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The Starmen
The Starmen
164 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1952
7 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
Leigh Brackett
399 books240 followersLeigh Brackett was born on December 7, 1915 in Los Angeles, and raised near Santa Monica. Having spent her youth as an athletic tom-boy - playing volleyball and reading stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard - she began writing fantastic adventures of her own. Several of these early efforts were read by Henry Kuttner, who critiqued her stories and introduced her to the SF personalities then living in California, including Robert Heinlein, Julius Schwartz, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton - and another aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury.
In 1944, based on the hard-boiled dialogue in her first novel, No Good From a Corpse, producer/director Howard Hawks hired Brackett to collaborate with William Faulkner on the screenplay of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.
Brackett maintained an on-again/off-again relationship with Hollywood for the remainder of her life. Between writing screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari!, and The Long Goodbye, she produced novels such as the classic The Long Tomorrow (1955) and the Spur Award-winning Western, Follow the Free Wind (1963).
Brackett married Edmond Hamilton on New Year's Eve in 1946, and the couple maintained homes in the high-desert of California and the rural farmland of Kinsman, Ohio.
Just weeks before her death on March 17, 1978, she turned in the first draft screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back and the film was posthumously dedicated to her.
In 1944, based on the hard-boiled dialogue in her first novel, No Good From a Corpse, producer/director Howard Hawks hired Brackett to collaborate with William Faulkner on the screenplay of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.
Brackett maintained an on-again/off-again relationship with Hollywood for the remainder of her life. Between writing screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari!, and The Long Goodbye, she produced novels such as the classic The Long Tomorrow (1955) and the Spur Award-winning Western, Follow the Free Wind (1963).
Brackett married Edmond Hamilton on New Year's Eve in 1946, and the couple maintained homes in the high-desert of California and the rural farmland of Kinsman, Ohio.
Just weeks before her death on March 17, 1978, she turned in the first draft screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back and the film was posthumously dedicated to her.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 3, 2023
Brackett was a writer now most remembered for her Hollywood screenplays such as Rio Bravo, Hatari!, The Big Sleep (she collaborated with William Faulkner), El Dorado, The Long Goodbye, The Empire Strikes Back, etc., but she got her start in the science fiction pulp magazines, and never left or lost her love for the genre. She was affectionately called "the Queen of Space Opera," and was married to fellow sf writer Edmond Hamilton; Ray Bradbury was best man at their wedding. The Starmen of Llyrdis was her second science fiction novel and was published in Startling Stories magazine in 1951. Gnome Press published it in hardback as The Starmen the following year, Ace Books published a shorter version of it under the title of The Galactic Breed as part of their double paperback program in 1955, but it didn't appear in her preferred, complete form until Ballantine brought out this edition in 1976. It's an interesting allegory about advancing suppressed races into equal levels of opportunity told in the framework of an adventurous space opera. The characters aren't really likeable, and the gender stereotyping is regrettable; it's stated more than once that all "young men" should have the opportunities. One thing I noticed is that one of the characters is named "Quorn," which was the name used for one of the major villains in Hamilton's famous Captain Future series. Brackett's writing is very accomplished and nuanced; she will have pages of action written in very short, terse sentences, and then lyrical and flowery paragraphs of description. For example, on page 140: "Two dimly gleaming bodies, dead worlds clinging to a long dead sun out here at galaxy edge. The glow of the Milky Way touched them, the ghostly glow of candles at a wake, and only emphasized their drear darksomeness and lonesomeness." That's more atmospheric prose than one usually found in Startling Stories, trust me. Altogether a fun and enjoyable read, and this first Ballantine (before there was a DelRey!) edition features a terrific cover by another nearly forgotten sf master, Dean Ellis, one of my favorite artists.
April 17, 2017
What would you do if you felt out of place for your entire life? As if Something was simply not right about who you were, where you were, and what you were doing? Would you search for an explanation for that odd feeling? Or would you accept it and do the best you could with what you knew about yourself and your world?
