Lorelei of the Red Mist

by Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury

Hugh Starke, space-rat and convict, was being pursued by spacecraft into the unknown parts of Venus. He had just pulled off the largest lone wolf heist in the history of that planet. But now it looked like he was going to pay the ultimate price for his misdeeds. But fate had a strange twist on Starke's life when he woke up in a different body. A body that was strong and powerful. In a body of a Venusian barbarian named Conan. But was Starke anything more than a puppet in this new body? For he soon found out the strings were being pulled by the beautiful, but terrible, Rann. For Rann was like the siren, Lorelei, and it was Hugh-Starke-called-Conan that would have to fight her or be lured to his doom!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction

83 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1946

About the author

Leigh 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.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I love Brackett and Bradbury this one felt like a hot mess to me. The difference in style between the first and second halves couldn't be more stark, with the second half feeling nothing more than perfunctory. So much felt hastily glossed over that I had a hard time following most of what was going on.

[Jose Moa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short novel of the first times of Bradbury as writter ,written in 1946 in colaboration with Leigh Brackett (is the same short novel that Three times infinity),tells the fantastic adventures in Venus of a man whose mind is transmited after a shipwreck to a strong venusian named Conan ( in this time little were known about the physics of Venus surface ),his relation and engagement in a war whre the main character is a sort of witch mermaid.
This short novel is the same that Three times infinity

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Continuing my exploration of the works of Leigh Brackett, this 1946 novella is an interesting curiosity in that (1) it’s co-written with Ray Bradbury and (2) it wasn’t a collaboration so much as a case where Brackett wasn’t able to finish the story after she got an offer from Howard Hawks to co-write the screenplay for The Big Sleep with William Faulkner, so she asked Bradbury (whom she was mentoring at the time) to think up an ending and finish it for her.

The story is a planetary romance set on Venus, in which professional thief Hugh Starke is on the run after stealing a million credits. His ship crashes and he’s left for dead, but he wakes up in a new body – specifically, a warrior named Conan – thanks to a mysterious sorceress named Rann who is also Conan’s former lover. There is a war going on between the humanoid fish sea-people who live in the Red Sea, Rann’s people (descendants of the sea people) and the humans of Crom Dhu, which is under siege. Rann wants Starke-as-Conan to kill the leader of Crom Dhu and end the siege. Starke has other ideas. There's also a zombie army at some point.

The story itself is pure planetary-romance pulp, and it’s okay if you like Conan stories (and this was apparently intended as an homage to Robert E. Howard) – which, I confess, I’m indifferent to. It’s perhaps more interesting to see how the story obviously switches writers in midstream, and also how at least some of the details here would find their way into Brackett’s Eric John Stark tales, which she started writing a few years later, particularly her descriptions of Venus as a liveable planet – she would reuse the Red Sea concept in Enchantress Of Venus. Anyway, it's not terrible, but it's probably more worthwhile if you want to see what Bradbury was doing before he became famous.

[dathomira]

there is truly nothing like a broad writing space fantasy in the 40s set on venus. thrilled that i pick this up and that i found an omnibus of her other novellas. i'd die for both rann and beudag and in a perfect world they would have killed hugh-starke-called-conan and joined their kingdoms, but not everyone is as bring brained as i am.

[Benjamin Chandler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a curious diversion.

In the mid 40s, Leigh Brackett started writing this novella for a pulp magazine, but was pulled away when only half done. Ray Bradbury was hired to complete the story; he wasn't given any notes and just went in his own direction. The story works as a whole, but you can tell where Brackett left off and Bradbury began; their writing styles were pretty different. I much preferred Bradbury's half. Although the story wasn't great, his distinct prose elevates it.

As for the plot, a scoundrel's mind is transplanted into the body of a warrior and he becomes involved in a Venusian war between various races that live on or in a sea made of red mist. (No one named Lorelei ever shows up or is mentioned.) While Brackett writes the war and the characters' motives as being very cold and almost devil-may-care, Bradbury humanizes everything. His description of the slaughter during a battle made me feel sorry for the "bad guys".

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this story 4 stars in part because of its historical interest, as a "collaboration" between Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury. Ms. Brackett wrote the first half and then turned it over to Mr. Bradbury to be finished. (I think I can make a good guess at just where the transition was made -- the styles don't quite match.) And its somewhat roundabout way of wedging it into Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian/Cimmerian universe. The story itself is an odd mix of Golden Age Sci Fi and Swords & Sorcery.

