The Coming Of The Terrans

The Coming Of The Terrans, by Leigh Brackett
No month stated, 1967  Ace Books

A few years after Ace published The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman and The Sword Of Rhiannon, they published this fine collection of Leigh Brackett stories that had originally appeared in various pulp sci-fi mags. This book collects both early and later Brackett, the tales spanning from 1948 to 1963 – in fact the sole two sci-fi stories Brackett wrote in the ‘60s are collected here, and I wonder if writing them is what inspired her to go back and revise “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon of Mars” for their Ace Double expansions.

All of the stories collected in The Coming Of The Terrans have an anti-Earthman, anti-colonialism vibe, more so than any other Brackett tales I’ve yet read. The “Terrans” are either foolish interlopers, well-meaning incompetents, or rugged individualists out to help the Martians. All of them, that is, save for the hero of the first yarn, Captain Burk Winters; but then, “Beast-Jewel of Mars” has a different vibe than the other stories collected here, and is more along the lines of the sci-fi action tales of Eric John Stark. Winters is even reminiscent of Stark (who actually hadn’t been created by Brackett yet, so maybe it should be vice versa), with sun-darkened skin; however he has sun-bleached, almost white hair. This one’s my favorite tale here, mixing sci-fi, action, and even nightmarish body-horror straight out of Island Of Lost Souls.

“Beast-Jewel of Mars” is from the Winter, 1948 issue of Planet Stories (I’ll link to the Internet Archive where scans of the magazines are available for free download). This is a great opening to the anthology, and it’s prime Brackett. One thing added to this Ace anthology is a date for each story, something unstated in the original pulp versions – we’re informed that “Beast-Jewel of Mars” takes place in 1998. Good grief, in the real 1998 I was barely making a living, driving a beaten-up Volkswagen Rabbit, but damn if I don’t look back on those pre-marriage/pre-responsibility days with nostalgia. Anyway, in the 1998 of Leigh Brackett – and I wonder if the dates for each story were arbitrarily determined by Ace, and not Brackett herself – space exploration is rampant and humans have ingratiated themselved onto all the already-populated planets.

When we meet him Burk Winters is landing in the spaceport of Kahora, one of the few places on Mars where Terrans are allowed. It’s a domed city straight out of Logan’s Run, with all the comforts of home. As the tales in the collection progress, we will see how Kahora grows and prospers, but in this earliest-set tale it’s more of a waystation. Winters has come here on a mission, one for which he’s apparently given up his commission. His fiance, Jill, supposedly died in a “flier” crash in the Martian desert, but Winters suspects there was foul play, as Jill had become involved with the Martian drug Shanga – so memorably featured in “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” with a bit more detail about it in The Secret Of Sinharat. In fact, “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” featured a reference to this very story, though the reference was edited out in the Ace Double expansion.

Shanga, known as “the going-back,” is a drug that makes its user regress down through the phases of evolution. Sounds horrific, but apparently it evokes feelings of euphoria in the user. Speaking of drugs, Winters enjoys calming his nerves with “Venusian cigarettes,” which we’re informed have a sedative effect. (Part of me believes – wants to believe – that noted sci-fi geek Jimi Hendrix had this paperback in his collection.) He contacts a Martian named Kor Hal who runs the local Shanga operation, but learns that the Shanga of Kahora, used only by visiting Earthmen, is a pale reflection of the real thing, which Kor Hal says was created by the people of Caer Dhu, 500,000 years ago. Readers of The Sword of Rhiannon/Sea-Kings of Mars will recall Caer Dhu was the domain of the Serpent Men, the Dhuvians, but that was a million years before…so one suspects regular ol’ Martians must’ve moved in afterwards.

Winters plunks down heavy cash and is taken by flier to Valkis, Low Canal city that’s been in other Brackett tales. Here he sees real Shanga, which the Martians don’t touch – it wiped out the people of Caer Dhu in a single generation. It’s run via giant prisms that harness celestial light or somesuch, and Winters is taken up in the “magnificent, unholy sensation” of Shanga. He regresses to beast, and then is challenged by a regal, bare-breasted woman (the Martian and Venusian women are always bare-breasted in Brackett, by the way – it’s like the eternal style on these planets). Still in beast form, “Burk,” as Brackett refers to our hero when a beast, is chased through the streets of Valkis, the angry Martians herding him up to the ruins of Old Valkis, which once loomed over the now-vanished sea. 

The Terran-hatred is strongest in this story, and thus it could use a more proactive Earthman hero. Winters though, back in normal form, is locked in an arena with other Shanga sufferers, some of them so regressed that they’re so hideous they can’t bear description. And here Winters discovers Jill, still alive, but regressed almost permanently into an almost missing link sort of thing. The Martian lady who challenged Winters is the Lady Fand, who rules Old Valkis, bringing the Terran Shanga-sufferers out each night for the amusement of the locals. Using his wiles – not to mention the unbelievable lack of security – Winters is able to sneak out, catch Fand, and put her under the Shanga lights, that night – and we see why the Martians forever swore off Shanga. Features a rushed but bloody ending in which the Shanga freaks wreak vengeance on the Martians, and Winters escapes with Jill, to alert Terran authorities – per the sidenote in “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” he was successful, and Lady Fand’s Shanga ring was crushed.

“Mars Minus Bisha” follows, and immediately we detect a different vibe. This one’s a heartbreaker, folks – who’d expect such an emotional tale from an old sci-fi pulp mag? Originally appearing in the January, 1954 issue of Planet Stories, this one lacks the action and violence of “Beast-Jewel of Mars” but makes up for it with characters you grow to care about. In earlier yarns Brackett’s protagonists were almost ciphers, but here we have Fraser, a doctor who has come here to Mars to study viruses. He’s sequestered in a Quonset hut in the desert, almost forbidden from contact with the locals. The year given in this Ace edition – but not the original story – is 2016.

One day a Martian desert woman storms up to the hut on one of those “lizardlike mounts” the Martians are always riding, and dumps off her daughter, whom she says is sick. Then the mother takes off. The child is named Bisha and she’s around seven. Gradually Fraser will learn that Bisha has affected her tribe with a sleeping sickness, reminiscent of the one in Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years Of Solitude, to the point that the entire tribe was in such jeopardy that the child was ordered to be put to death – the Martians having none of the “humanity” of Terrans in such matters.

But the mother instead snuck Bisha off to Fraser, hoping this strange Terran doctor might cure her…and apparently raise her, as the mom isn’t coming back. Thus begins a compelling drama between Fraser and his new charge, with Brackett subtly hitting all the right notes, like when Fraser realizes belatedly that he’s just gotten a family. Soon he’s talking to the brooding young Bisha about Earth and the home they’ll share when he takes her back with him. But then Fraser begins blacking out, going into minor comas for several hours at stretch. When he tells a local about it, the local instantly knows Bisha is with him, thus setting off a tense finale in which the two attempt to escape across the desert via “trac-car” before Bisha’s former tribesmen can stop them. Be prepared to have your heart ripped out and stomped on.

Next up is “The Last Days of Shandakor,” from the January, 1952 issue of Startling Stories.  The book gives the date as 2024. This one’s unique, at least so far as the other Brackett stories I’ve read, in that it’s in first-person. Our narrator is John Ross, a “planetary anthropologist” who knows more about Mars than most Martians do. Then one day in a Barrakesh tavern he sees a strange native in a billowing cloak with coal-black eyes – eyes like no Martian Ross has ever seen – and realizes he’s looking at a “new” Martian race. The fact that the other Martians give this dude wide berth, almost pretending he’s not there, only adds to the mystery.

The strange Martian’s name is Corin (Brackett did love her Celtic names), and he claims to be from the lost city of Shandakor, which is dying. Ross talks Corin into letting him tag along on the journey back, knowing that Corin plans to kill him – which he does, though Ross defends himself. Afterwards Corin kills himself, refusing to take a Terran into Shandakor. Ross looks for the first time at Corin’s uncovered face, and it is almost reptillian. Ross, thirsty and alone, is jumped by a pair of hulking barbarians; turns out a barbarian army has surrounded Shandakor, refusing to go inside, even though the ciy appears to be unguarded. They take Ross’s money and push him into the city, telling him the people of Shandakor are rich, with water to spare.

Ross finds a literal ghost town, populated with the usual human-type Martians and other Martians such as he’s never seen, walking around, doing business, etc. But there is absolutely no sound, and no one sees him. Brackett mentions that some of these beings have wings, and others have the snakelike features of Corin; she doesn’t elaborate, only stating these are “the lost races of Mars.” My suspicion is we are to assume the people of Shandakor are the descendants of the “Halflings” which proliferated in the time of The Sword Of Rhiannon/Sea-Kings Of Mars, and this is where they segregated themselves from the human-stock Martians who gradually took control of the planet. 

Eventually Ross learns that these “ghosts” are recordings pulled from the very stones of Shandakor, a sort of bizarre security device to keep away the superstitious barbarians. In truth Shandakor is peopled by a few thousand survivors, all of them with similar features as Corin. One of them is a “girl-child” named Duani who wants to keep Ross almost as a pet, claiming she’s never seen a real Terran before. Ross is enslaved, his job to clean the gears of the strange machine that runs the holograms. He learns about Shandakor and falls in love with Duani; this is the second tale in which a Terran protagonist plans to take a Martian girl back to Earth with him, though here it’s a different sort of love, Ross belatedly realizing how damn hot Duani is (plus her being topless all the time doesn’t hurt).