Michael Trehearne did not accept that feeling of Otherness, but would he be able to accept the answers he found when he went ancestor hunting? Or would he happily discover himself 'home' at last, part of a group, no longer feeling like an outsider? And what would his arrival mean to 'his' people and their society? Was being on the Inside at last all he thought it would be? Or was there something not quite right there also?
This was not the first Brackett title I've read, but it was the first I've read that did not have fantastical Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired events going on in its pages. I know she was heavily influenced by Burroughs, but in this 1952 book she trusted her own voice and created a thought-provoking adventure that I could hardly put down.
Michael Trehearne did not accept that feeling of Otherness, but would he be able to accept the answers he found when he went ancestor hunting? Or would he happily discover himself 'home' at last, part of a group, no longer feeling like an outsider? And what would his arrival mean to 'his' people and their society? Was being on the Inside at last all he thought it would be? Or was there something not quite right there also?
This was not the first Brackett title I've read, but it was the first I've read that did not have fantastical Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired events going on in its pages. I know she was heavily influenced by Burroughs, but in this 1952 book she trusted her own voice and created a thought-provoking adventure that I could hardly put down.
July 17, 2015
For fans of sci-fi’s Golden Age, it has been a sort of literary guessing game to riddle out which stories were written by Henry Kuttner and which by his wife, C.L. Moore. And this has proved to be no easy task, as the two, as legend goes, were so in rapport that one could pick up in mid-paragraph where the other had left off. But for several reasons, no such difficulty could ever be presented by Golden Age stalwart Edmond "The World Wrecker" Hamilton and his wife, "The Queen of Space Opera," Leigh Brackett. For one thing, their writing styles were so very different that they hardly ever collaborated. Hamilton, who I love, and who was 11 years older than Leigh, tended to a cruder, pulpier style, while Brackett was more lyrical, more polished, and certainly a better wordsmith. A recent side-by-side reading of Hamilton’s classic space opera "The Star Kings" (1949) and Brackett’s lesser-known "The Starmen of Llyrdis" has amply demonstrated--for me, anyway--that Leigh was clearly the greater talent of the two. And in this belief, I am not alone. Writing of her 1955 novel "The Long Tomorrow" in his excellent overview volume "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels," Scottish sci-fi critic David Pringle remarks that "she was a vastly superior writer to Hamilton."
As for the work in question, "The Starmen of Llyrdis" (Brackett's second novel, after 1951's "Shadow Over Mars"), it has a somewhat complicated publishing history. It originally appeared in the March '51 issue of "Startling Stories," when Leigh was 35 (Hamilton's Captain Future "novelet" "Earthmen No More" was in that same issue, which had a cover price of...25 cents), and in 1952 appeared in hardcover under the title "The Starmen." In 1955, a revised and abridged version of the novel, entitled "The Galactic Breed," appeared as one-half of one of those cute little "Ace doubles" (D-99, for all you collectors, backed with Robert Moore Williams' "Conquest of the Space Sea"). And finally, Ballantine brought the book out again, in 1976, and under its original title...the edition that I was fortunate enough to lately acquire.
In the book, the reader meets a 30-ish American male named Michael Trehearne, who, when we first encounter him in the Brittany region of France, is in the middle of trying to track down his family origins after a lifetime of feeling that he just does not quite fit in anywhere. And, as it turns out, for good reason! Trehearne soon comes upon a group of people there who he resembles, and who call themselves Vardda. Michael soon learns that the Vardda are actually a civilization of star-roving traders from the planet Llyrdis, which orbits the giant orange star Aldebaran, 65 light-years from Earth! Trehearne's Earthling mother had mated with a Vardda years before, it seems, resulting in a hybrid child. The Vardda, due to a genetic mutation engineered by the legendary scientist Orthis a millennium earlier, are the only race in the entire galaxy whose bodies can withstand the faster-than-light speeds requisite for any kind of reasonable interstellar travel. They have, thus, over the past 1,000 years, set up a monopoly in galactic trade, over which all the other worlds are understandably jealous. Trehearne is allowed to accompany the Vardda back to Llyrdis, and surprises everyone by NOT dying en route. Once on Llyrdis, he is allowed to become a full-fledged crewman on a space-going trader ship. However, he has by now aroused the enmity of Kerrel, of the Llyrdis Council; has become the target of several assassination attempts; has entered into a rather combustible affair with a Varddan woman named Shairn; and is soon tempted to become an Orthist: those renegade revolutionaries who feel that star travel should be for all races, and who search for Orthis' 1,000-year-old lost spaceship, and the secret of the mutation process that it might contain....
