Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars" (Startling Stories, Fall 1944). Early life and education Leigh Brackett was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her father died when she was very young; her mother did not remarry. She was a tomboy, "tall" and "athletic". She attended a private girls' school in Santa Monica, California, where she was involved in theater and began writing. Career Fiction writer Brackett first published in her mid-20s; the science fiction story "Martian Quest" appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Her earliest years as a writer (1940–42) were her most productive. Some of her stories have social themes, such as "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (1943), which considers the effects on alien cultures of Earth's expanding trade empire. At the time, she was an active member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), and participated in local science fiction fandom by contributing to the second issue of Pogo's STF-ETTE, an all-female science fiction fanzine (probably the first such). Brackett's first novel, No Good from a Corpse (1944), was a hard-boiled mystery novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler. The book led to her first big screenwriting assignment. After this, Brackett's science fiction stories became more ambitious. Shadow Over Mars (1944) was her first novel-length story; though rough-edged, it marked the beginning of a new style influenced by the characterization of the 1940s detective story and film noir. It won a Retro Hugo for best novel in 2020. Planet Stories published the novella "Lorelei of the Red Mist", in which the protagonist is a thief named Hugh Starke. Brackett finished the first half before turning it over to her close