Leigh Brackett 24 min read

In the sweltering Venusian swamplands, the outcasts and space-rats of the Stellar Legion sweat and wait in tense silence, space's scrapings, ready to be flung into battle at their commandant's word.

Leigh Brackett's 1940 story is an atmospheric, muscular military space opera. Vivid, driven, superbly styled. Read it for early Brackett, a Foreign-Legion-in-space tale of hard men and hard fighting on a steaming Venus, told with the tough romantic lyricism that made her one of the great voices of planetary adventure.

In its time

Published in 1940, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

24 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Hannes Bok