Boasting colorful descriptions of numerous alien planets and peoples, finely drawn characters and several marvelously done action set pieces, Brackett's book turns out to be a real winner; indeed, it is remarkable that it does not enjoy a greater renown. That elusive "sense of wonder" deemed so paramount for Golden Age sci-fi is present here in great abundance, and Trehearne never fails to be awed by the wonders that he is privy to as a star-roaming Vardda. Thus, just before his first touchdown on Llyrdis, he marvels that "...presently, he would stand on the soil of a strange world, in the light of an alien sun, and the winds that blew would come from far peaks nameless to him, and off of unknown oceans...." The scenes in which Trehearne is attacked by an unknown assailant on a fungoid planet, is beset by weasellike killer hounds on another, and, along with several others, explores the long-lost ship of Orthis on a dead world, orbiting a dark star at the galaxy's edge, are quite thrilling, as well as highly atmospheric. It really is quite impressive just how much color, history, incident and sweep Brackett manages to cram into a book of only 164 pages, all while keeping things highly literate. "Way above the typical space opera of the period," the sci-fi fanzine "Locus" later reported, and correctly so! But this should come as no surprise to Brackett's legion of fans, who perhaps have been thrilled by the exploits of her most popular literary creation, Eric John Stark, in both short stories and novels, or perhaps have been impressed by her co-writer credits on such diverse films as "The Big Sleep," "Rio Bravo," "The Long Goodbye," and a little something called "The Empire Strikes Back." Much like the stones that bedeck Trehearne's Vardda belt, "The Starmen of Llyrdis" turns out to be, to my great delight, a small but perfect gem....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, a most excellent destination for all fans of Leigh Brackett: http://www.fantasyliterature.com ....)
As for the work in question, "The Starmen of Llyrdis" (Brackett's second novel, after 1951's "Shadow Over Mars"), it has a somewhat complicated publishing history. It originally appeared in the March '51 issue of "Startling Stories," when Leigh was 35 (Hamilton's Captain Future "novelet" "Earthmen No More" was in that same issue, which had a cover price of...25 cents), and in 1952 appeared in hardcover under the title "The Starmen." In 1955, a revised and abridged version of the novel, entitled "The Galactic Breed," appeared as one-half of one of those cute little "Ace doubles" (D-99, for all you collectors, backed with Robert Moore Williams' "Conquest of the Space Sea"). And finally, Ballantine brought the book out again, in 1976, and under its original title...the edition that I was fortunate enough to lately acquire.
In the book, the reader meets a 30-ish American male named Michael Trehearne, who, when we first encounter him in the Brittany region of France, is in the middle of trying to track down his family origins after a lifetime of feeling that he just does not quite fit in anywhere. And, as it turns out, for good reason! Trehearne soon comes upon a group of people there who he resembles, and who call themselves Vardda. Michael soon learns that the Vardda are actually a civilization of star-roving traders from the planet Llyrdis, which orbits the giant orange star Aldebaran, 65 light-years from Earth! Trehearne's Earthling mother had mated with a Vardda years before, it seems, resulting in a hybrid child. The Vardda, due to a genetic mutation engineered by the legendary scientist Orthis a millennium earlier, are the only race in the entire galaxy whose bodies can withstand the faster-than-light speeds requisite for any kind of reasonable interstellar travel. They have, thus, over the past 1,000 years, set up a monopoly in galactic trade, over which all the other worlds are understandably jealous. Trehearne is allowed to accompany the Vardda back to Llyrdis, and surprises everyone by NOT dying en route. Once on Llyrdis, he is allowed to become a full-fledged crewman on a space-going trader ship. However, he has by now aroused the enmity of Kerrel, of the Llyrdis Council; has become the target of several assassination attempts; has entered into a rather combustible affair with a Varddan woman named Shairn; and is soon tempted to become an Orthist: those renegade revolutionaries who feel that star travel should be for all races, and who search for Orthis' 1,000-year-old lost spaceship, and the secret of the mutation process that it might contain....
