, "I've got you, and a damned hard time I've had doing it. That's why I'm going to talk about it."His dark eyes met Stark's cold stare and held it.

Download or read book Queen of the Martian Catacombs and Black Amazon of Mars Deseret Alphabet Ed written by Leigh Brackett and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leigh Douglass Brackett (1915-1978) was an American writer, particularly of science fiction; she is one of the few women writers to be at the forefront of science fiction's "Golden Age." Brackett was also a screenwriter, known for her work on films from The Big Sleep (1945) to The Empire Strikes Back (1980). "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" and "Black Amazon of Mars" are the first two novellas in her Eric John Stark series. These stories, spanning a sprawling (and scientifically impossible) Solar System, are rolicking adventures in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter and Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. They are excellent examples of pulp science fiction at its "pulpy-est"-manly men, warrior women, and non-stop action.

Download or read book Queen of the Martian Catacombs written by Leigh Brackett and published by BEYOND BOOKS HUB. This book was released on 2023-09-24 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stark’s mind veered away from the incredible thing that was about to happen. It spoke words to him, hurried desperate words of sanity, about the electrical patterns of the mind, and the sensitivity of crystals, and conductors, and electro-magnetic impulses. But that was only the top of his brain. At base it was still the brain of N’Chaka that believed in gods and demons and all the sorceries of darkness. Only pride kept him from cowering abjectly at Berild’s feet....FROM THE BOOKS.

Download or read book The Secret of Sinharat written by Leigh Brackett and published by Paizo Incorporated. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised on the savage world of Mercury, hard-bitten mercenary Eric John Stark lives among the people of the civilized solar system, but his calm veneer masks a warrior's spirit. Criminals staging a revolution in the Martian Drylands force Stark to side with the law in an adventure leading him to the ruins of the Martian Low Canals, a romance and a secret that could shake the Red Planet to its core.

Download or read book Planet Stories Summer 1949 written by Leigh Brackett and published by . This book was released on 2008-08-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains two stories including Queen of the Martian Catacombs and S O S APHRODITE .

Download or read book Child of the Sun Leigh Brackett SF Boxed Set Illustrated Black Amazon of Mars Child of the Sun Citadel of Lost Ships Enchantress written by Leigh Brackett and published by E-Artnow. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns written by Paul Green and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From automatons to zombies, many elements of fantasy and science fiction have been cross-pollinated with the Western movie genre. In its second edition, this encyclopedia of the Weird Western includes many new entries covering film, television, animation, novels, pulp fiction, short stories, comic books, graphic novels and video and role-playing games. Categories include Weird, Weird Menace, Science Fiction, Space, Steampunk and Romance Westerns.

Download or read book Visions of Mars written by Howard V. Hendrix, and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-02-21 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen wide-ranging essays explore the evolving scientific understanding of Mars, and the relationship between that understanding and the role of Mars in literature, the arts and popular culture. Essays in the first section examine different approaches to Mars by scientists and writers Jules Verne and J.H. Rosny. Section Two covers the uses of Mars in early Bolshevik literature, Wells, Brackett, Burroughs, Bradbury, Heinlein, Dick and Robinson, among others. The third section looks at Mars as a cultural mirror in science fiction. Essayists include prominent writers (e.g., Kim Stanley Robinson), scientists and literary critics from many nations.

Download or read book Science Fact and Science Fiction written by Brian M. Stableford and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book The Complete Illustrated Stark written by Leigh Brackett and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition collects the entirety of the 70th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the adventures of Leigh Brackett's pulp hero, Eric John Stark. Contains Queen of the Martian Catacombs (1949), The Enchantress of Venus (1949), and Black Amazon of Mars (1951). Each of these classic pulp adventures has been lovingly and faithfully illustrated by Portuguese art duo StarTwo.

Download or read book Black Amazon of Mars written by Leigh Brackett and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-10-09 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A FICTION HOUSE PRESS REPRINT: Grimly Eric John Stark slogged toward that ancient Martian city-with every step he cursed the talisman of Ban Cruach that flamed in his blood-stained belt Behind him screamed the hordes of Ciaran, hungering for that magic jewel-ahead lay the dread abode of the Ice Creatures-at his side stalked the whispering spectre of Ban Cruach, urging him on to a battle Stark knew he must lose!

