{"id":4744,"date":"2015-12-01T10:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T15:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/?p=4744"},"modified":"2025-09-12T08:42:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:42:33","slug":"star-wars-forgotten-pulp-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2015\/12\/01\/star-wars-forgotten-pulp-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars’ forgotten pulp connection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Leigh
Leigh Brackett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Star Wars series returns to the silver screens just a couple of weeks from now with Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens<\/a><\/em>, and with it a nearly 90-year-old branch of science fiction that originated in the pulp magazines: the space opera.<\/p>\n

Merriam-Webster defines space opera as “a futuristic melodramatic fantasy involving space travelers and extraterrestrial beings.” Early, or proto, science fiction and fantasy naturally included beings on worlds other than our Earth. In the 1600s, Cyrano de Bergerac<\/strong> wrote about rocketing to another world — our Moon in this case — in The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon<\/em>. There were similar stories over the next 250-odd years, with Earthlings exploring inhabited worlds among the stars.<\/p>\n

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs<\/strong> took readers of All-Story<\/em> to Mars, called Barsoom by its many, varied inhabitants, in “Under the Moons of Mars.” It was one of many planetary romances (using romance in the literary sense to mean a heroic adventure in a faraway location) appearing in the early pulp magazines.<\/p>\n

Mixing science and technology with planetary romance, E.E. “Doc” Smith<\/strong> cast the mold of the space opera with “The Skylark of Space,” which was eventually serialized in Amazing Stories<\/em> (August through October 1928). Smith’s tale included all of the elements you’d expect in a space opera: heroes, villains, a stolen technology, a kidnapping, a chase across the galaxy, and a war between empires on a distant planet.<\/p>\n

Before long, the space opera was a staple of the science fiction pulps. Smith’s Skylark series continued with two more serials in the pulps. Other pulp fictioneers contributing to the space opera field included Isaac Asimov<\/strong>, Jack Williamson<\/strong>, A.E. Van Vogt<\/strong>, C.L. Moore<\/strong>, Edmond Hamilton<\/strong>, and Leigh Brackett<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And though the pulp era ended in the 1950s, space opera lived on, though maybe not as a major part of sf. That is, until 1977 and Star Wars<\/em> (later retitled Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"Luke<\/a>
Luke Skywalker hangs injured from the ceiling of the Wampa’s ice cave in “The Empire Strikes Back.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the unanticipated success of Star Wars<\/em>, director George Lucas<\/strong> was under pressure to get a sequel underway. Looking for help, Lucas turned to a screenwriter eminently qualified for the job: Leigh Brackett — the same Leigh Brackett from the earlier pulps.<\/p>\n

In the 1976 essay, “Story-teller of Many Worlds,” Edmond Hamilton says of his wife:<\/p>\n

(Leigh Brackett) was once, a good many years ago, a sunburned, muscular, small girl roaming the California beach in front of her grandfather’s old house and playing at being a pirate. From what her family told me, I believe she was a hardy, adventurous little tomboy. But then something happened that wafted her away to realms more fascinating than the shores of Santa Monica Bay and imagined piracy.<\/p>\n

The something was a chance gift to her of a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Gods of Mars<\/span>. In that classic of wild adventure on a haunted, dying Mars, Leigh found a basis on which to build new and vaster dreams. The book was an inspiration from which, in later years, she slowly built up her own colorful Mars, the planet of the wicked Low-Canal cities and desert tribesmen and lost secrets, the world with an ancient history full of magic and mystery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brackett — the 100th anniversary of her birth is Monday, Dec. 7, by the way — began her writing career with the publication of “Martian Quest” in Astounding Science Fiction<\/em> (February 1940). Soon after, she also was regularly appearing in Super Science Stories<\/em>, Thrilling Wonder Stories<\/em>, and more importantly Planet Stories<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"PlanetPlanet Stories<\/em> “provided a steady market for the kind of stories I liked best to write. In short, I owe them much. … Planet<\/em>, unashamedly, published ‘space opera,’ ” Brackett wrote in the introduction to her anthology, The Best of Planet Stories #1<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Along the way, she earned the moniker of “Queen of Space Opera.” But her writing wasn’t limited to space opera, or sf for that matter.<\/p>\n

Her first published novel, No Good From a Corpse<\/em> (1944), was a hardboiled tale featuring detective Ed Clive<\/strong>. In Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories<\/em>, Bill Pronzini<\/strong> writes that No Good From a Corpse<\/em> is “so Chandleresque in style and approach it might have been written by (Raymond<\/strong>) Chandler<\/strong> himself.”<\/p>\n

(In addition to the sf pulps, Brackett’s pulp market grew to include Flynn’s Detective Fiction<\/em>, Mammoth Detective<\/em>, and Thrilling Detective<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

No Good From a Corpse<\/em> opened a new door for Brackett. The novel — in particular its dialog — so impressed film director Howard Hawks<\/strong> that he contracted Brackett to collaborate with William Faulkner<\/strong> (and Jules Furthman<\/strong>) on the screenplay of Chandler’s The Big Sleep<\/em>. The movie was released in 1946, and in 1997 was added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From there, she went on to write 17 film or TV screenplays, including four more for Hawks (the John Wayne<\/strong> features Rio Bravo<\/em>, Hatari!<\/em>, El Dorado<\/em>, and Rio Lobo<\/em>) and another Chandler adaptation, The Long Goodbye<\/em>, for director Robert Altman<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"StarIn 1977 while Star Wars<\/em> was still dominating at the box office, Lucas sought out Brackett, Laura Berger<\/strong> at Women and Hollywood<\/a> says, based on her pulp background, not knowing about her screenwriting credentials. “His interest in bringing her into the Star Wars universe was based solely on her work in pulp sci-fi,” Berger writes.<\/p>\n

In December of that year, Lucas wrote out by hand a 19-page story treatment<\/a> for the sequel. Brackett worked from that treatment, fleshing it out into a 128-page script<\/a>. In both the treatment and the draft script you can see a framework of locations, characters, and ideas that ended up in what is arguably the best of the Star Wars movies.<\/p>\n

She turned in the first draft for what would become Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back<\/em> in February 1978. Less than a month later, on March 18, Brackett was dead from lung cancer at age 62. Lucas tapped Lawrence Kasdan<\/strong>, who also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>, to rewrite the script. The final, fifth version is what appeared on screen in 1980.<\/p>\n

“Space opera” was coined by Wilson “Bob” Tucker<\/strong> in a 1941 fanzine article as a mocking term for “the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn,” derived from “horse opera” used to describe hackneyed Westerns. But it has since shed that negative connotation. Much of that credit goes to the popularity of the Star Wars series, which included an often overlooked contribution by pulp magazines’ Queen of Space Opera, Leigh Brackett.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Star Wars series returns to the silver screens just a couple of weeks from now with Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, and with it a nearly 90-year-old branch of science fiction that originated in the pulp magazines: the space opera. Merriam-Webster defines space opera as “a futuristic melodramatic fantasy involving space travelers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"At Yellowed Perils, Star Wars' forgotten pulp connection: Leigh Brackett. #pulpmags #sf #starwars","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[6,9,40,11,12],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-4744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies-tv-radio","category-people","category-pulp-history","category-pulps","category-pulpsters"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/files\/2015\/12\/empire-strikes-back-lrg.jpg?fit=1200%2C512&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-1ew","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4744"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6586,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744\/revisions\/6586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4744"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=4744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}