Boasting colorful descriptions of numerous alien planets and peoples, finely drawn characters and several marvelously done action set pieces, Brackett's book turns out to be a real winner; indeed, it is remarkable that it does not enjoy a greater renown. That elusive "sense of wonder" deemed so paramount for Golden Age sci-fi is present here in great abundance, and Trehearne never fails to be awed by the wonders that he is privy to as a star-roaming Vardda. Thus, just before his first touchdown on Llyrdis, he marvels that "...presently, he would stand on the soil of a strange world, in the light of an alien sun, and the winds that blew would come from far peaks nameless to him, and off of unknown oceans...." The scenes in which Trehearne is attacked by an unknown assailant on a fungoid planet, is beset by weasellike killer hounds on another, and, along with several others, explores the long-lost ship of Orthis on a dead world, orbiting a dark star at the galaxy's edge, are quite thrilling, as well as highly atmospheric. It really is quite impressive just how much color, history, incident and sweep Brackett manages to cram into a book of only 164 pages, all while keeping things highly literate. "Way above the typical space opera of the period," the sci-fi fanzine "Locus" later reported, and correctly so! But this should come as no surprise to Brackett's legion of fans, who perhaps have been thrilled by the exploits of her most popular literary creation, Eric John Stark, in both short stories and novels, or perhaps have been impressed by her co-writer credits on such diverse films as "The Big Sleep," "Rio Bravo," "The Long Goodbye," and a little something called "The Empire Strikes Back." Much like the stones that bedeck Trehearne's Vardda belt, "The Starmen of Llyrdis" turns out to be, to my great delight, a small but perfect gem....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, a most excellent destination for all fans of Leigh Brackett: http://www.fantasyliterature.com ....)
October 21, 2013
The story is invested in its setup: a man whose very existence threatens the status quo of interstellar commerce, and who is being batted around by a woman whose motives remain mysterious (but may involve being interference against an unwanted suitor). So, it's all about the political situation and the interpersonal entanglement, and unfortunately spends entirely too long on the staging for the levels of conflict before starting to actually involve people doing things. By that time, I had lost interest.
June 22, 2020
ENGLISH: A curious novel about E.T. who are the only ones who can resist interstellar travel, while all the other intelligent species in the universe cannot do it, due to their physical constitution.
This novel poses a few interesting ethic dilemmas, and shows that there are things more important than love between man and woman: duty comes first. This message reminds me of Anthony Hope's way of expressing the same idea in "The prisoner of Zenda":
Is love the only thing?... If love had been the only thing, you would have let the King die in his cell.
The novel contains some important scientific mistakes, which test to the utmost the credulity of the reader. For example:
1. There are no green stars. There are blue, white, yellow, red, and brown stars, but not green.
2. It is absolutely incredible that an alien can reproduce with an Earth girl. Do they have DNA, and if they do, is it compatible with ours? I'd deem it impossible.
3. One of the characters rebukes the Earthlings, because some think that there may be no other intelligent beings in the universe apart from us. But the alternative proposed by Brackett (that there are intelligent beings on almost all the planets around almost all the stars), and to top it all, something completely incredible: that they are all practically in the same state of civilization, because the "savages" are, in fact, almost at the same level as the "civilized", if we consider the time that civilization has lasted on our planet: about 5000 years, which must be compared with 4.6 billion years that the solar system has lasted, and the 13.8 billion years of the universe.
ESPAÑOL: Curiosa novela sobre unos extraterrestres que son los únicos que pueden resistir los viajes interestelares, mientras todas las restantes especies inteligentes del universo lo tienen prohibido por su constitución física.
Esta novela plantea algunos dilemas éticos interesantes y muestra que hay cosas más importantes que el amor entre hombre y mujer: que el deber es lo primero. Este mensaje me recuerda la forma en que Anthony Hope expresa la misma idea en "El prisionero de Zenda":
¿Es que el amor lo es todo?... Si el amor lo fuera todo, tú hubieras dejado que el rey muriera en su celda.