But prepare to be gutted, once again – Brackett it appears went more for emotional, poignant finales in her later yarns, and this one’s no exception. The people of Shandakor know their time is limited, and thus willingly go to the Place of Sleep, which is like a euthenasia center or something. When it’s Duani’s turn, Ross freaks and smashes the hologram machinery, so that the barbarians can come in – and a devastated Duani is glad Ross is only a human, so he will never know how horrible his actions were. Brackett’s husband Edmond Hamilton deemed this “the last and best” of Brackett’s Martian tales, but I disagree – it’s great and all, but I prefer the more action-centric tales.

“Purple Priestess of Mars” follows, and it really is the last of Brackett’s Martian tales, the last story she published to occur on the Red Planet. It’s from the October, 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and it’s the shortest tale collected here, not to mention the most Lovecraftian. It also has a different vibe, in that the Terran “hero” is a liberal academic Brackett clearly dislikes. I read somewhere that Leigh Brackett hated liberalism (I also read somewhere online that her mid-‘70s The Book of Skaith trilogy was like an anti-liberalism diatribe), and that’s very apparent here.

For, like the typical uber-liberal, our “hero,” a government social worker named Harvey Seldon, is a sanctimonious know-nothing know-it-all, the kind of guy who thinks he knows what the Martians need more than the Martians themselves do, even though he’s never even been to Mars. This is his first time, coming into the Kahora spaceport, which we learn is now a city of eight vast domes. Also, humans have more so integrated with the Martians, the date for this story being given as 2031. Seldon even looks down on the crewmember of the transport ship that’s brought him here to Mars, but accepts the man’s offer to hang out with some real, live Martians that night. Seldon practices some positive reinforcement antics to groove himself up; Brackett really had the nascent liberal movement figured out.

That night Seldon goes out of his way to apologize for the previous Terran “exploitation” of Mars (you could even say it’s the first stop of his Martian Apology Tour), even correcting the natives that there was never any “human sacrifice” in the “mad moon” religion of yore. Despite the fact that the locals insist there was. But as we’ll recall, Seldon knows better than everyone, and insists that the legends that there was once a cult that worshipped a supposedly-lost race on Mars’s moon Phobos, referred to as Denedron by the Martians (Deimos is called “Vashna,” by the way), is all make believe courtesy the first Terrans who came to Mars, lying “adventurers” all of them.

Then he’s drugged and these Martians sneak Seldon through the streets and the desert to Jekkara, the anything-goes Low Canal city from previous Brackett joints which is still forbidden to Terrans even at this late date. Here he is thrust into a religious ceremony, given a drink that is possibly drugged, and sees a lovely native gal named Lella, wearing a silver mask like the gal on the cover painting, leading a group of worshippers. Then a demonic “eye” opens, and Seldon loses his marbles – could this “mad moon” demon really exist, and demand a regular sacrifice? The Martians take Seldon back to Kahora, claiming that this was “the only way” they could get him to see the reality of this bloodthirsty religion, which can only be found in the hills outside Jekkara; they plead with him to tell his superiors about it, so it can be stamped out and the demon destroyed. No one else has believed their story, but they figured if an actual government employee saw it for himself, something could be done.

Instead, Seldon flees back to Earth and convinces himself it was all a drug trip. As if her wit couldn’t get any more acidic, Brackett delivers a finale in which a psychoanalyst listens to Seldon’s story and tells him it was all a manifestation of his mind, the demonic eye he thought he saw merely a sign from his subconscious that he needs to accept the fact that he is a “latent homosexual.” All this is exactly what Seldon needs to hear, the supernatural explained away in a fashion he can accept, and thus he can get back to being a sanctimonious jerk. And then a letter arrives from Mars, telling him Lella awaits him at the next moon…

The final tale is “The Road To Sinharat,” from the May, 1963 issue of Amazing Stories. This one gets back to the novella length of the other tales, and also somewhat has the vibe of the more action-centric yarns. It also seems to have served Brackett with some inspiration for The Secret Of Sinharat, mostly in the details of the titular location; in that 1964 Ace expansion, we learn that a constant wind in Sinharat has the sound of ghostly screaming, something I don’t believe was mentioned in the original “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” version of the story. The year given is 2038.

We’re back to the third-person narration, and our hero is Dr. Matthew Carey, who is so reminiscent of Matt Carse of The Sword Of Rhiannon/Sea-Kings Of Mars, from the similar name to the same occupation, that you wonder why Brackett didn’t just make it the same character. Like Carse, Carey’s a rugged archeologist, very much in the Indiana Jones mold, and he’s been at it for a while, his hair getting touches of gray. When we meet him Carey’s run afoul of the United Worlds Planetary Assistance Committee, yet another Terran government body of liberal do-gooders who think they know what’s best for Mars. In this case the Committee, led by one Winthorpe, plan to use science to transform the deserts of Mars into oceans and forests. They care little that the Martians themselves do not want this to happen – the humans know better. But they want to arrest Carey on grounds that they believe he’s so stirred up the natives to the point of revolution.

Carey though recalls something like this happened in Mars’s dim past. Brackett skillfully divulges Carey’s plan as the narrative progresses, to the point that we don’t even initially know why he wants to go to mythical Sinharat, ancient abode of the Ramas, those Martians who used their own science to gain immortality. Carey evades the police (for some reason, Interpol is after him – even operating here on Mars – led by a bloodhound of an agent named Waters), and hooks up with an old tomb-raiding Martian pal named Derrech. Along with them comes Derrech’s sexy sister Arrin, who you won’t be surprised to know traipses around in that traditional Martian garb of kilt and no top – however it appears that Martian women are mostly all small-breasted, as Brackett seems to consistently use that description for them.

The action starts in Jekkara, and we get references to barbarian leader Kynon, from “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” which Brackett would soon expand as The Secret Of Sinharat. Carey refers to this as the last time Sinharat reached the public conscious, but he knows that there might be something in the Rama archives that can stop the so-called Rehabilitation Project from terraforming Mars. Carey also makes the interesting comment that he knows, from “a pretty good authority,” that there is a water well hidden in Sinharat. Could that “authority” be none other than Eric John Stark? 

So begins a journey across the Low Canals of southern Mars, heading up north to the Drylands of the barbarians of Kesh and Shun, the group travelling in a barge that’s pulled along the dried-out canals by those lizard beasts. There’s sporadic action, like when in Valkis a group of barbarians storm the barge while Derech and his crew are off in the city; they’re no doubt muscle paid for by Waters, who knows Derech is secretly transporting the fugitive Matthew Carey. But as mentioned Carey’s no wimp, and, naked, he hefts a war axe and starts screaming at them, having learned long ago how to “go Martian” and fool people into thinking he’s a Dryland barbarian. Brackett uses the phrase “go Martian” in the same connotation as “go postal,” a phrase that wouldn’t even be coined for a few more decades.

Soon Carey’s going all the way with it, wearing a leather armor kilt and harness – ie, just as depicted on Gray Morrow’s great cover art, which you might have noticed from my overlong writeup actually depicts characters and incidents from the book, which is cool. When Carey and friends arrive in Sinharat, they find the warriors of Kesh and Shun surrounding the place, and Interpol agent Waters hiding within the city – Waters having guessed where Carey was headed. But Brackett doesn’t give us a bloodthirsty finale, instead having our heroes trick their way into Sinharat, and Carey finding the material he wants, visually recorded on ancient Rama technology.

Instead, the finale is more on the lines of drama, with Carey presenting the recordings to the Committee, he and his comrades having been safely flown out of Sinharat before the barbarians could close in. Here we get the humorous note that a Committee translator speaks in Esperanto! Well, I guess that seemed “futuristic” in 1963. But we see that the Ramas tried to terraform Mars long in the past, only with disastrous results – to the point that the Committee determines that they will not in fact bring water to the Martians. Thus, revolution is averted.

Brackett’s writing throughout is strong as ever: concise, evocative, and poetic. Special mention must be made of her brief Preface, in which she discusses how science has now confirmed that there is not and has never been life on Mars – but she still vouches for the truth of these stories. “After all, I was there.” But I have to say, it would be a damn shame if this is why Brackett’s work fell out of favor, and was out of print for so long – who cares if there isn’t life on Mars, or any of the other planets in the solar system? That doesn’t detract from the enjoyment value of Brackett’s work; the stories collected here are the very definition of escapism. And I think Leigh Brackett has become my new favorite writer.

Conan (Conan #1)

Conan, by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, and Lin Carter
July, 1984  Ace Books
(original Lancer Books edition, 1968)

If you had asked me when I was 13 years old who my favorite author was, I probably would’ve said Robert E. Howard. When my men’s adventure novels phase abruptly fizzled out around that time, I found myself moving on to sci-fi and fantasy, in particular the Conan stories. At that time these Ace paperbacks were ubiquitous in bookstores, at least in my area – unfortunately though I was just a poor kid and couldn’t afford all of them. But I had this one, though I have no recollections of it, other than one or two stories – and I can’t believe it was almost exactly thirty years ago that I first read it!

These days the Ace books (which themselves were reprints of the original Lancer editions) are out of print and out of favor; Howard purists lose lots of sleep over the editing L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter did to the original Howard tales, not to mention the “pastiches” they wrote to fill in the gaps in Conan’s life. As is well known, Howard didn’t write the Conan stories in any sort of chronological order, but in response to a fan’s letter he did construct a sort of template; de Camp used this when fleshing out the Conan saga.

The Conan series ran to 12 volumes, taking Conan from youth to old king; initially most of them were published by Lancer, but after that imprint went out of business, Ace took over. The books also weren’t published in order; Conan The Adventurer, for example, while being the fifth book in the series, was actually published first. Millions of copies of these books were sold over the decades, no doubt due in large part to the cover paintings by Frank Frazetta (his work is kind of butchered on this Ace edition of Conan #1, though; the original Lancer edition shows more of the painting). Boris Vallejo’s paintings, later in the series, are also great, I think.