Anyway, my review would be lower if this story didn't have other elements of interest. As it is, it was still fun.

BTW -- I read this story in an old science fiction magazine from the 50s that I got at a used book store. One especially nice touch is that the story included the original black-and-white interior illustrations. They really do add something to stories, especially OLD stories.

[Puffthemagicbunny · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW:Graphic violence, Moderate war, torture, death, blinding.

Clarketech: The whole Venus thing, mind body transfers without surgery, underwater breathing without scuba..

So to my shame I had never heard of Leigh Brackett and bought this 80 page book based on the title and of course Ray Bradbury. So I did a little sleuthing after I got home and found out I really should know who Ms Brackett was and that 1940’s pulp science fiction was a weird and strange place. I do so enjoy jumping down rabbit holes.

I admit I enjoyed this more for the history than for the story. The characters are stereotypes, the plot predictable until Bradbury gets a hold of it then the train leaves the tracks for ports unknown. Both Brackett’s and Bradbury’s writing is above par. I found that it helped if I placed the action in another solar system rather than our Venus. Also the human like aliens and the psi powers seem to be a forerunner to Star Trek. The rabbit hole revealed a strong Bradbury, Campbell, Roddenbury connection and also Brackett to Lucas.

So enjoy it for the nostalgia and the writing. It really doesn’t make much sense.

Also I was disappointed that there was no character named Lorelei. I suppose the Lorelei refers to the German siren or perhaps the cliff.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is easy to tell who wrote the first half (Brackett) and who wrote the last (Bradbury). I would give the first half three stars. It had its issues, particularly a character named Starke usurping Conan's body. Yes, the Conan. How did Brackett or Planet Stories manage not to get sued by Howard, or his estate, for blatant copyright infringement? That aside, it was a mildly enjoyable but frivolous read that didn't seem like it was going anywhere significant.

Clearly Brackett felt the same way, because she abandoned the story. Reportedly the Planet Stories editor wanted to print a final version and when he couldn't get Brackett to finish it commissioned Bradbury to do so. Bradbury made an effort, but not a good one. He kept the protagonist, but then introduced new characters who had no role, actions of significance, or even character except for being named as present.

The story drifted around meaninglessly for the back forty pages and the died a pointless death, mercifully to the reader. Neither writer shines from having their name associated with this heap of steaming dung.

[Buzz Dixon · Rating 2 out of 5]

All aspiring writers should take inspiration from Ray Bradbury's career. He was gawdawful in his earliest stories but through consistent work at improving his craft, he became one of the best writers of the 20th century. This is a dreadful story even by Planet Stories infamously low bar, starting off with a space crook on the lam then suddenly shifting into a literal Conan fan fic adventure with said space crook gets killed in a rocket crash yet somehow finds his mind transferred over to a recently dead hulking barbarian. Gotta admit the finale with Conan leading a passle of naked aquatic zombies to storm a ship is Howardish enough to pass muster, but all in all this is a thoroughly lackluster tale. For Bracket and / or Bradbury completists only.

[Athanasius · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a shame that Leigh Brackett couldn't finish this tale (the first half was written by Brackett, with Bradbury completing the latter half) as she was weaving quite a magical story which Bradbury promptly ruined. Her prose is far superior to Ray's slapdash effort; the first half of the tale is original, engaging and finely wrought (particularly the initial undersea descriptions). Unfortunately, the latter half is terrible...I literally felt I was reading the writing of a 12 year old.
2.5 stars for Leigh's half, and zero for Ray's :(

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great sword and planet outing by Leigh Brackett. We visit the Sea of Red Mist from Enchantress of Venus. I truly can't tell where Ray Bradbury picks this story up, my understanding is he finished it.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great sci-fi classic from the golden age..

[Jefferson Fortner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Swords and Sorcery in Space, a genre that I am not particularly fond of. Nothing much going on here other than an adventure story set on Venus.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars may be a bit generous, but the mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements--much of which was original with this book, decent / sometimes great prose, and the historical importance of the book compels me to add a star.

[Melanti]

Note to self: Don't buy this - collected in 9 Rarities. Buy that instead.