La novela contiene algunos errores científicos importantes, que ponen a prueba excesivamente la credulidad del lector. Por ejemplo:
1. No existen estrellas verdes. Las hay azules, blancas, amarillas, rojas y marrones, pero no verdes.
2. Es absolutamente increíble que un extraterrestre pueda reproducirse con una chica terrestre. ¿Acaso tienen ADN, y si lo tienen, compatible con el nuestro? No hay quien se lo crea.
3. Uno de los personajes increpa a los terrestres, porque algunos piensan que es posible que no haya otros seres inteligentes en el universo aparte de nosotros. Pero la alternativa que propone Brackett (que hay seres inteligentes en casi todos los planetas alrededor de casi todas las estrellas), y para colmo, algo completamente increíble: que todos están prácticamente en el mismo estado de civilización, porque los "salvajes" están, en realidad, casi al mismo nivel que los "civilizados", si se considera el tiempo que ha durado la civilización en nuestro planeta: unos 5000 años, que hay que comparar con los 4600 millones de años que ha durado el sistema solar, y los 13800 millones de años del universo.
This novel poses a few interesting ethic dilemmas, and shows that there are things more important than love between man and woman: duty comes first. This message reminds me of Anthony Hope's way of expressing the same idea in "The prisoner of Zenda":
Is love the only thing?... If love had been the only thing, you would have let the King die in his cell.
The novel contains some important scientific mistakes, which test to the utmost the credulity of the reader. For example:
1. There are no green stars. There are blue, white, yellow, red, and brown stars, but not green.
2. It is absolutely incredible that an alien can reproduce with an Earth girl. Do they have DNA, and if they do, is it compatible with ours? I'd deem it impossible.
3. One of the characters rebukes the Earthlings, because some think that there may be no other intelligent beings in the universe apart from us. But the alternative proposed by Brackett (that there are intelligent beings on almost all the planets around almost all the stars), and to top it all, something completely incredible: that they are all practically in the same state of civilization, because the "savages" are, in fact, almost at the same level as the "civilized", if we consider the time that civilization has lasted on our planet: about 5000 years, which must be compared with 4.6 billion years that the solar system has lasted, and the 13.8 billion years of the universe.
ESPAÑOL: Curiosa novela sobre unos extraterrestres que son los únicos que pueden resistir los viajes interestelares, mientras todas las restantes especies inteligentes del universo lo tienen prohibido por su constitución física.
Esta novela plantea algunos dilemas éticos interesantes y muestra que hay cosas más importantes que el amor entre hombre y mujer: que el deber es lo primero. Este mensaje me recuerda la forma en que Anthony Hope expresa la misma idea en "El prisionero de Zenda":
¿Es que el amor lo es todo?... Si el amor lo fuera todo, tú hubieras dejado que el rey muriera en su celda.
La novela contiene algunos errores científicos importantes, que ponen a prueba excesivamente la credulidad del lector. Por ejemplo:
1. No existen estrellas verdes. Las hay azules, blancas, amarillas, rojas y marrones, pero no verdes.
2. Es absolutamente increíble que un extraterrestre pueda reproducirse con una chica terrestre. ¿Acaso tienen ADN, y si lo tienen, compatible con el nuestro? No hay quien se lo crea.
3. Uno de los personajes increpa a los terrestres, porque algunos piensan que es posible que no haya otros seres inteligentes en el universo aparte de nosotros. Pero la alternativa que propone Brackett (que hay seres inteligentes en casi todos los planetas alrededor de casi todas las estrellas), y para colmo, algo completamente increíble: que todos están prácticamente en el mismo estado de civilización, porque los "salvajes" están, en realidad, casi al mismo nivel que los "civilizados", si se considera el tiempo que ha durado la civilización en nuestro planeta: unos 5000 años, que hay que comparar con los 4600 millones de años que ha durado el sistema solar, y los 13800 millones de años del universo.
