8th+grade+-+Golden+Age+of+SF+-+Leigh+Brackett

(1915 - 1978)**
 * LEIGH BRACKETT

The Golden Age of science fiction was about a twenty four year period. There weren’t that many women writers during this period because some publishing companies would not publish their work. Leigh Brackett was lucky enough to get some of her work published in “Astounding Science Fiction” Magazine in 1940 and this kicked off her classification as a science fiction writer. Leigh Brackett was born on January 15, 1915 in Los Angeles, California. She has always had a passion for writing, but she did not always write about science fiction. Her first story was “Martian Quest” which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine. Howard Hawks wanted Brackett to work with him on a screenplay called “The Big Sleep”, but Hawks did not know Brackett was a women. Hawks said “call in this guy Brackett to help William Faulker write the script for //The Big Sleep//". This statement proves that women were not even thought about when the stories were not even thought about when the stories were being considered for screenplays in that time period. Leigh Brackett married science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton on December 31, 1946. Edmond published many great science fiction stories including “The Star of Life” and “The Valley of Creation”. Leigh and Hamilton worked side by side for a quarter century, but they never shared authorship on a story. There was one collaboration, but it did not appear in print until 2005. Leigh wrote many great stories including “No Good from a Corpse” which was her first novel and “Black Amazon of Mars”. Brackett did abandon science fiction writing for screenplay writing, but she did return to science fiction after Planet Stories sent out their last issue in 1955, her carrer was basically over. She did continue to write, but her career was never the same. Most of her writings after that were film and television. Leigh died on March 18, 1978 from cancer, but some of her writings were still being published and put on store shelves. Leigh was one of the few women writers of her time that made a major change to the and more and more women are continuing to write science fiction till this day.