Just a few short weeks after Leigh Brackett’s birthday last year, Blue Tyson fired up the finest (and, so far, only) blog/website dedicated to the Queen of Space Opera. Tyson is an indefatigable Aussie sci-fi/fantasy fan whose archival work in his favorite fields of literature became known to yours truly a few years back. This was due to several interesting posts he put up at The Official Robert E. Howard Forum. One was an exhaustive listing of Sword-and-Sorcery heroes; another was a link to Tyson’s cover gallery devoted to the fiction of Leigh Brackett. Now that he’s had a few months to work on his project, I say that Tyson can take a bow and let the Interwebs behold the proud monument he has constructed in honor of Brackett on this, the anniversary of her mortality.

For those of tentative temperament who have yet to click on the link above, I will say that the set-up of Tyson’s site is a bit different than some other blogs. This is due to the fact that the website functions not only as a blog wherein info on Brackett is posted regularly, but also as an archive. Almost every work of fiction by Leigh has an entry, as does just about everything else remotely Brackett-related. Curious about the various alcoholic beverages of Brackett’s Venus and Mars? There’s an entry. Brackett-related artwork by diverse hands (like the Freas pic below)? Right here. For Brackett newbies, Tyson provides numerous excerpts from her tales right there on the site. He has also proffered an extensive list of excerpts to be found elsewhere on the ‘Net. In each case, it’s necessary to scroll down just a bit to get past the ever-present category tabs, but I feel that’s a small price to pay for the treasures Tyson has gathered.

Leigh Brackett was needing something like this. With much of her fiction now back in print thanks to publishers like Planet Stories and Haffner Press, the time seems ripe for giving her fans, old and new, someplace to dig deeper into her life and work.