the group picture

Love the Black Amazon of Mars cover! I read it a few weeks ago and it was great fun. Leigh Brackett,a much underated female author,can stand up with the big boys of the sword and sorcery genre. Her hero,John Eric Stark can battle his way through hordes of enemies in the time honoured tradition,but at least Brackett somehow manages at least a smidgen of motivation and sensibility to the scenario.
And to anyone who has not yet read Brackett's The Long Tomorrow - why not? Good book of the dystopian 50s era,totally ignored by everyone at the time,this book was one of my fave reads of 2015. Highly recommended

I'm a Brackett fan too. We recently did a group read of her "Terror Out of Space" at The Weird Tradition.

Thank you for your link to the Weird Tradition group. I rarely read horror,especially the in your face graphic stuff,I am a real wimp,but I have a soft spot for the good old fashioned weird and arcane stuff,and read quite a bit HPL last year,some Sheridan Lefanu,a little Ashton Smith etc. I was surprisingly pleased to find myself fairly familiar with a lot of the titles on your spreadsheet (very useful that!). This year is already committed to 1950s science fiction for the most part,but I will definitely be checking out your group reading schedule for next year.We refugees from shelfari and then Leafmarks are still busy settling in here,a steep learning curve,but I look forward to taking a better look into the dark depths sometime!

>1 dustydigger: I really enjoyed Black Amazon of Mars when I read it a few years ago. My only (rhetorical) question is, why does the woman on the book cover look so very Irish? LOL?!?

And yes, The Long Tomorrow is a very good and thought provoking post-apocalyptic read.

Lol!ScoLgo, she looks like Maureen O'Hara's younger sister (to completely date me.Always loved O'Hara and Wayne in The Quiet Man) Bit of the usual OTT art work that made SF pulp be so frowned upon by the general public in those days.Robots,rayguns,buxom heroines in distress and spaceships with fins have been indelibly imprinted on the public conscience forever more . At least this amazon isnt fainting in the arms of a Bug Eyed Monster,whether its appropriate to the story or not, as is so common on these mag covers!And she is dressed all in black,wielding a weapon,and she normally hid under a black helmet,so thats pretty good for such pictures lol.

I did read The Long Tomorrow, but the folksy Americana didn't appeal to me personally. I agree the Eric John Stark stories are enjoyable.

>6 EnsignRamsey: Hmmm. Life in Brackett's post-collapse America might have been rural, but was way too dark for me to call "folksy."