Dry Ice Factory

So I finished this collection of Brackett's crime fiction last night. What I learned after a long, hard slog through over 500 pages is that I far prefer her science fiction. This may not be surprising, because I've never been a big fan of crime fiction. On the other hand, I really liked the two Dorothy B. Hughes crime novels I read relatively recently -- In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse -- so I'm not completely immune. I found these Brackett stories (and the eponymous novel that opens the collection) pretty flat, cliche, and uninvolving. Her SF is pretty cliche too, but the mood and exotic atmosphere pull me in. She's better at updating E.R. Burroughs than at updating R. Chandler.

Most of these stories were from early in her career, in the '40s, and her SF of that era wasn't as good as the stuff from the '50s. But the two or three stories from the '50s in this collection didn't impress me either. I'd still be willing to read one of the two crime novels she wrote in the '50s, but my expectations are definitely lowered.

Now I'm not sure whether to read some more of her SF novels or to go back and finish the CL Moore collection from the Fantasy Masterworks series (of which I've read the Northwest Smith stories but not the Jirel of Joiry ones). Decisions, decisions!

Yesterday was sunny and warm, so I decided to get out into it.

( An account of mild adventures )

For the past few years, when I've read SF and fantasy it has tended to be the older, pulpier variety. Lately, I seem to be embarking on the project of rereading some of my adolescent favorites, spurred by enjoyable recent tours of Andre Norton and HP Lovecraft.

When I was a teenager, my favorites (after I was done with Norton) were Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and JRR Tolkien, all of whom I read and reread fervently, as did my friend Reid, who also joined me in making up trivia quizzes about the different minor characters and secondary world zoology. I stopped reading all of them when I went to college and got serious about literature and thus started reading New Wave SF writers instead. Later, I went back to Tolkien, but I've never had any interest in rereading Burroughs or Howard. But somehow I was prompted to give Leigh Brackett's The Sword of Rhiannon a reread, and from there it wasn't much of a reach to try Burroughs' A Princess of Mars again.

( Two Martian odysseys )