The Halfing and Other Stories
Author: Leigh Brackett
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 351
Date Started: March 25th, 2023
Date Ended: April 26, 2023
Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 6.5/10
Well, now I know it takes me about a month to finish a standard size novel. Pathetic!
I found out about this book by following the great Pulp Librarian on Twitter:
The Halfling and Other Stories is a collection of short stories and novellas by celebrated sci-fi author Leigh Brackett. Interesting fact about Brackett: per Wikipedia, she worked on an early draft of Empire Strikes Back and apparently some of her ideas were left in the film. She unfortunately died in 1978, before the 1980 release of the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Brackett#The_Empire_Strikes_Back
This collection was published in 1973, but the stories here were all written and individually published in the late 40s and early 50s, and as a result, they exhibit some early sci-fi tropes, e.g. Mars has little green men, Venus is covered in jungle and has reptilian or creepy white humans, etc. If you can get past that, (and you should), you've got a collection of some pretty solid, classic sci-fi adventures to get through.
Here's a brief breakdown of each story:
The Halfling - A decent start. This is almost a hardboiled detective story (which Brackett also wrote) set in an interplanetary carnival. The term 'halfling' refers to aliens in the story for some reason, I guess because they are sort of human? Anyway, the main character falls head over heels for his new, mysterious carnival dancer. A series of murders ensues, and his new dancer turns out to be a religious zealot assassin. Short and a good bit of fun.
The Dancing Girl of Ganymede - Another dancer story? Huh. Anyway, this one is pretty good. The main character falls in love with a mysterious dancer while he's just chilling out on Ganymede. He's captured by her 'brothers,' and it turns out they are all androids on the run from the law. This one ends on a downer with everyone dying, but not before the villain explains to the protagonist that he hasn't won, that humanity will continue to create androids to do the jobs they do not want or cannot do, and eventually they will inherit their rightful place as masters of the universe.
The Citadel of Lost Ages - More novella than short story, The Citadel of Lost Ages takes place in the distant future after the Earth has become tidally locked because of 'the dark star.' Humanity has been enslaved by the Numi, a race of human/feline hybrids from the dark side of the world. Fenway, the hero, escapes his masters and must lead a ragtag group of tribesmen to the Citadel, a storehouse of ancient knowledge in the dark hemisphere that will help humanity overthrow their oppressors.
All the Colors of the Rainbow - This might be my favorite story in the bunch. Flin and Ruvi, a married couple and representatives of the Galactic Federation end up in Great Falls, Montana, during their mission to share knowledge with humanity in order to help them integrate into galactic society. Great Falls turns out to be a sundown town, and Flin and Ruvi, being green-skinned, are subject to a horrific hate crime. Flin gets revenge by using his weather manipulating technology to flood the city.
The Shadows - This one was ok. A grizzled spacer leads a group of young, eager explorers to a planet that is suspiciously devoid of sentient life. Shadows stalk the explorers and an ancient hunger is awakened. It's ok.
Enchantress of Venus - I liked this one a fair bit. Enchantress of Venus features Eric John Stark, a character that shows up in several Brackett stories. Stark is a Terran that was raised by Mercurian aboriginals and later adopted by a human. He's a bad motherfucker with a good heart. Stark ends up in a Venusian shithole lorded over by an inbred family of nobles. Spoiler, he fucks them up and frees the slaves.
The Lake of the Gone Forever - Okay, we're getting into the dregs here. In this story, our main character Rand Conway accompanies a wealthy industrialist, his daughter, and an exo-anthropologist (is that a word?) to Iskar, a planet his father once visited. His father's dying regret was that he could never come back to the Lake of the Gone Forever. While the general message of the story is quite good and progressive (colonialism is bad, exploiting people is bad, etc), I felt the actual story was just sort of weak and might be my least favorite of the lot.
The Truants - This last entry is not listed in the table of contents; a bonus track, if you will. This story is extremely silly, involving a bunch of alien joyriders that stole their parents' spaceship looking for other children to play with. They invite the local kids, including the daughter of our protagonist, Sherwin, to come aboard their spaceship and visit their homeworld. The local parents start up a posse to give these aliens what for, but when Sherwin discovers that they are just children as well, he just speaks up in a paternal tone and they split. I guess parental authority transcends interplanetary barriers.
All in all, this is a decent collection of stories by an excellent author. It's by no means her best, but worth checking out for classic sci-fi fans. If you need your science fiction to be hard, maybe look elsewhere. If you can get past the dated tropes (and you should try), there's fun to be had and timeless themes in these stories.
