Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett --[a.k.a.] "The Queen of Space Opera" -- was an American writer, particularly of Science Fiction. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on such films as The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973), Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), etc. Alternate Names: George Sanders.

A noted science-fiction/fantasy author who was prolific in SF and other pulps in the 1940s; a mentor and sometime collaborator of Ray Bradbury. Brackett was first published in her mid-twenties. Her first published science fiction story was "Martian Quest", which appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction Magazine -- edited by John W. Campbell Jr.. At age 31, she married with Edmond Hamilton in San Gabriel, California, and moved with him to Kinsman, Ohio. Because her first name was not obviously feminine, her fans thought that she was a man in the early 1940s... Died of cancer after writing the first version of the script of Star Wars: Episódio V - O Império Contra-Ataca (1980). Because it was an unfinished script, George Lucas revised her draft and engaged Lawrence Kasdan to finish the screenplay. Howard Hawks thought Leigh Brackett was a good writer because according to him she wrote "like a man". The character "Sheriff Leigh Brackett" in John Carpenter's successful independent horror film Halloween - A Noite do Terror (1978) was named after her.

Often referred to as the Queen of Space Opera, Brackett also wrote planetary romance. Almost all of her planetary romances take place within a common invented universe, the Leigh Brackett Solar System, which contains richly detailed fictional versions of the consensus Mars and Venus of science fiction in the 1930s–1950s. Mars thus appears as a marginally habitable desert world, populated by ancient, decadent, and mostly humanoid races; Venus as a primitive, wet jungle planet, occupied by vigorous, primitive tribes and reptilian monsters. Brackett's Skaith combines elements of Brackett's other worlds with fantasy elements. Though the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs is apparent in Brackett's Mars stories, the differences between their versions of Mars are great. Brackett's Mars is set firmly in a world of interplanetary commerce and competition, and one of the most prominent themes of Brackett's stories is the clash of planetary civilizations; the stories both illustrate and criticize the effects of colonialism on civilizations which are either older or younger than those of the colonizers, and thus they have relevance to this day. Burroughs' heroes set out to remake entire worlds according to their own codes; Brackett's heroes (often antiheroes) are at the mercy of trends and movements far bigger than they are.

[Autora laureada com o Prêmio Hugo para Melhor Apresentação Dramática]:
1981 Hugo Award Winner -- Dramatic Presentation: The Empire Strikes Back written by Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan, directed by Irvin Kershner (20th Century Fox).

[Indicações / Nominated]: Writers Guild of America (USA) -- 1981 WGA Award (Screen) / Melhor Comédia Adaptada: [Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium: Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) [Shared with Lawrence Kasdan].

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA -- 1981 Saturn Award -- Best Writing -- Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) [Shared with Lawrence Kasdan].