Born: 7 December 1915, United States
Died: 18 March 1978
Country most active: United States
Also known as: George Sanders
American author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, nicknamed the “Queen of Space Opera”, was one of the most prominent female writers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the mid-20th century. Her earliest published story, Martian Quest, appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Her first novel, No Good from a Corpse, was published in 1944, and helped launch her screenwriting career. On that side, she primarily wrote Western and crime movies, and worked on an early draft of the Star Wars film The Empire Strike Back, though she died before it went into production.
In 1956, she became the first woman shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel for her book The Long Tomorrow. She was one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award, with C. L. Moore. In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as Shadow Over Mars in 1944.