authors to provide the bulk of its fiction in the early years, with Nelson Bond providing eight lead stories, some of them novels. Fourteen more were written by Ray Cummings and Ross Rocklynne; and Leigh Brackett was also a regular contributor, with seventeen stories in total published over the lifetime of the magazine. The letter column in Planet Stories was titled "The Vizigraph"; it was very active, with long letters from an engaged readership. It often printed letters from established writers, and from fans who would go on to become well known professionally: Damon Knight's letters are described by sf historian Mike Ashley as "legendary"; and Robert Silverberg commented in a letter in the Summer 1950 issue that Ray Bradbury "certainly gets some original ideas, if not good ones". The editors put a good deal of effort into keeping the letter column friendly and lively; contemporary writer and editor Robert Lowndes recalls that "Reiss was sincere and urbane; Wilbur [Peacock] enjoyed taking his coat off and being one of the crowd". Despite the focus on melodramatic space adventure, the fiction in Planet Stories improved over the next few years, largely due to the work of Brackett and Bradbury. Both writers set many of their stories on a romanticized version of Mars that owed much to the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Brackett's writing improved during the 1940s from formulaic pulp adventure to a more mature style, and she became the most accomplished writer of planetary romances of her day. She wrote a well-received series of stories featuring adventurer Eric John Stark, which began in the Summer 1949 Planet Stories with "Queen of the Martian Catacombs". Her work had a strong influence on other writers, in particular Gardner F. Fox, Lin Carter and Marion Zimmer Bradley, Brackett later argued that "the so-called space opera is the folk-tale, the hero-tale of our particular niche in history". Also arguing in support of Planet Stories, science fiction critic John Clute has commented that "the content was far more sophisticated than the covers". Bradbury's work for Planet Stories included two of the stories that he later incorporated into The Martian Chronicles, including "The Million Year Picnic"; only one other story in the series had appeared before this. He also collaborated on a story with Brackett, "Lorelei of the Red Mist", based on an idea of hers, which appeared in the Summer of 1946. His stories