Anyway, for this re-read I did something a little different. For the Howard tales contained herein, I read the original, unadulterated versions, which are now readily available in a trio of Del Rey trade paperbacks that came out several years ago. (I would bet good money that these Del Rey editions haven’t sold anywhere near the amount the old Lancer/Ace editions did, though…) So I can’t speak to the tinkering de Camp/Carter did to the REH originals, though you can find copious amounts of info about this sort of thing online, particularly on Wikipedia.

Re-reading Conan #1 all these years later, in addition to finding that I hardly remembered any of the tales, I also found that the majority of them were overly repetitive. The same thing basically happens over and over again, and Conan himself doesn’t really stand out until late in the book. In this way perhaps this book isn’t the best introduction to the character, but I decided to start with it (again) anyway.

Here are the stories:

“The Legions Of The Dead” (de Camp & Carter) – Okay, I’m cheating here; this story doesn’t actually appear in Conan #1. It’s from the 1978 Bantam paperback Conan The Swordsman, which is yet another book of Conan pastiches by these two authors, written after their Lancer/Ace stuff. I included it here because this story takes place before “The Thing In The Crypt” (below), thus chronologically it was the earliest tale in Conan’s life that these two authors wrote.

Conan is just a teenager when we meet him, serving as a mercenary with an Aesir war party that has ventured into “haunted” Hyperboria; we’re informed he has left his native Cimmeria due to a “blood feud.” The Aesir are here to rescue Ranni, daughter of Njal, the Aesir leader. There isn’t much to the story, and Conan doesn’t really come to life – we’re just informed that his ideas are usually discarded by the Aesir. But through his ingenuity he’s able to rescue Ranni from the castle in which she’s imprisoned, and the Aesir escape.

The titular legion of the dead soon attack – it is an army made up of their fallen comrades, as well as other “gaunt” Hyperboreans they’ve recently killed. This is necromancy courtesy wicked Queen Vammatar of Hyperborea, an ageless beauty with “high breasts.” It was she who took Ranni captive, and now aims to get her back with her undead warriors, but Conan again saves the day; as Njal and the others fall to the sword-wielding zombies, Conan knocks Vammatar off her horse, puts Ranni on it, and the horse races off. Meanwhile Conan is caught, destined for the Hyperborean slave pens, and here the tale ends.

“The Thing In The Crypt” (de Camp and Carter) – The previous story was basically a prequel to this one, which is the official first story in Conan #1. It’s another trifle of a story, but well-known in its own right because writer/director John Milius included it in his awesome ’82 film Conan The Barbarian. (The sequence is not present in Oliver Stone’s original draft of the script.) The problem with reading “The Legions Of The Dead” before this one is that repetition I mentioned above.

I imagine Lin Carter got a chuckle out of seeing this story in the film, as it turns out “The Thing In The Crypt” started life as a story featuring Carter’s character Thongor of Lemuria. Thongor was changed to a young Conan, who when we meet him has escaped those Hyperborean slave pens and is running from wolves that chase him. He has no weapons, same as in the film, and finds a passageway into an underground crypt – again, same as in the film. But where the movie diverges is the skeleton in the crypt is inanimate, other than when Conan takes the Atlantean sword from it.

In the story, the “thing in the crypt” is actually a “mummified” corpse with rough gray skin, and it comes to life to attack young Conan when he has the umbrage to take its sword away. Conan is understandably freaked out, but fights back – however, given that I read “The Legions Of The Dead” before this, I was like, “Conan, you just fought an entire legion of zombies – you’ve got this, man!” But admitedly, that story was written much later, and clearly the authors didn’t go to too much trouble to connect the two stories. Needless to say, Conan gets the sword and makes his escape.

Back to the film, Milius also improved on the sequence by making the sword so important that it became Conan’s main weapon – indeed the one he used to break his father’s sword, thus implying that Conan had become stronger than his father. In this story, the sword is just a sword, and it’s not mentioned again as being important in any way. I know purists dislike Conan The Barbarian, but I love it; I could care less that it isn’t faithful to Howard’s work, as it stands on its own…the movie is like a Nietzschean myth on film, and it might be my favorite movie ever. Here is a great review by someone who gets it.

“The Tower Of The Elephant” (Howard) – First published in the March, 1933 issue of Weird Tales, “The Tower Of The Elephant” is another Conan yarn that found its way (sort of) into the ’82 film; it’s even present in Oliver Stone’s original script. This was the only tale I remembered from this book. But I didn’t read this version, this time – I read the faithful reprint of “The Tower Of The Elephant” that can be found in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian (Del Rey, 2003).

I actually re-read this story several years ago, when I got that Del Rey book at the library, shortly after it was published; I recall at the time I was underwhelmed by most of Howard’s early Conan yarns, not liking them nearly as much as I had when I was a kid. And with this reading…well, I sort of felt the same. “Elephant” is a cool story, sure, but there really isn’t much to it. Conan’s in depraved Zamoria, where he wants to prove his mettle as a young thief. Promptly displaying his barbarian nature, he kills a local who has the temerity to mock him in a tavern. Oh and incidentally, the tales collected here are ones in which Conan is actually stated as wearing the damn loincloth-and-sandals ensemble he wore in every single issue of the various Marvel Comics series. So Conan’s a true barbarian here with no refinements.

Conan sneaks into the titular Tower, accompanied by a famous and portly fellow thief. On the temple grounds they are attacked by trained lions, and other evils wait inside the tower. Up top resides a Ganesha-like creature which appears to be an ancient alien, one imprisoned here by the evil wizard below. Conan just sort of stands and listens to a long speech, kills the elephant-headed alien at its bidding, then watches as the evil wizard is shrunk down in celestial vengence. Sadly, this isn’t the only story in the book where Conan just stands around.

“The Hall of the Dead” (Howard, de Camp and Carter) – This is a de Camp and Carter fleshing-out of a Howard outline; the original outline can be found in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian. Conan’s still in Zamora, still thieving, and tries to loot a deserted section of the city that’s supposedly haunted. A group of soldiers are chasing him, led by a “Gunderman.” Conan kills all of them and gets into the city, in which he finds a massive slug, which I guess just lives there. Anyway, it tries to attack him, and he kills it. He then finds that the Gunderman’s still alive, and Conan talks him into looting the place with him.

The titular hall features a bunch of skeletons which, you won’t be surprised at this point to learn, come to life and attack Conan and friend. So that’s the third tale in which our hero encounters the undead. De Camp’s dialog is incredibly lame and juvenile throughout, including even a “Let’s get out of here!” courtesy the Gunderman. The story features an O. Henry-esque finale in which the priceless jewels the duo have looted either crumble to dust or become animate – and poisonous.

“The God in the Bowl” (Howard) – This one was rejected by Weird Tales when Howard submitted it sometime in the ‘30s; it was published decades later with de Camp revisions, and that edit is included in this Ace book. However, I read the original Howard version, again collected in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian. I can see why this one was rejected. It doesn’t feel like a Conan yarn at all; it’s a locked room murder mystery in which our hero once again stands around for long portions of the narrative.

Anyway Conan’s in Nemedia, having been hired by a fallen noble to loot a temple. However Conan is wrongly accused of murder; he’s caught in the act of snooping through the temple by a guard who has come across the murdered corpse of the temple owner. Conan’s accused of murder, and there follows a tedious story of various one-off characters coming along to exposit on this or that, accusing Conan of murder, when of course he’s innocent. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the supernatural is to blame, as the dead owner had recently curated an ancient artefact of Set – another element which made it into the film, as the Set logo is even described as a two-headed snake.

Another element that made it into the film is the creature itself – here it is a massive snake with the head of a man, which of course brings to mind Thulsa Doom’s transformation to a snake in Conan The Barbarian. (Thulsa Doom of course was a villain of Howard’s other character, King Kull, but then, the ’82 movie has more in common with Kull than it does Conan, even down to the titular character, as Arnold’s Conan is just as prone to brooding as Kull was.) But otherwise the only thing I found memorable about “The God in the Bowl” was Conan constantly calling his accuser “dog.” Conan The Gangsta Rapper!

“Rogues in the House” (Howard) – The REH originals continue; this one first saw print in Weird Tales, January 1934. Once again I read the faithful reprint in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian. This turned out to be my favorite Howard story in the book, even though I had no recollection of it from my first reading, three-score years ago. It also sufficiently inspired Frank Frazetta, who chose a scene from this story for his awesome cover painting – a scene that also appeared to inspire the producers of the crappy Conan The Destroyer (1984).

Conan’s in a prison near Zamora when we meet him, having been working as a thief alongside a “Gunderman” who went rogue from his ranks – a Gunderman who is dead before the story even begins, having been hanged. Likely we are to assume it is the same Gunderman who became Conan’s sort-of ally in “The Hall of the Dead,” which I guess one could see as clever pastiching on de Camp’s part. Conan’s in pure badass mode, finally; he’s visited in prison by a nobleman named Murilo who wants Conan to kill an evil priest named Nabonidus. In return Murilo will engineer Conan’s breakout.

Conan takes the job, and manages to escape prison even when the nobleman’s plans fall through, “braining” a dumb guard with a bone and making his “leisurely” escape. Conan then takes care of unfinished business: revenge on the whore who sold him out. First he guts one of her customers, then he dumps the half-nude babe into a cesspit. After this he figures it’s “time to kill” the priest. In a nice bit of characterization, while Conan is an uncivilized barbarian, he keeps his word and he pays off his debts; he feels indebted to the nobleman, even though technically Conan freed himself.

