Three Science Fiction Novellas by Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett wrote science fiction like a knockout punch: fast, hard, and unforgettable. This collection gathers three of her most electrifying planetary adventures, each one a fever dream of alien worlds and desperate stakes. In "Enchantress of Venus," a man descends into the burning seas of Venus to confront a sorceress who commands powers beyond human understanding, finding something worse than death in her realm of drowned cities. "Shannach, the Last" drops a lone figure into the lightless caverns of Mercury, where albaster thought-rulers hold dominion over a world of eternal night and alien horror. And "The Vanishing Venusians" follows the last survivors of a dying race across the endless acidic seas of Venus, fighting toward a homeland that may already be gone. These are pulp adventure stories at their finest: vivid, propulsive, and strangely haunting. Brackett was one of the few women writing in the Golden Age, and her Venus is a place of strange beauty and genuine menace. For anyone who wants to understand where modern space fantasy came from, start here.