January 6, 2008
A man searching for the history of his ancestors finds out that he belongs to a people unlike any other. Brackett weaves intergalactic societies and political rivals into a tight tale.
I have yet to read a Brackett book that I didn't enjoy. Some, such as "The Sword of Rhiannon", are straightforward adventures featuring courageous heroes and daunting odds; others, such as "The Big Jump" and this one, deal with more complicated themes. Here, Brackett considers the ramifications of interstellar travel that depends upon genetic imperative. Though the book is short (164 pages), she develops her characters enough to invest meaning into the questions she asks. The atmosphere she establishes in some scenes is vivid and thought-provoking - especially towards the climax.
Brackett, I think, was a compassionate writer who knew how to connect with her material and share this intimacy with her readers. She had a talent for establishing emotional stakes, and drawing the reader in. I am so glad that I discovered her in the last year.
I have yet to read a Brackett book that I didn't enjoy. Some, such as "The Sword of Rhiannon", are straightforward adventures featuring courageous heroes and daunting odds; others, such as "The Big Jump" and this one, deal with more complicated themes. Here, Brackett considers the ramifications of interstellar travel that depends upon genetic imperative. Though the book is short (164 pages), she develops her characters enough to invest meaning into the questions she asks. The atmosphere she establishes in some scenes is vivid and thought-provoking - especially towards the climax.
Brackett, I think, was a compassionate writer who knew how to connect with her material and share this intimacy with her readers. She had a talent for establishing emotional stakes, and drawing the reader in. I am so glad that I discovered her in the last year.
January 15, 2013
Good old fashioned scifi!Enjoyed!
April 22, 2022
Michael Treehearne discovers that he is actually a member of the Vardda, the only race that can withstand the rigors of intergalactic flight.
Leigh Brackett is one of my favorite authors but this was slow going. Even though the chapters are short and Brackett’s prose shines in some places, the story is dry, lackluster, and has some jarring plot contrivances. It has a few interesting ideas but I feel it’s missing the wonder and excitement that most of her other work has.
Leigh Brackett is one of my favorite authors but this was slow going. Even though the chapters are short and Brackett’s prose shines in some places, the story is dry, lackluster, and has some jarring plot contrivances. It has a few interesting ideas but I feel it’s missing the wonder and excitement that most of her other work has.
August 1, 2020
It was an awesome, a godlike thing, to come into a solar system from outside, drenched in the naked blazing of a foreign sun, and see the planets from far off, no bigger than a child’s ball, circling the parent star in their slow eternal orbits.
This 1952 science fiction story takes a fairly standard really-old-school science fictional element, the protagonist being alone because they’re different from everyone else, and only finding a home when they are found by or discover extraterrestrials (this is not a spoiler—it’s dealt with in the first couple of pages) and turns it into something that’s still fresh today.
It’s an adventure story with a really shocking loss about two thirds of the way in.
The basic story: there is a genetically-engineered race of starmen who are the only race able to withstand the rigors of space travel. They zealously guard the secret of their abilities, exiling anyone who threatens to expose the secret to a dismal planet off at the edge of nowhere. They don’t even know what the secret is, and don’t want to know. The progenitor of their race was the first person they exiled, and he never revealed the secret.
Of course, everyone suspects it’s out there somewhere, and there is a secret society dedicated to finding it. Michael Trehearne, the earthly protagonist, while sympathetic to their goal, also accepts the very reasonable rationale for the necessity of not giving everybody the ability to travel through space: it would mean endless war.
…giving the mutation to all the races of the galaxy would mean wars and conflicts of such staggering dimensions that whole solar systems, including ours, might very well be destroyed.
This is almost certainly true.
Except for that one iron rule, the traders are a relatively enlightened lot, somewhat Roman in their democracy, and open to trade with just about anyone, even people who hate them.
Which is good, because everyone hates them.
February 24, 2020
Edmond Hamilton once described Leigh Brackett's (his Mrs.) typical hero as someone who fights to achieve a dream, then discovers he chose the wrong dream. This novel is a perfect example.