The “rogues in the house” turn out to be Conan, Murilo, and Nabonidus himself, all of whom make it into the darkened tunnels beneath the priest’s home. Nabonidus’s apelike creature-servant Thak has taken over the place, sitting above on Nabonidus’s throne in the preist’s red robes. There’s a lot of standing around and listening and watching as Murilo and Nabonidus take turns expositing on this or that (a Howard mainstay, one I always forget about until I read him again). Then they all watch as some interlopers are killed off by Thak, using Nabonidus’s hidden weapons. The cover painting comes from Conan’s brutal but brief mortal combat with Thak. This one’s good, but a bit too much of it is composed of exposition and characters just standing around.

“The Hand Of Nergal” (Howard and Carter) – Now it’s Lin Carter’s turn to flesh out an untitled outline Howard jotted down in the ‘30s. Despite its reliance on coincidence (a Carter specialty), and the fact that Conan acts a bit out of character so far as his willingness to fight the supernatural goes, I liked this one a lot more than I expected. Conan’s serving as a mercenary in a Turanian army, battling the forces of Munthassem Khan; Carter attempts to tie back to the previous story by mentioning that Conan is riding the horse Murilo gave him. The opening is the best part, with a gore-spattered Conan on a bloody battlefield of corpses. You won’t be surprised to learn that this is the portion that’s mostly by Howard; the outline he wrote can be found, again, in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian. 

Carter adds supernatural stuff – a horde of demon-bats descends on the carnage, and Conan alone has the gumption to fight them off. In his escape he finds a nubile wench named Hildico who, Carter coincidence in full effect, was tasked by her ruler to come here, to a battlefield, and find Conan. Conan recently came across a talisman of sorts, just plumb found it (Carter in effect again), and it turns out this means he’s now “the chosen one” who can stop the evil Munthassem Khan, possessor of the titular Hand of Nergal. This talisman by the way also succeed in scaring off those demon-bats, which turn out to have been sent by the Khan.

This one’s kind of similar to the previous story, in that Conan stands around in a dungeon-type setting while supernatural forces come into play, but this time those spirits do all the heavy lifting and Conan just watches it all go down. His ass is saved by Hildico, who coincidence-again-be-damned knows how to use Conan’s talisman against the Khan; despite all the fuss made about Conan being chosen and whatnot, only this serving wench-type knows that you have to throw the talisman at your victim to full activate it(!). Pretty damn dumb, but Carter’s invested in the tale, so it’s entertaining despite its dumbness.

“The City Of Skulls” (de Camp and Carter) – We end the anthology the way we started it: with another pastiche by de C and C. Believe it or not, this was my overall favorite story in the collection, and by a wide margin. I really liked it! The authors do an admirable job of capturing the vibe of a Howard original, but I liked this one better than any of the actual Howard originals in the book. It opens identically to the previous yarn, with Conan serving as a mercenary in a war party that’s in the process of being slaughtered. It’s a little over a month after the previous story (which is recapped, as if we didn’t just read the damn thing a few pages ago), and Conan’s in a party that is escorting sexy Princess Zosara into Hyrkania to marry “the Great Khan.”

I read somewhere that, in his “edits” of Howard’s original work, de Camp removed some of the more racist material. This accusation is thrown into doubt within the first few pages, where we come upon stuff like, “[Conan] drove the point of his tulwar straight into the slant-eyed, yellowish face,” not to mention our introduction to Conan’s new best bud, Juma: “a gigantic black from Kush.” Conan, Juma, and Zosara are captured and taken on the long journey to Shamballah, the City of Skulls, the capital of a hidden kingdom called Meru which is like at the bottom of a valley or something. Zosara is to be wedded to the depraved “god-king” ruler, and Conan and Juma are consigned to the galley of a ship as slaves.

Conan’s actually pretty badass here, “braining” dudes left and right, even with the chains of his manacles. The authors dole out lots of gore, from the opening massacre to Conan and Juma’s inevitable revolt on the slave galley. The novella ends in Shamballah, where the duo rescue the bound and nude Zosara from the god-king, who sits on a throne of skulls, worshipping a massive jade statue with many arms. It comes to life, trying to smash them, and Juma saves the day, tossing the god-king beneath the statue’s crushing feet. Features a goofy finale in which, a month later, the two safely deposit Zosara in the kingdom of the Khan she’s to marry, and Conan gossips to Juma that, unbeknownst to the Khan, Zosara’s already bearing him a heir – courtesy Conan, of course.

Overall I enjoyed Conan #1, with the caveat that none of the stories were particularly memorable. You know something’s up when the de Camp and Carter pastiche is the most entertaining story in the book! Writing-wise, Howard’s prose is head and shoulders above de Camp and Carter’s, but bear in mind that REH was a pulpster given to some seriously purple prose; he is in particular enamored with the word “ejaculated,” which isn’t used in the sleazy way you might think but instead as a dialog modifier. And he regularly uses thirty words where two would suffice. (Hey, just like my wife!!) He is also prone to exposition, and telling rather than showing. It appears that de Camp and Carter tried to mimic his style in their pastiches, but I’m unfamiliar with either man’s work outside of their Conan oeuvre. Regardless, their stories don’t have that weird fire of Howard’s original work.

On to Conan Of Cimmeria, which is one I do remember very well, if only for the masterful “Queen Of The Black Coast.”

The Sword Of Rhiannon (aka Sea-Kings Of Mars)

The Sword Of Rhiannon, by Leigh Brackett
No date stated (1963?)
(Original Ace edition, 1953)

First published as a “complete novel” under the title “Sea-Kings of Mars” in the June, 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories (which can be found at The Internet Archive), this Leigh Brackett planetary romance came out in paperback as The Sword Of Rhiannon in 1953, as the flipside of an Ace Double, the other side of which was Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Conqueror (aka The Hour Of The Dragon). This edition is a standalone paperback reprint. 

Unlike Brackett’s later expansions of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon Of Mars,” this is a straight-up reprint of the original ’49 pulp version, only with a new title and minus the illustrations (of which there were only a few, anyway, so no big loss). It runs to just a bit over 120 pages in this Ace edition, though with some very small, very dense print. The back cover compares Brackett to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and it isn’t mere hyperbole, as The Sword Of Rhiannon is basically Brackett’s version of Burroughs’s Barsoom novels. (And as for this new title, Brackett stated that Ace made the change, fearing that “Mars” in the title would scare off savvy sci-fi readers who knew there was no life on Mars…)

As for one thing that has been added to this Ace edition – that would be typos. This edition of The Sword Of Rhiannon is littered with typos, more than even the average Leisure Books publication. Indeed, this book has my favorite typo OF ALL TIME. Early in the original Thrilling Wonder Stories edition, there is the line “The women screamed like harpies.” Folks, in this Ace edition, that line appears on page 20, and it’s rendered as: “The women screamed like hairpies.” (Italics mine.) I kid you not! But that’s just the most egregious example. As mentioned, practically every page has a typo of some sort, so the copy editor must’ve really been hitting the sauce that day.

Anyway, this Brackett yarn doesn’t feature her recurring protagonist Eric John Stark; our hero is an archeologist named Matt Carse who is about as cipherlike as you could get. Seriously, we learn hardly a single thing about him, other than that he’s 35, an “Earthman” by birth, and has lived on Mars for 30 years. Apparently he lost his archeologist creds due to some tomb-raiding or somesuch. He’s got blond hair and the rugged good looks expected of a pulp hero; he’s also apparently damn good with a sword, though how he got to be that way is unexplained.

In fact when we meet him Carse is coming out of some tavern on Mars where he presumably took some illegal substances; he’s approached by a native thief, who claims to have found something almost mythical: the Sword of Rhiannon, the “Cursed One” who ran afoul of the old gods of Mars ages upon ages ago. Rhiannon’s tomb has been sought for untold eons, yet this random thief has stumbled upon it, and wants Carse’s help to sell off the priceless artefacts within. As ever Brackett captures a ghostlike, haunted Mars as the two venture to the desolate location of the tomb in the dead of the Martian night.

In the hidden tomb Carse finds a glowing orb of black energy; into this he’s shoved by the turncoat thief, who resents Carse’s unwillingness to give him a fair share of the ensuing profits. This orb turns out to be a sort of captured black hole, and long story short, Carse is shoved across the millennia – and comes out into a Mars of one million years ago. In Brackett’s solar system, Mars has an incalculably ancient history; even the so-called “New” cities, like the New Valkis in which Carse finds himself at story’s beginning (a location featured in “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and other Brackett yarns), are thousands upon thousands of years old.

What’s interesting about The Sword Of Rhiannon is that Brackett basically wrote about a different planet; the Mars of a million years ago is vastly different than the one Carse knows. It is an ocean-filled sort of paradise populated by beings that not only don’t exist in Carse’s time, but aren’t even remembered. Whereas New Valkis in Carse’s time was an ancient city on the outskirts of even-more-ancient Old Valkis, all of it surrounded by vast desert, “Valkis” is just Valkis here and there is ocean everywhere.

As in the incredible Stark novella “Enchantress Of Venus,” Brackett gives this ocean some cool, psychedelic touches – it’s phosphorescent, glowing white, and even has healing powers. However it burns upon initial contact. Anyway, Carse is suitably smackjawed by his trip through the ages, initially disbelieving the reality of the situation, but in true pulp fashion Brackett doesn’t belabor this too much. Within a few pages Carse is accepting of his new reality and enduring the rigors of this strange new world.

