Leigh Brackett was born in Los Angeles. Her father, William Franklin Brackett, was a certified public accountant and aspiring writer who died in 1919. Brackett's childhood was spent in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Boston, where she attended public elementary schools and a convent secondary school, and on the California coast, where she spent extended periods with her grandfather. Her earliest literary experience, under her grandfather's tutelage, centered on Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Rudyard Kipling (she committed long portions of Kipling's Jungle Book to memory). She began her own writing at age nine by jotting down sequels to current films, particularly those starring Douglas Fairbanks. What Brackett called her "serious" writing began at age thirteen. After the completion of her formal schooling, Brackett's grandfather offered to subsidize her attempts at commercial authorship. She produced two socially conscious novels, numerous short stories, and several poems, none of...