Modern-day Earthman Michael Tregarde has spent his life feeling he doesn't belong anywhere. Then he learns it's because he's half-human, half-Vardda, the latter being the one race that can survive the stress of interstellar flight. Taking a chance that he's inherited the gift, he joins them in leaving Earth, and then wins himself a lover and a place in Vardda society.
And it's not enough. The Vardda have carefully kept the genetic engineering secret to surviving space from the rest of the universe, and Michael sees the effects of that have not been good. He joins a secret group plotting to share the secret, and so makes himself a traitor to the society he craved to be part of.
A good, solid, imaginative story.
Modern-day Earthman Michael Tregarde has spent his life feeling he doesn't belong anywhere. Then he learns it's because he's half-human, half-Vardda, the latter being the one race that can survive the stress of interstellar flight. Taking a chance that he's inherited the gift, he joins them in leaving Earth, and then wins himself a lover and a place in Vardda society.
And it's not enough. The Vardda have carefully kept the genetic engineering secret to surviving space from the rest of the universe, and Michael sees the effects of that have not been good. He joins a secret group plotting to share the secret, and so makes himself a traitor to the society he craved to be part of.
A good, solid, imaginative story.
September 30, 2020
Another brilliant adventure among the stars by Leigh Brackett. The Vaarda, the only race that can, thanks to a mutation, travel among the stars, discover one of their own on earth. Taken into space, he joins others on a grand adventure that can possibly bring spaceflight to all, ending the vaarda monopoly.
October 4, 2017
Read back in the 70s
July 26, 2018
I loved this. I wish I’d known about this author years ago.
April 28, 2022
Surprisingly good for the age of it. I did et expect to be drawn in like I was. The ending dragged a bit but I’m happy with the ending all the same
January 30, 2024
So well written, I love LB. Very noir, in the sense that these characters are none of them particularly likeable. They exist on a more realistic scale than the action heroes of many of the pulps while still being larger than life.
I'm fixated, in this last round of reading her oeuvre, in her attitudes to her female characters. She doesn't seem to like them much. Our one female character here is a siren, luring our hero into the world of fae, even if that world is a world of space going aliens. She starts out on the side of our bad guy, who at least has his convictions and stays true to them. She changes her colors for our hero, but we aren't given any look onto her interior or into the interior of them as a couple to know why that would happen or believe it.
This is revisiting some of the themes of Ark of Mars which felt much more openly to be a work that disliked women intensely. This does not, but neither does it like them, or care enough about them to show any interest.
Not really interested in the libertarian views of the author or this work, so I won't go into that.
In closing though, the writing is riveting, and it's worth reading.
I'm fixated, in this last round of reading her oeuvre, in her attitudes to her female characters. She doesn't seem to like them much. Our one female character here is a siren, luring our hero into the world of fae, even if that world is a world of space going aliens. She starts out on the side of our bad guy, who at least has his convictions and stays true to them. She changes her colors for our hero, but we aren't given any look onto her interior or into the interior of them as a couple to know why that would happen or believe it.
This is revisiting some of the themes of Ark of Mars which felt much more openly to be a work that disliked women intensely. This does not, but neither does it like them, or care enough about them to show any interest.
Not really interested in the libertarian views of the author or this work, so I won't go into that.
In closing though, the writing is riveting, and it's worth reading.
March 17, 2016
This was another short book I read too slowly and as such had a hard time remembering the characters. Though I think it fair to say the emphasis of the book was on setting and plot rather than people. The idea was an interesting one, one race capable of interstellar travel that had a vast trading empire. Like empires on Earth it did so with trade, rather than politics or might as in so many science fiction stories. It was different and unique. The premise than an Earth man got caught up in this, and wasn't really an Earth man at all, was a fairly common trope, but more an excuse to get the story going than anything else. His reaction to the situation had very little differences to the people who'd lived in it their whole lives. It was also interesting to see how a woman author voiced the sexism of the characters, and the time, when she put in how "women weren't capable" of making or understanding decisions of galactic importance.