Luckily as an archeologist he’s fluent in the High Martian which is spoken here, though his accent makes others think he’s a barbarian – Brackett again paying subtle tribute to her writing hero Robert E. Howard. This different Mars has different peoples, ones Carse has never even heard of – “Halflings,” of which there are Swimmers, who are seal-human hybrids, with fine hair on their faces and bodies; the Sky Folk, who are basically like the Hawkmen of Flash Gordon; and finally the Dhuvians, aka the Serpent Men: these are hated and feared by all Martians, and they’re also the reason why Rhiannon is known as “the Cursed One,” as ages ago he taught the evil Serpent Men the science secrets of his people, Rhiannon being one of the Quiru, “hero gods who were human but superhuman.”

Brackett faithfully follows the “planetary romance” guidelines: before you know it, Carse is shackled up, alongside his new sort-of colleague, the portly thief Boghaz, who serves as the book’s comedic relief. And Brackett’s so good, the stuff with Boghaz is funny, and he isn’t the sort of comedic relief you hope gets gutted before story’s end, like for example the loser in Conan The Destroyer. Tall, brawny, blond Carse is accused of being a Khondor spy by the Jikkharans who live in this city which is part of the Sark Empire – the fact that Carse hasn’t heard of any of these places or people doesn’t much help him.

He’s conscripted into slave-duty on a Sark warship, one that’s bound to carry Ywain, daughter of the emperor, to the capital city of Sark. Ywain is one of those “bad Brackett babes” familiar from previous stories – a mega-beauty with raven hair and a malicious spirit; so evil, in fact, that a “black nimbus” seems to surround her. She wears tight black mail, showing off her incredible curves. Carse, spying her from the veritable dungeons of the rowing pit, instantly sees how cruel and vicious she is – but boy, she sure is hot. “It would be good to tame this woman,” he tells himself, a sentiment that would’ve been par for the course in the world of the pulps but which of course would trigger the overly-sensitive types of today.

Carse gets his chance when he causes a mutiny, he and Boghaz taking Ywain captive – this after Carse, as if his mind were temporarily possessed by another, has killed off the cloaked Dhuvian mentor Ywain keeps in a darkened inner room. Brackett amps the hate-lust that brims between Carse and Ywain, with Carse almost killing Ywain as well, but settling with a sock to the face that leaves her with a permanent facial scar – it pleases him that he has left his mark on her. Ywain leaves her own, later; when Carse impulsivey kisses her in “anger,” she bites his inner lip.

Another interesting difference between Brackett’s day and our own is the utter lack of sentimentalism. Onboard the war galley the Sarks keep a few Halflings, among them a pair of Swimmers and also a birdman whose wings have been broken in a typical display of Sark sadism. After the mutiny Carse and his ship of loyal followers are approached by a formation of Sky Folk; as they leave, the one on the ship with the broken wings despondently watches them fly away. As Carse and the others are busy with other stuff, the maimed birdman tosses himself into the ocean, drowning himself. If this tale had been written today, Carse no doubt would dive right in after him, pull him out, and there would follow a bunch of “Your life is worth it! You’re important!” sappiness. Instead, Carse and his fellows basically shrug and deem that the birdman’s suicide was “for the best!” 

Khondor turns out to be the country of the Sea Kings, a confederation of city-states opposed to the Sark Empire. But even here Carse can’t catch a break; the viking-like warriors of Khondor also distrust Carse, and put him through various trials. This is mostly due to Emer, the pretty, blonde, Cassandra-like sister of King Rold; Emer, who has spent so much time with the Halflings that she has sort of picked up their ESP via osmosis, instantly detects something unusual about Carse. Not only that he is from “another world,” but that he is possessed – by the Cursed One.

I’ll tell you another reason why Brackett was such a great writer: she understood the all-important pulp dictum that the bad girl is always better than the good girl. Initially I feared that Emer was going to be set up as Carse’s lady…after all, she has all the typical prerequisites, from being good-natured to blonde-haired. But she’s barely in the novel. Instead, Brackett wisely puts the focus on Ywain, with Rold’s gruff advisor even accusing Carse of being in “love” with her, due to how Carse keeps insisting that the people of Khondor not immediately put Ywain to death, like they want to.

We learn in another psychedelic-ish sequence that Carse is indeed possessed by Rhiannon, who subtly invaded Carse’s mind when Carse stepped into that black time-tunnel bubble. It was Rhiannon who guided Carse’s hand when he killed the Serpent Man on Ywain’s ship. Rhiannon, speaking through Carse, insists that he has changed his ways in the eons of his imprisonment, and wants to aid the Sea Kings in their battle against Sark, and also he wants to destroy the Dhuvians. But no one will listen to him, least of all Carse, who wants the undead Rhiannon out of his brain, posthaste. There’s some good stuff here with Emer frightened of the Rhiannon in Carse, but Ywain sort of liking it.

The finale sees the united Sea Kings about to be doomed in a battle against Sark, with Rold and his fellows taken captive. Carse pretends to be Rhiannon in the flesh, Boghaz his frightened accomplice; they steal Ywain as barter material and make off on Carse’s war galley. The men aboard are still his loyal followers, even though Khondor has sentenced him to death. More good stuff with Ywain possibly being hip to the fact that Rhiannon is really Carse – even up to admiting to “Rhiannon” that she might not’ve minded it when Carse kissed her, after all.

However, the brevity necessary of pulp sort of harms The Sword Of Rhiannon in the homestretch; Carse succeeds in getting into the Tomb of Rhiannon, finding all sorts of bizarre weapons which he hopes to use against Sark and the Dhuvians (that is, if he can figure out how to operate them!). But he is captured by the Serpent Men, who of course easily figure out that Carse is just pretending. But then Rhiannon really does assume control of Carse, and Brackett doles out the “climactic action” in like two pages, Rhiannon wiping out everyone, destroying all his weaponry (which appears to harness the powers of the sun), and basically dismantling the Sark Empire. It’s so harried that it lacks much dramatic impact, and of course it’s further harmed by the fact that our hero, Matt Carse, is sort of on mental vacation while it’s happening.

But Brackett never loses sight of the characters – the reader is as thrilled as Carse to detect that Ywain seems to have grown concerned for Carse during all this, particularly when it looked like he was about to be killed by the Dhuvians. Turns out Ywain, while she harbors no regrets for ruling her people with an iron hand, never much liked the Serpent Men, and resented her father, the emperor of Sark, for making her be so damn evil all the time. Once Sark has been defeated and the Dhuvians all killed, it’s time for Carse to go – Rhiannon has promised to show him the way. The reader is not surprised when Ywain announces her wish to go along with Carse, to his own era: the Mars she knew is now dead, and she has no desire to rule a now-powerless Sark.

Off the new couple goes to Carse’s future Mars, the desert world so familiar from Brackett’s other yarns, and in a fitting but quick finale we see that Ywain will have no problems adapting. While this is a perfectly self-contained story, I wouldn’t have minded seeing more stories with these two characters (they could’ve even run into Eric John Stark!). As usual Brackett makes you care about her characters – as mentioned, even minor characters like Boghaz, who would be annoying in most other such tales, shine with their own memorable personalities.

Brackett’s writing is as polished as ever, with that word painting she does so well; the phosphorescent sea of Mars in particular makes an impression. In fact Brackett’s writing is so good, and her world so fully realized, that it wasn’t until after I finished that I realized not much really happens in The Sword Of Rhiannon. I mean sure, the main character is thrust a million years into the past and all…but really, he’s thrown on a war galley, mistreated in various ways, and eventually bluffs his way into freedom – not once but a few times. Action stuff, as would be expected in such a tale, isn’t as constant as you might think…in fact, the cover of this Ace edition is very misleading, and likely was done for something else, as there are no bald, elf-eared characters in the entire book!

Little-known fact: This novel actually provided the inspiration for the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon.” Okay, I made that up.

People Of The Talisman and Black Amazon Of Mars

The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman, by Leigh Brackett

No date stated (November, 1971)  Ace Books

(Original Ace Double edition, 1964)
(Also published as Eric John Stark: Outlaw Of Mars, by Ballantine Books, September 1982)

As mentioned in my review of The Secret Of Sinharat, People Of The Talisman also started life in the pulps, as “Black Amazon Of Mars,” before it too was expanded in 1964 as the flipside of this Ace Double. I’ve reviewed the original novella below.

Whereas The Secret Of Sinharat mostly stayed true to its original incarnation, with only a few changes here and there – though not all of them to the story’s benefit, I’d argue – People Of The Talisman is almost a straight-up rewrite, save for the opening pages. It’s also a little longer; Sinharat came in at a mere 94 pages, whereas Talisman runs to 124.

“Black Amazon Of Mars” was the last Eric John Stark adventure Leigh Brackett published until 1974 (The Ginger Star, being the first volume of the Book Of Skaith trilogy), though it appears to occur before the 1949 Stark novella “Enchantress Of Venus” (review forthcoming), and also before the unpublished-until-2005 novella “Stark And The Star Kings,” which was written in 1973 (review also forthcoming). This is mostly because Stark is still on Mars in the story, which is where we left him at the end of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs”/The Secret Of Sinharat. He’s made his way from the deserts of the Drylands up into the snowy expanses of the Norlands. There’s no pickup from the previous story, but we’re informed that Stark has been carrying on guerrilla warfare with some of the Dryland barbarian tribes featured in the previous story, and a few times he mentions he’s been to Valkis – whereas it was made clear in Sinharat that it was his first time visiting that Martian city. 

