Leigh Brackett & S. H. Marpel 
Queen of the Martian Catacombs Anthology (Golden Age Space Opera Tales) 

Another riveting anthology in the Golden Age Space Opera Tales series…


Gaunt giant and passionate beauty, they dragged their thirst-crazed way across the endless crimson sands in a terrible test of endurance. For one of them knew where cool life-giving water lapped old stones smooth — a place of secret horror that it was death to reveal!


Erik John Stark is sent on a perilous mission into the Valkis and encounters the Queen of the Martian Catacombs.


Leigh Douglass Brackett (1915–1978) was an American writer, particularly of science fiction; she is one of the few women writers to be at the forefront of science fiction’s “Golden Age.” Brackett was also a screenwriter, known for her work on films from *The Big Sleep* (1945) to *The Empire Strikes Back* (1980).

“Queen of the Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon of Mars” are the first two novellas in her Eric John Stark series. The third and final installment is included: ‘Enchantress of Venus’. These stories, spanning a sprawling (and scientifically impossible) Solar System, are rolicking adventures in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. They are excellent examples of pulp science fiction at its “pulpy-est”—manly men, warrior women, and non-stop action.


Space Opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology.

The term has no relation to music, as in a traditional opera, but is instead a play on the terms ‘soap opera’, a melodramatic television series, and ‘horse opera’, which was coined during the 1930s to indicate a formulaic Western movie. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, and video games.


The Golden Age of Pulp Magazine Fiction derives from pulp magazines (often referred to as ‘the pulps’) as they were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term pulp derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called ‘glossies’ or ‘slicks’. (Wikipedia)

The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were proving grounds for those authors like Robert Heinlein, Louis La Mour, ‘Max Brand’, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and many others. The best writers moved onto longer fiction required by paperback publishers. Many of these authors have never been out of print, even long after their passing.  


This Anthology Contains:

– Queen of the Martian Catacombs

– Black Amazon of Mars

– Enchantress of Venus


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