Download or read book Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Vol 2 written by R. Reginald and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, A Checklist, 1700-1974, Volume Two of Two, contains Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II.

Download or read book The Beast Jewel of Mars written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wise men of Caer Dhu were not so wise. They found the secret of Shanga, and they escaped their wars and their troubles by fleeing backward along the path of evolution.Excerpt Burk Winters remained in the passenger section while the Starflight made her landing at Kahora Port. He did not think that he could bear to see another man, not even one he liked as much as he did Johnny Niles, handle the controls of the ship that had been his for so long.He did not wish even to say goodbye to Johnny, but there was no avoiding it. The young officer was waiting for him as he came down the ramp, and the deep concern he felt was not hidden in the least by his casually hearty grin.Johnny held out his hand. "So long, Burk. You've earned this leave. Have fun with it."Burk Winters looked out over the vast tarmac that spread for miles across the ochre desert. An orderly, roaring confusion of trucks and flatcars and men and ships-ore ships, freighters, tramps, sleek liners like the Starflight, bearing the colors of three planets and a dozen colonies, but still arrogantly and predominantly Terran.Johnny followed his gaze and said softly, "It always gives you a thrill, doesn't it?"Winters did not answer. Miles away, safe from the thundering rocket blasts, the glassite dome of Kahora, Trade City for Mars, rose jewel-like out of the red sand. The little sun stared wearily down and the ancient hills considered it, and the old, old wandering wind passed over it, and it seemed as though the planet bore Kahora and its spaceport with patience, as though it were a small local infection that would soon be gone.He had forgotten Johnny Niles. He had forgotten everything but his own dark thoughts. The young officer studied him with covert pity, and he did not know it.Burk Winters was a big man, and a tough man, tempered by years of deep-space flying. The same glare of naked light that had burned his skin so dark had bleached his hair until it was almost white, and just in the last few months his gray eyes seemed to have caught and held a spark of that pitiless radiance. The easy good nature was gone out of them, and the lines that laughter had shaped around his mouth had deepened now into bitter scars.

Download or read book A World Is Born written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first ripples of blue fire touched Dio's men. Bolts of it fastened on gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell. Jill cried out as he tore silver ornaments from her dress...ExcerptMel Gray flung down his hoe with a sudden tigerish fierceness and stood erect. Tom Ward, working beside him, glanced at Gray's Indianesque profile, the youth of it hardened by war and the hells of the Eros prison blocks.A quick flash of satisfaction crossed Ward's dark eyes. Then he grinned and said mockingly."Hell of a place to spend the rest of your life, ain't it?"Mel Gray stared with slitted blue eyes down the valley. The huge sun of Mercury seared his naked body. Sweat channeled the dust on his skin. His throat ached with thirst. And the bitter landscape mocked him more than Wade's dark face."The rest of my life," he repeated softly. "The rest of my life!"He was twenty-eight.Wade spat in the damp black earth. "You ought to be glad--helping the unfortunate, building a haven for the derelict....""Shut up!" Fury rose in Gray, hotter than the boiling springs that ran from the Sunside to water the valleys. He hated Mercury. He hated John Moulton and his daughter Jill, who had conceived this plan of building a new world for the destitute and desperate veterans of the Second Interplanetary War."I've had enough 'unselfish service'," he whispered. "I'm serving myself from now on."