When we meet up with Stark this time he’s in the rugged, snowy expanses of north Mars, on his way to the sequestered kingdom of Kushat along with a Martian friend named Camar. But Camar is dying, presumably from wounds in the guerrilla fighting. Camar is from Kushat, and apparently only a few people have ever left the city. Camar actually fled, having stolen the sacred Talisman of Ban Cruach, a Martian who saved Kushat around a million years ago, taking some sort of power from the Gates of Death, ie the unexplored, hellish region which looms beyond Kushat, the titular “Gates” being a pass through the black mountains outside the city. The talisman is a lens in a leather boss that Camar has hidden on his belt; Stark vows to take the talisman on to Kushat, as a favor to his dying friend.

But there’s more to the talisman than meets the eye; when Stark exploringly puts it on his forehead, he sees visions that appear to come from Ban Cruach’s actual experiences, all those millennia ago. The talisman is the fabled protector of Kushat; whatever it was that Ban Cruach found out there, the promise was that if ever Kushat was in trouble, the talisman would provide its people with the means of overcoming it. Given this, Kushat has never been conquered, and the superstitious Martians have given it wide birth. Now, without its protective talisman, the city is unprotected. 

Posthaste Stark is captured by “the riders of Mekh,” a barbarian tribe that roams the wilds outside Kushat. They take his few belongings – a recurring bit is that Stark is basically penniless everytime we meet him – but leave the cheap belt which was once Camar’s, and now rests on Stark’s waist, because it looks so worn and worthless. The barbarians take Stark to their leader, a badass warrior in black armor, who wields a black war axe and wears a black mask that appears to be inspired by samurai armor:

His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before only in very old paintings – the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings of Mars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhuman visage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, it sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.

This is the Lord Ciaran, ruler of the riders of Mekh, on his way to sack Kushat – something that’s never been attempted at this time of year, where it seems to be a gentleman’s agreement that no battles will be waged in the dead of winter. The expansion features a big gaffe of omission – sitting by Ciaran is an old pile of rags named Otar, a crazed old runaway from Kushat, and he is not introduced in the expansion as he is in the novella. Yet Stark abruptly refers to him by name. Clearly Brackett (or was it her husband Edmond Hamilton who did the ghostwriting for the expansion?) overlooked the fact that she’d edited out his intro from the novella. Not that it matters; Otar eventually disappears from both the novel and the novella.

One thing fixed up in the expansion is that here no one promptly assumes Stark has the talisman, as they do in the novella – they just demand to know if Stark knows where it is. He’s strung up on a rack and whipped, but breaks free thanks to his Tarzan-like abilities, getting the jump on some riders who think he’s passed out. He takes up a spear and lays into his captors – “He killed, and was happy.” Stark escapes on one of those lizardlike “mounts” which Brackett has yet to describe, and gradually loses the Mekh riders, ending up in Kushat.

This is another of those fallen Martian cities, though not so depraved as Valkis was in the earlier story. No one believes Stark’s story that barbarian riders are about to storm the wall that surrounds Kushat, and he also soon discovers that the rulers of Kushat are lying to their people that the Talisman of Ban Cruach is still here. A waif-like girl from the Thieves’s Quarter named Thanis argues with young soldier Lugh and company compander Lord Rogain(!) that she be given responsibility for Stark, as they plan to throw him in prison for his “lies.” Thanis takes Stark back to her apartment in the Quarter, which she shares with her brother Balin.

I mentioned in my review of The Secret Of Sinharat that some of Stark’s bad-assery had been whittled out, in the transition from novella to novel. The same thing happens here; to put it plainly, Stark gets laid in “Black Amazon Of Mars,” but he doesn’t in People Of The Talisman. This is due to the character revision Thanis experiences; in the novella she’s a sultry vixen who promptly throws herself on Stark, referring to him lovingly as “animal” afterwards, yet in the novel she is much more naïve and innocent, and has what amounts to a big brother sort of love for Stark.

The novel also features this incredibly goofy bit of coincidence in which Balin announces that he’s discovered Stark has the talisman, because not only did Balin know Camar, but he also recognized Camar’s belt!! We get a lot of insight into Kushat and the myth of Ban Cruach, perhaps a bit too much. There’s a massive statue of him in the city square and Lugh lies to Stark that the talisman is there. Stark’s story of impending invasion is only half-heartedly listened to, so soldiers man the wall. The siege of course happens a few days later, with Ciaran in his black armor marshalling his forces. Stark is crazed with vengeance, and gets in a brief swordfight with Ciaran.

Here comes the big shock – ruined of course by the title of the original novella – Ciaran is actually a she. Stark knocks off that ancient Martian helmet and is surprised when he finds himself looking into the face of a beautiful woman with black hair (she had “red-gold” hair in the novella, by the way). There’s a moment where it looks like her barbarians will abandon her, having discovered they’ve been following a woman, but Ciaran leaps into the fray and thus becomes a “goddess” to them. Stark meanwhile bands together some Kushatians, knowing the city is doomed, and leads them on a long escape through the tunnels beneath Kushat – this novel is very heavy on the atmospherics, lacking much of the action of the source novella.

Determined to help save Kushat, and also get his vengeance on Ciaran, woman or not, Stark leads his group into the Gates of Death, to find whatever power Ban Cruach found there. He ends up cutting off a pursuing Ciaran and capturing her, and succeeds in keeping his group of survivors from killing her – they can use her to barter for their safe passage. Meanwhile they explore the ghostly ruins in the Gates of Death. They are soon confronted by aliens who look much like the one depicted on the cover, and these aliens predate the human-stock “Martians” who now run the planet.

The talisman allows conversation with these stalking aliens, and Stark detects that there is something untrustworthy about them, despite their apparent kindness. They vow to help Kushat, as Ban Cruach made the same promise to them, so long ago – these aliens want to live alone in their own kingdowm, and Kushat was like a barrier between them and the rest of Mars. In a stupid moment they happily hand over all their weapons to the band of survivors, and off they rush to reclaim Kushat from the riders of Mekh – it’s all very rushed and sort of goofy.

But it turns out to be a “game;” the aliens have tricked the Kushatians, and the lights in the eerie city go out so the aliens can now hunt the survivors for sport. The talisman is revealed to be worthless, and one of the aliens smashes it. Eventually Stark runs into Ciaran, and the aliens have contrived it so these two could fight to the death; instead, they take up their swords, stand back to back, and commence to hacking and slashing. They escape, along with Thanis and Balin and a few other survivors, and Ciaran promptly vows to leave Kushat, taking her barbarians with her…as long as Stark helps her fight to reclaim her birth kingdom of Narissa; Ciaran, daughter of the now-dead king, was ridiculed by her people for being a girl who wanted to rule, but now she will return to Narissa and claim it for her own.

And here People Of The Talisman comes to its unsatisfying, rushed end. Having read the novella first, it occurred to me as I read this expansion that what appears to have happened was that Brackett, for whatever reason, toned down the pulpy fun of the source material and attempted to make it all more “straight” and “serious.” Gone is the fast-moving action of the novella, replaced with lots of scene-setting and needless tours of Kushat. It’s my understanding that Brackett’s sci-fi gradually lost this pulpish vibe as the ‘50s went into the ‘60s, so maybe these expansions were just reflections of that.

As with The Secret Of Sinharat, I read the 1971 reprint shown above. Here is the cover of the original 1964 paperback; it’s interesting that ’71 reprint cover artist Enrique “Enrich” Torres basically just redrew it, same as he did for his Sinharat cover:

On to the original pulp version – as with “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” I found “Black Amazon of Mars” to be vastly superior to the expansion. “Black Amazon Of Mars” appeared in the March 1951 issue of Planet Stories, and you can find a scan of it for free download at The Internet Archive. Not only does the novella move faster – which would be a given as it’s shorter than the expansion – but the character motivations and climax are all superior, and Stark comes off as a stronger character. It’s also in even more of a Robert E. Howard mold than “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs,” filled with warriors in armor battling it out with swords and axes. Here’s the cover:

As with my rundown of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs,” I’ll mostly go over differences here, so spoilers will run rampant. The novella starts off basically identical to People Of The Talisman, up to the point where Stark arrives in Kushat. As mentioned above, Stark gets lucky with Thanis, who is much more sultry here, less the innocent waif. There’s also none of the business of Balin having known Camar and recognizing Camar’s belt. But the novella does suffer from a strange tendency of various characters abruptly assuming, apropos of nothing, that Stark has the talisman of Ban Cruach and is hiding it from them.

But the main thrust of the story proceeds the same; Stark warns of the approaching hordes of Ciaran, and his story is doubted. He gets involved in the fighting during the eventual siege, and unmasks Ciaran as in the novel, but here she has red hair. Also in the novella it’s revealed that Ciaran is really “Ciara,” something not addressed in the novel. Despite her unmasking Ciara still leads her riders to a conquest of Kushat. In panic Balin flees through the Gates of Death, to find whatever power Ban Cruach left there. Alerted to this by a shrieking Thanis, Stark goes off in pursuit – and he himself is chased by Ciara and several of her barbarians.

The Gates of Death are guarded by a mummified figure in armor, holding a massive sword: Ban Cruach himself. Rushing past this figure, Stark encounters “the ice-folk,” the faceless, looming creatures of ice who live in this hellish, frozen area. They scare off Ciara’s men, and she proceeds alone after Stark. The duo fight the creatures but are captured, taken to an ice palace. Speaking telepathically, the ice-folk reveal that they were the original rulers of Mars, but Ban Cruach fought them back a million years ago, segregating them in this frozen section of the north – when they ruled Mars, the entire planet was covered with their ice castles, but Ban Cruach defeated them and gave the world to the current human-like Martians.

Ban Cruach did this, somehow, with his sword, the radioactive properties of which still in some mysterious way prevent the ice-folk from leaving their ghetto. They force Stark to get the sword, figure out how it works, and use it to free them so they can once again take control of Mars. This is the exact opposite of the goal of the aliens in People Of The Talisman. Stark refuses until the ice-folk threaten to freeze Ciara and Balin to death. Stark complies, and puts on the talisman, still hidden in his belt. With it he is granted the knowledge of how to use the sword.

