Leigh Brackett caught my eye as the screenwriter adapting Chandler of course) fro Robert Altman's excellent version of The Long Goodbye. Though it's always hard to really see the screenplay through Altman's direction, all his movies seem like his movies first, regardless of source. In any event, that together with the kinda art deco cover here caused me to pick this one up. Turns out its that oh-so-antiquated sci-fi genre that's really basically fantasy in space. Following Burroughs (and still a few years before the mars probes would end the hope embodied here) this is full-on martian swords and sorcery. Economically written, reasonably intriguing (and fantasy pre-tolkein, so no orcs in sight) but still really of a middling pulp variety. Even her female characterizations are disappointedly of their times. (But come to think of it she ruined one of the more interesting female character twists in her other screen-Chandler adaptation, of The Big Sleep, working with Faulkner). Ah well.