In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars" (Startling Stories, Fall 1944).

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.

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 friend[5] Ray Bradbury, so that she could leave to work on the screenplay of The Big Sleep.

Between 1948 and 1951, she produced a series of science fiction adventure stories that were longer than her previous work, including classic representations of her planetary settings as "The Moon that Vanished" and the novel Sea-Kings of Mars (1949).

Brackett adopted an elegiac tone in her stories, no longer celebrating the conflicts of frontier worlds but lamenting the passing of civilizations, and concentrating more on mood than plot.

"The Road to Sinharat" was an affectionate farewell to the world of "Queen of the Martian Catacombs", and the other, with the intentionally ridiculous title of "Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon", borders on parody.

[citation needed] Brackett and her husband shared Guest of Honor duties at the 22nd World Science Fiction Convention in 1965 in Oakland, California.

This trilogy brought Eric John Stark back for adventures on the extra-solar planet of Skaith (rather than his old haunts, Mars and Venus).

Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by her novel No Good from a Corpse that he had his secretary call in "this guy Brackett" to help William Faulkner write the script for The Big Sleep (1946).

Howard Hawks hired her to write or co-write several John Wayne pictures, including Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari!

Brackett wrote a finished first draft, titled "Star Wars sequel", that was delivered to Lucas shortly before her death from cancer on March 18, 1978, but her version was rejected and Lucas wrote two drafts of a new screenplay and, following the delivery of the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, turned them over to Lawrence Kasdan to rework some dialogue.

Yoda is named Minch, Luke has a hidden sister named Nellith, Lando Calrissian is Lando Kaddar, Luke's father is still a distinct character from Darth Vader and appears as a Force ghost on Dagobah, and Han Solo, at the end of the script, leaves to search for his uncle Ovan Marek, the most powerful man in the universe after the Emperor Palpatine.

John Saavedra of Den of Geek website wrote: Most importantly, you see that Brackett's draft, while definitely in need of a rewrite and several tweaks, holds all of the big moments we'd eventually see on screen.

We still get a version of the Battle of Hoth (a much more ridiculous one), the wise words of an old Jedi Master, the excitement of zooming through a deadly asteroid field, a love triangle (a MUCH more overt one), a majestic city in the clouds, unexpected betrayals, and the climactic duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader that we would reenact on playgrounds for years to come.

[15]On December 31, 1946, at age 31, Brackett married another science fiction writer, Edmond Hamilton,[2] in San Gabriel, California.