The finale is a weird burst of near-psychedelic action as Stark waves the magical sword around, melting ice-folk and structures alike. The sword has a sort of microwave beam that wipes out anything in its path, and also protects Stark from the black light beams the ice-folk shoot at him. He also uses it to melt the ice that has nearly killed Ciara and Balin, and the three escape after Stark destroys the entire palace. The finale sees them emerging back into normal Mars, and here, unlike the clunky finale of the novel, Ciara does not vow to leave Kushat – indeed, it’s specified that she will remain there as ruler. There’s none of the business of her seeking to reclaim the throne of her father, either. She does though extend the same sort of offer to Stark – she asks him to stay with her, and Stark figures he will, at least for a while.

This was the last Eric John Stark story Brackett published until 1974, with The Ginger Star, being the first volume of the Book of Skaith trilogy – that is, if you aren’t counting the expanded versions of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon Of Mars” from 1964. However it would appear that Brackett, like her inspiration Robert E. Howard, didn’t write her Stark stories in chronological order, so that the second-published Stark yarn, “Enchantress Of Venus” (Planet Stories, Fall 1949), actually would follow after “Black Amazon Of Mars,” which was published two years later. I’ll be reading that one next, as well as the other stories collected in the 2008 Baen eBook Stark And The Star Kings And Other Stories.

The Secret Of Sinharat and Queen Of The Martian Catacombs

The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman, by Leigh Brackett

No date stated (November, 1971)  Ace Books

(Original Ace Double edition, 1964)
(Also published as Eric John Stark: Outlaw Of Mars, by Ballantine Books, September 1982)

Where the hell has Leigh Brackett been all my life?? I grew up reading the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard, but never really got into Edgar Rice Burroughs, though I was aware of his Martian tales and wanted to read them. (Something I still intend to do someday.) 

But I knew a sort of subgenre of “sword and planets” (aka “planetary romances”) existed which sort of took the sword and sorcery of Howard and mixed it with the alien worlds of Burroughs; after a recent hardboiled pulp binge abruptly petered out with no warning, I found myself suddenly interested in this subgenre, discovering a whole slew of books and series that were new to me.

Leigh Brackett’s material jumped out at me more than any other, and I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without reading her. Brackett still has a sizeable following, with info about her all over the web as well as many reviews of her various novels and scripts, so I’ll keep the preamble short. She may be new to me but I’m sure many of you have known about her for years. Sadly it would appear she is most remembered these days either for her Hollywood scripts or for the fact that she wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back, so her name is prominently displayed on posters for that film. She got her start in sci-fi, though, specifically for the pulps, and she was herself a big fan of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Her writing I feel comes very close to REH – certainly more close than any of the Conan pastiche authors I’ve ever read. One gets the impression that L. Sprauge de Camp should’ve hired Brackett instead of Lin Carter when he began anthologizing the Conan books.

Brackett wrote a variety of pulp sci-fi, but her main series character was Earthman Eric John Stark, who is basically a combo of Tarzan and Conan – a big, brawny dude who was raised in the wilds of Mercury, where he was known by the natives as N’Chaka. Now Stark serves as a mercenary around the solar system, violently sworn to protecting the rights of his fellow “barbarians.” The Stark stories are very much in a “Conan the Barbarian of Mars” sort of vein, ie as if Conan had starred in those Burroughsian Martian tales. Brackett’s Mars (and other planets in the solar system) are basically Howard’s Hyperborea, with only occasional mentions of laser pistols or space ships (or even cigarettes!). Otherwise they are very much in the sword and sorcery realm, with combat handled mostly with bladed weaponry, warriors in chain mail, and people speaking in the formal, almost stilted tones of Howard’s Conan work.

Stark appeared in three pulp novellas: “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” from 1949 (reviewed below); “Enchantress of Venus,” also from 1949; and “Black Amazon of Mars,” from 1951. There was also a novella titled “Stark and the Star Kings,” which Brackett wrote with her husband Edmond Hamilton in 1973; it wasn’t published until 2005, though was originally slated to appear in Harlan Ellison’s never-published Last Dangerous Visions in the mid ‘70s (it is mistakenly copyrighted 1949 in the Baen eBook Stark And The Star Kings And Other Stories; I will be reading/reviewing it soon). In 1964 Brackett expanded two of the Stark novellas into the paperback I’m reviewing: “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” became The Secret Of Sinharat, and “Black Amazon of Mars” became People Of The Talisman, which is the flipside of this Ace Double. “Enchantress Of Venus” was never expanded, but was included in the 1977 anthology The Best of Leigh Brackett; it apparently takes place after the other two Stark novellas Brackett published, but before “Stark and the Star Kings.” Stark would later appear in a trilogy Brackett published in the mid-‘70s (The Book Of Skaith).

Folks with a lot more background on the subject than I claim that Brackett’s husband Edmond Hamilton actually expanded these two novellas in 1964. Having read both the originals and the expansions, I myself am undecided on this. I tend to think this myth is untrue, mainly due to the foreward Brackett and Hamilton wrote for “Stark and the Star Kings,” presumably for Ellison’s anthology, but included with the 2005 publication of the novella. In this foreward, the authors claim that “Stark and the Star Kings” was their first and only collaboration; during the writing of it they found that their styles did not jibe. My argument is that, if Hamilton had done the expansion on these two novellas, why wouldn’t they have mentioned it in the “Stark and the Star Kings” foreward, which was written several years after the Ace Double was published?

Anyway, all that is moot, and is likely a mystery that will never be solved anyway. What matters is the work itself, and folks, it’s pretty damn cool. I mean, I’m 42 now, but reading Brackett’s work made me feel like I was 12 again. Who cares that science has buzzkilled the possibility of her inhabited solar system? This to me is pure sci-fi as it should be, not bogged down with technical jargon or attempts at “realism.” It’s just straight-up fun, featuring a grim but likable protagonist and his colorful adventures on various planets. If you are looking for escapist sci-fantasy that is written with incredible polish, look no further.

Speaking of colorful, let’s get to Eric John Stark himself. His history is only sprinkled here and there throughout The Secret Of Sinharat; interestingly, Brackett doesn’t add anything more to what she’d already hinted at about Stark’s history in the original 1949 novella. Raised by “half human aborigines” in the wilds of Mercury, Stark’s skin was burned so black by the relentless sun that it is almost as black as his hair (dude, it’s called sunscreen!!). This black skin contrasts eerily with his light eyes. Otherwise he is a total Conan/Tarzan type – tall, brawny, but lean, able to move faster than normal men and given to red rages of violence. Sadly, some of this violence is toned down in the 1964 expansion, most notably in the glutting of Stark’s vengeance in one central part of the story; in the original pulp novella, Stark strangles an enemy, but in the ’64 expansion someone takes the kill from him. But more of that anon.

Brackett wastes no time on world-building or scene-setting; another wonderful element of vintage pulp sci-fi, unlike the reams of exposition you’ll encounter in the genre today. The cover painting (on this edition above and the original ’64 edition, below) captures it nicely; Stark, riding a lizardlike beast across the desert wastes of Mars, is vainly trying to escape an Earth Police Control squad. But one of them calls out for “N’Chaka,” which was Stark’s native Mercurian name, and one known only to a few. It is Simon Ashton, of the EPC, Stark’s foster father – apparently Stark’s tribe was killed when he was a child, and Ashton found the boy in a cage and raised him. There is absolutely no maudlin glurge here; the two have not seen one another in sixteen years, and Ashton conscribes Stark’s service in exchange for tossing out Stark’s imprisonment sentence – Stark’s up for life on the prisons of the moon for various illegal activities.

The expansion features one bit of explanation I appreciated; I read the original pulp novella first, and had a hard time understanding what these various “aliens” looked like; they all seemed to be humans. The ’64 expansion explains why this is: “Earth’s sister worlds…[populated by] descendants of some parent human stock that long ago had seeded the whole System.” In Brackett’s solar system, all the planets are habitable, and all apparently have oxygen and native life, as well as human inhabitants, though there are various differences – usually in body size, eye color, and the like. So it would appear there’s no “hatching from eggs” as in the Barsoom novels of Burroughs.

Despite this “parent human stock” which seeded the planets, Stark is still often referred to as “the Earthman,” which again gives the book a Burroughsian (or Flash Gordon) feel – that is, when he isn’t being called a “barbarian” or “wild man” or even “animal.” As mentioned he is drawn to barbarian causes, and was already on his way to ancient Martian city of Valkis to serve as a mercenary for barbarian tribe leader Delgaun. Word has it that all the various tribes are gathering for a war on the “Drylands” of Mars. Simon Ashton says that there may be more to it than that, and the EPC is worried, particularly over rumors of the ancient Ramas cult – basically the ancient Egypt of Brackett’s Mars.

Stark takes the mission, not only so as to get rid of his prison sentence but also out of respect to his father foster – and also so as to prevent the shedding of “barbarian blood” in whatever vain pursuit Delgaun and his colleague, fellow barbarian leader Kynon, have in mind. This brings us to the city of Valkis, which is now a “beautiful corpse” of the glorious city that once was – again, the parallels to ancient Egypt are hard to miss. Stark meets Delgaun, who is “lean and catlike, after the fashion of his race,” and has yellow eyes like “hot gold.” He meets the other mercenaries called in for the war, among them Luhar of Venus, who sold Stark out on a previous job; the two men are determined to kill one another.