August 10, 2025
4⭐
--- Michael Trehearne ma geny i wygląd Varddów - kosmicznych podróżników i handlarzy, jedynych we wszechświecie, potrafiących znosić przeciążenia przy prędkościach nadświetlnych. Będąc bękartem urodzonym i wychowanym na Ziemi, w wieku trzydziestu kilku lat udaje mu się odnaleźć rodowitych Varddów i z ich pomocą dostać na planetę Llyrdis, skąd pochodzi jego rasa. Po pokonaniu licznych przeszkód zaczyna w końcu wymarzoną pracę jako podróżnik-handlarz odwiedzający odległe gwiazdozbiory, mgławice i planety...
--- Przystępny język, zwarta, jednowątkowa fabuła, dość szybkie tempo narracji i sprawnie wplecione w akcję dylematy moralne sprawiają, że lektura nie nudzi. Do końca kibicujemy też bohaterowi w jego dojrzewaniu jako Vardda i jako mężczyzna, w konflikcie z głównym antagonistą powieści czy narastających wątpliwościach co do słuszności monopolu Varddów na gwiezdne podróże... Sama końcówka zaś i finał to zupełna jazda bez trzymanki jak w najlepszym dreszczowcu!
--- Michael Trehearne ma geny i wygląd Varddów - kosmicznych podróżników i handlarzy, jedynych we wszechświecie, potrafiących znosić przeciążenia przy prędkościach nadświetlnych. Będąc bękartem urodzonym i wychowanym na Ziemi, w wieku trzydziestu kilku lat udaje mu się odnaleźć rodowitych Varddów i z ich pomocą dostać na planetę Llyrdis, skąd pochodzi jego rasa. Po pokonaniu licznych przeszkód zaczyna w końcu wymarzoną pracę jako podróżnik-handlarz odwiedzający odległe gwiazdozbiory, mgławice i planety...
--- Przystępny język, zwarta, jednowątkowa fabuła, dość szybkie tempo narracji i sprawnie wplecione w akcję dylematy moralne sprawiają, że lektura nie nudzi. Do końca kibicujemy też bohaterowi w jego dojrzewaniu jako Vardda i jako mężczyzna, w konflikcie z głównym antagonistą powieści czy narastających wątpliwościach co do słuszności monopolu Varddów na gwiezdne podróże... Sama końcówka zaś i finał to zupełna jazda bez trzymanki jak w najlepszym dreszczowcu!
June 9, 2022
Great stuff. Michael Trehearne always felt different - and then he finds out he's half Vardda, the only race that can survive the rigors of starflight. Trehearne is brought aboard a star-cruiser and barely makes it, but he's in.
But this isn't a Chosen One narrative. Trehearne becomes a simple crewman. It turns out the book has bigger things on its mind: It's about whether one civilization can monopolize starflight and the lucrative space trade routes. Trehearne takes the side of freedom, but as usual with Brackett, the bad guys have their own perspectives.
There's a bravura sequence at the end when Trehearne and Co., pursued by a single-minded inspector, travel to the end of the galaxy in search of ... I don't want to spoil it, but no one takes you to that place of endurance and despair like Brackett does.
But this isn't a Chosen One narrative. Trehearne becomes a simple crewman. It turns out the book has bigger things on its mind: It's about whether one civilization can monopolize starflight and the lucrative space trade routes. Trehearne takes the side of freedom, but as usual with Brackett, the bad guys have their own perspectives.
There's a bravura sequence at the end when Trehearne and Co., pursued by a single-minded inspector, travel to the end of the galaxy in search of ... I don't want to spoil it, but no one takes you to that place of endurance and despair like Brackett does.
July 3, 2015
Bence çok eğlenceliydi. Açıp hiç ara vermeden okudum. 1971 basımı kitabın elime geçmesini sağlayan Funda, sana teşekkür ederim. Bir de yazarı bir kadın bilim kurgu yazarı çıkmasın mı! Bir tek eleştireceğim en son iki paragraf, çok klişe idi, keşke başka birşey yapsaydı!
July 28, 2008
Brackett always told a good story, but this is not one of my favorites by her. Still, it's pretty good.
September 10, 2009
An unmemorable space fantasy by Leigh Douglass Brackett (12/7/15–3/18/78).
November 4, 2014
Grade B+
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