Download or read book The Stellar Legion written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-11-05 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MacIan was a man with a secret, and it had followed him to Venus and the Legion, escape was impossible...ExcerptSilence was on the barracks like a lid clamped over tight-coiled springs. Men in rumpled uniforms-outlanders of the Stellar Legion, space-rats, the scrapings of the Solar System-sweated in the sullen heat of the Venusian swamplands before the rains. Sweated and listened.The metal door clanged open to admit Lehn, the young Venusian Commandant, and every man jerked tautly to his feet. Ian MacIan, the white-haired, space-burned Earthman, alone and hungrily poised for action; Thekla, the swart Martian low-canaler, grinning like a weasel beside Bhak, the hulking strangler from Titan. Every quick nervous glance was riveted on Lehn.The young officer stood silent in the open door, tugging at his fair mustache; to MacIan, watching, he was a trim, clean incongruity in this brutal wilderness of savagery and iron men. Behind him, the eternal mists writhed in a thin curtain over the swamp, stretching for miles beyond the soggy earthworks; through it came the sound every ear had listened to for days, a low, monotonous piping that seemed to ring from the ends of the earth. The Nahali, the six-foot, scarlet-eyed swamp-dwellers, whose touch was weapon enough, praying to their gods for rain. When it came, the hot, torrential downpour of southern Venus, the Nahali would burst in a scaly tide over the fort.Only a moat of charged water and four electro-cannons stood between the Legion and the horde. If those things failed, it meant two hundred lives burned out, the circle of protective forts broken, the fertile uplands plundered and laid waste. MacIan looked at Lehn's clean, university-bred young face, and wondered cynically if he was strong enough to do his job.Lehn spoke, so abruptly that the men started. "I'm calling for volunteers. A reconnaissance in Nahali territory; you know well enough what that means. Three men. Well?"Ian MacIan stepped forward, followed instantly by the Martian Thekla. Bhak the Titan hesitated, his queerly bright, blank eyes darting from Thekla to Lehn, and back to MacIan. Then he stepped up, his hairy face twisted in a sly grin.Lehn eyed them, his mouth hard with distaste under his fair mustache. Then he nodded, and said; "Report in an hour, light equipment." Turning to go, he added almost as an afterthought, "Report to my quarters, MacIan. Immediately."MacIan's bony Celtic face tightened and his blue eyes narrowed with wary distrust. But he followed Lehn, his gaunt, powerful body as ramrod-straight as the Venusian's own, and no eye that watched him go held any friendship.

Download or read book Lord of the Earthquake written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-12-10 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mysterious lands of Manoa, Xacul claims he is a god, but is he really the one causing the rumbling and fire spouting from the ground? ExcerptIt was stiflingly hot in the submarine's tiny cabin. The steady pound of the screws was a throbbing ache. Coh Langham, his scarred hawk face set in lines of restless boredom, stared out the port at the featureless muck that rolled endlessly away under the searchlight, "Krim," he said abruptly, "you're crazy."Simon Krim, hunched like a shaggy black bull over the tiny control panel, spoke without taking his eyes from the sea-floor. "What's the matter, Langham? Has the thrill petered out?""Thrill!" Langham's strong brown body, stripped to dungarees, hitched angrily lower in the seat. Yes, he had expected a thrill. He had hated seeing Krim again; it took him back to a time he wanted to forget. But Krim had asked him, and he, at a loose end and restless as always, had accepted. Hunting a sunken continent with a submarine was something he hadn't done before. It looked exciting.The excitement had resolved itself into three weeks of hellish monotony, heat, and inactivity, and utter boredom.Simon Krim grunted. "That's all you think about, isn't it? Thrills. Your father was a hard-working archeologist, my best friend. And you spend your life crashing planes and climbing mountains, having adventures."There was an edge to his voice; his hairy body gleamed with sweat, and there were tight lines around his mouth.Coh Langham's blue eyes went hard under the scarlet cloth that held back his damp fair hair. "My life's my own, Krim. My father certainly never got much out of his!"

Download or read book The Jewel of Bas written by Leigh Brackett and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2011-11-05 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quest to the Mountain of Life to save what remained by humanity from the machines that were bent on destroying them.excerptMouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn't much of it. She sniffed and said: "You could have stolen a bigger joint. We'll go hungry before the next town.""Uh huh," Ciaran grunted lazily.Anger began to curl in Mouse's eyes."I suppose it's all right with you if we run out of food," she said sullenly.Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched her with lazy gray eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small red thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing behind it. He said, "It's just as well. I don't want you getting fat and lazy."Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown knees. It began to purr softly.Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence of the place was wonderful.He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut, but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, far below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat, desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of the world, where Ciaran's sharp eyes could just make out a glint of gold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.Mouse said suddenly, "Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain of Life?"