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Eric John Stark was born on Mercury to miners who died in a cave-in. He was brought up by Mercurian aborigines and given the name N’Chaka, meaning “the man without a tribe”. Stark grew up to become a wanderer, a warrior, a rebel, and — a legend. Queen of the Martian Catacombs (1949) – 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! A twelve chapter novella. Enchantress Of Venus (1949) – Laughing, she cast him down into the hideous depths, beneath the seas of flaming gas, to where dead blossoms swayed, whispering, over strangely jumbled rains . . . But there he found the secret of her power, and came surging back—up from the depths, up from the seas, the tortured swamps to storm her forbidding shrine and seek her within, death like a gift in his hands . . . A twelve chapter novella. Black Amazon of Mars (1951) – Grimly Eric John Stark slogged toward that ancient Martian city—with every step he cursed the talisman of Ban Cruach that flamed in his blood-stained belt. Behind him screamed the hordes of Ciaran, hungering for that magic jewel—ahead lay the dread abode of the Ice Creatures—at his side stalked the whispering spectre of Ban Cruach, urging him on to a battle Stark knew he must lose! A nine chapter novella. Leigh Douglass Brackett (1915 – 1978) was an immensely talented writer of science fiction, and is known as the “Queen of Space Opera.” She was also a very talented screenwriter and worked on such films as The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Brackett was married to fellow science fiction author, Edmond Hamilton.