The Nemesis From Terra by Leigh Brackett

Rick Urquhart is attempting to evade “The Company”, a rather ruthless mining conglomerate that wields much power on Mars. Tension has been building between rebellious Martians and humans who work for The Company. Rick encounters a Martian who prophesizes that Rick will ultimately rule the planet. Unfortunately, The Company catches Rick and sends him back to labor in the mines once again.  From there the story takes off in a series of adventures involving his escape, a Martian-rights activist/love interest, travel to the Martian North Pole to meet with the “Thinkers”, overcoming several power-hungry bad guys, capture by the Martians, and ultimately rising to become the Martian’s greatest hope for success.

That’s a lot of plot to cover in one not-so-big book.  It is typical of 1940’s Science Fiction however which tended to be long on plot and short on world or character building. I’ve long wanted to try Leigh Brackett, well known as a prolific author of science fiction short stories and novels from the pulp era as well as a screen writer (to include work on the script for “The Empire Strikes Back”).  Much of her work is of the “planetary adventure” or “planetary romance” variety and this one sort of falls into that category.  This is actually her first full length science fiction novel, first published under the title “Shadow Over Mars” in 1944 in the pulp magazine, “Startling Stories”.

I enjoyed reading this quite a bit even though it was a bit rough around the edges.  Apparently, the style of this one is reflective of her previous work on a crime-noir novel and is darker than most of her later work which reportedly morphed into a more fluid style.  Often referred to as the "Queen of Space Opera", she wrote in what was the consensus Mars world of science fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, so world-building as we know it today was not as necessary.  Everybody knew that Mars was a marginally habitable desert world, populated by ancient, decadent and mostly humanoid races. I do prefer more substantial characterization though rather than just names attached to interesting alien species as we see in this novel.  

All-in-all, I’m glad I read this one, even if it isn’t a perfect representative sample of her work.  I do plan to read more of her stuff as there is certainly enough here to bring me back.