Soon fellow barbarian leader Kynon makes his appearance; riding in from the desert amid great pomp, Kynon is younger and brawnier than Stark expected. His is filled with the wonder of the ancient art of the Ramas, which he claims to have rediscovered after many years searching in the endless desert; this art is displayed for the agog masses. The Ramas were known for transferring minds from one body to another, thus granting themselves immortality, their minds living on and on in an endless tide of young bodies. Kynon puts on a show, with an old man and a young boy, using a glowing scepter to transfer the mind from the former into the latter. The barbarian crowd is duly impressed, but Stark sees the con, and calls Kynon on it later. Kynon admits to the deceit, but claims it is all for the good of the rabble, something for the various tribes to gather together under.

With Kynon is a hotstuff babe with red hair named Berild; she seems intrigued by Stark’s impertinence. Serving Berild is the equally pretty – but more young and naïve-seeming – Fianna. Stark notices a strange struggle going on between Delgaun, Berild, and Fianna, but takes care of more pressing issues when he’s ordered that night to go pull a fellow mercenary, Freka, out of a Shanga den on the outskirts of Valkis. One of Brackett’s more novel creations, Shanga is an illegal drug, known also as “the going back.” People sit under quartz lights and regress back to various stages of bestialism, with their faces changing accordingly – the real hardcore users changing almost entirely in form. Interestingly, the original ’49 edition contains a line that was edited out of the ’64 expansion: “[Shanga] was supposed to have been stamped out when the Lady Fand’s dark Shanga ring had been destroyed.” This is a reference to Brackett’s 1948 novella “The Beast-Jewel of Mars,” which was included in the early Brackett anthology The Coming Of The Terrans (Ace Books, 1967).

Fianna has warned Stark that this is going to be a trap, and it is – there follows a cool, Island Of Lost Souls-like scene where Stark is attacked by several bestial-faced Shanga users. Luhar is also there, with a knife ready for Stark; the entire thing has been an assassination attempt, courtesy Luhar and Delgaun, the latter presumably wanting to take out Stark due to his jealousy over how Berild’s been checking out “the wild man.” Stark acquits himself well in the fight, though there’s no Conan-esque moment, as I’d hoped, where he starts to hack and slash. He also doesn’t kill Luhar – who promptly begins plotting, almost in the open, with Freka. Brackett appears to imply that Luhar and Freka are an item, something which is slightly more apparent in this expansion than in the original novella.

The midpoint sees the two hatch their revenge; as the barbarian troop is making its way across the vast desert to Sinharat, ancient “island city” of the Ramas which Kynon has taken as his own base of operations, a sand storm strikes. Freka and Luhar manage to knock Stark from his mount in the vicious pounding waves of sand and leave him for dead. However, Berild is stranded with him, and there follows a harrowing trek across the red wastes of the desert. The two have only one skin of “stinking water,” and they struggle inhumanly as they march for days and days – Sinharat is a seven-day journey, and they don’t have nearly enough water to survive the walk. It becomes even more grueling when the enter “the Belly of Stones,” which is like the Saharra of Mars.

Days later, passed out from dehydration and the heat, Stark wakes to find Berild walking around an ancient well, and it looks as if she is remembering something. After much digging she points out a hidden, ancient well. Two days pass, during which the two apparently have lots of off-page interspecies sex – something Stark practically confirms to Fianna later on. When they arrive in Sinharat, ancient fallen city of the Ramas built on a mountain of coral, no one believes that they were able to survive the trek. Stark makes for Luhar, to sate his vengeance, but Berild denies him this, courtesy a dagger she’s hidden in her dress. I found this unsatisfactory. Berild argues with a raging Delgaun that Luhar and Freka’s treachery almost “ended” her, a strangely-chosen word which she stresses strongly, much to Stark’s suspicion. 

Sinharat is more captured here than in the novella. Millennia ago it was surrounded by an ocean, but now it’s just desert, and when the wind blows through the honeycombs of coral beneath it, strange cries fill the air, freaking out the superstitious barbarians (and Stark himself). The temples and palaces are fallen down, some roofless, with ancient statues all over the place – again, pretty much ancient Egypt. This part is a bit padded, compared to the original version, more so focused on Stark figuring out the truth about Berild. There is a nice part though where he’s attacked one night by Freka, hopped up again on Shanga and in pure beast mode. Stark deals with him with his hands, for which he’s arrested – Delgaun has demanded absolutely no fighting or killing, and Stark has increasingly made himself a nuissance.

The finale is almost like Zardoz – Stark has already figured out that Berild is more than she seems, something Fianna confirms. Skip this paragraph and the next if you don’t want to know. But Fianna reveals that she, Berild, and Delgaun are all Ramas, impossibly ancient, only in new bodies. Berild, tired of her ancient consort Delgaun, secretly plots for power; she is the one who duped Kynon into assembling the barbarian rabble, and she will replace Delgaun with someone else who can rule beside her into eternity – she offers this to Stark, but instead he arms himself with a sword and goes to deliver death. This is where the Zardoz vibe occurred to me.

Brackett isn’t much for gore or overdone violence; when people are hit by swords they just fall down. So in (what little) of her work I’ve read, there’s none of the hacking and slashing Howard did so well. And truth be told, the climax of The Secret Of Sinharat is a bit harried, at least to me – Berild is dispensed with almost casually by Kynon, who has been fatally stabbed by her…and then he goes to the ramparts and informs the throngs that it’s all been a lie, while Stark just stands there. In the end Fianna decides not to smash the globes of mind-transference, saying that she might change her mind and want a new body, after all. She invites Stark back in “thirty years” if he changes his mind and wants to be immortal with her! Stark says no thanks. The end.

Shown above is the cover of the edition I read – this reprint features no publication info, other than the original copyright date of 1964. It does however carry the inscription “cover by Enrich.” This refers to artist Enrique “Enrich” Torres, and according to a listing of Ace Double publication dates, this The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman reprint is from November, 1971. I actually prefer this cover to the original 1964 edition (which itself is nice), mostly because I think it more faithfully captures the vibe of the novel – and also I enjoy Enrich’s sub-Frazetta/Vallejo art. But anyway, here is the cover of that 1964 edition:

Just for the sake of completeness, here’s the cover for the 1982 Ballantine reprint of The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman, which was retitled Eric John Stark: Outlaw Of Mars. It retains the Ace text, though it’s not a flipover as that earlier Double was; it is however missing the “cast of characters” which was provided for Sinharat in the Ace edition. This is my least favorite cover of them all:

Now, on to the original pulp edition, which appeared as “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” in the Summer, 1949 issue of Planet Stories. You can find this novella at The Internet Archive for free download; be sure to select the PDF option, as it’s a scan of the original issue, complete with illustration and breathless editorial blurb. All I can say is, the original version is better – like, much better. It’s leaner and more brutal at times, and features a bit more action. It also, unsurprisingly, moves a lot more quickly than the expansion.  Here is the cover:

I’m mostly going to go over the differences here, so spoilers will be heavy – if you want to avoid all this, just skip the next couple paragraphs. The novella is mostly the same as the expansion, for the first half, at least. Only a few changes here and there, as mentioned above. But once Stark and Berild are lost in the Belly of Stones, the novella is much different. Here there is none of Stark spying on Berild as she seeks out the ancient well; she doesn’t bother to hide the fact that she’s apparently recalling her own ancient memory to remember where it is. And also, after their few days of humpin’ and bumpin’ here in the oasis by the well, Stark in the novella promptly accuses Berild of being a Rama – in the expansion this is drawn out much longer. Berild fiercely denies the accusation, even up to the point of threatening Stark’s life.

Once the two get to Sinharat, the novella differs even more greatly. Here occurs the vengeance-glutting I mentioned above, which Brackett denied Stark in the ’64 version; as soon as he sees Luhar, Stark strangles him to death. For this he’s tossed into a dungeon, chained, and it is Freka who wields an axe, waiting for him to waken. Hence the bit from the expansion, with Stark fighting a Shanga-drugged Freka, doesn’t happen here. Fianna appears, as in the novella, and guns down Freka, though her gun apparently shoots flame or something – the expansion makes it seem like a regular gun, but here it’s more of your typical pulp sci-fi raygun deal, which I think is cooler. After this Fianna explains the truth of it all – that she, Berild, and Kynon are all really Ramas. In the expansion, Brackett made Delgaun the Rama, and Kynon the dupe; it’s the other way around in the original.

The climax is much imrpoved in the novella, and one wonders why it was even changed for the expanded version. Here Berild reveals to Stark that she wants him to rule beside her, in Kynon’s body – and Stark accepts. There follows a cool scene in which the “Sending-On of Minds” of the ancient Ramas is employed, and Stark’s mind is placed in another body; he can barely stand to look at his old body, filled with barbarian dread at the sorcery. Turns out though it’s just a con – he declares to the assembled throngs that Berild has tricked them and that he is not really Kynon and etc. This is so much better than in the expansion, where a dying Kynon exposited all this. Now chaos breaks out, and in it Delgaun kills Berild off-page, then comes after Stark (still in Kynon’s body), and fatally stabs him before Stark kills him. The novella ends with Fianna getting Stark’s mind out of Kynon’s body just in time, returning it to his own. She also smashes the globes of mind transference, unlike in the expansion, and tells Stark she needs time to think about her new life. The end. 

End spoilers. Folks, the novella is super cool and I’d recommend it in a hot second over The Secret Of Sinharat. If you’re at all interested in checking out Brackett, I’d recommend going to the link above and downloading the PDF of “Queen of the Martian Catacombs.” It’s a ton of fun, and when I read it I couldn’t wait to read more of Brackett’s work. I’ll be doing a review of People Of The Talisman and its original version, “Black Amazon Of Mars,” next.