Space Opera Noir from the Master!

Half Tarzan. Half Bogie from The Big Sleep (for which Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay, along with that guy William Faulkner). After his parents died when he was an infant, Eric John Stark was raised by savage aliens on the Mercurian terminator. Whatever veneer of civilization Stark possesses is thin indeed.

But that's a good thing. For the universe Stark inhabits is a tough place all around—a cosmos where Mars and the planet Skaith make late-'30s Casablanca look like a gated retirement community! Stark is a hard man for hard-boiled times. He's literally noir, too—burned a permanent-midnight-black during his youth under Mercury's harsh sky.

This is wonder-filled, wonderful stuff. It's ERB meets Raymond Chandler—although Brackett truly is in a class by herself . Cynical motives. Politically seething, highly-complex worlds. Clandestine, desperate plots to throw off foreign masters—or just to make a buck off the general suffering of others.

And one man who survives everything bad life can throw at him—and emerges a hero.

Eric John Stark.

You won't regret this journey into Leigh Brackett's master-work. By the way, not only did Brackett co-write the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, did you notice that the film was dedicated to her when it came out shortly after her death Clearly this is a story-teller who has had a world-shaping influence on modern times. Tap it at the source.

With a new introduction by Algis Budrys, a legend himself, and exciting new art by Doug Chaffee, the first of our two Leigh Brackett mega-volumes will feature the Stark novels set on the planet Skaith, starting with The Ginger Star, followed by The Hounds of Skaith and concluding with Reavers of Skaith. The entire "Eric John Stark" saga—including Edmond Hamilton's stories, and the one true collaboration between Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett!