Ever since the subject of Wild Wild West came up again, I’ve been thinking critically about the dichotomy between science fiction and the Western pulp genre. I’ve developed a theory that I think I will write more about later, but right now, I’m wondering why Western motifs and thematic elements work so well for horror and with such difficulty in hard science fiction.
My memory is colored by the fact that I spent a lot of money on our spinoff anthology series, Tales From The Wild Weird West, only to have it fail in development and never reach release. Looking back at the facts of the matter, though, we’ve actually published quite a bit of fiction that veers into Western territory. Some examples:
“The Dead Barn,” by Amy Caylor - A Western post-zombie-Apocalypse story currently out in Stupefying Stories #23.
“Rain Charmer,” by Gef Fox - A clever little tale of being careful what you wish for, currently out in Stupefying Stories #22. I’d call this a story with a Native American motif, except that Gef is Canadian, so the proper term is First Nations.
“The New Herd,” by Lilliana Rose - Snarky, fun; better yet, it’s free, as it snuck in during one of the periods when we were trying to reboot SHOWCASE as a webzine. Read it now!
“Princess Nicotine,” by John Skylar - A cyberpunk Western, if you will. Published in SS#18, which is now out of print. Too bad you missed it.
“I Live the Warrior’s Life,” by Robert Lowell Russell - Plenty of people write stories in which the veil between worlds is pierced and monsters from the Other Side cross over into our world. Robert had the imagination to realize that in North America we’d get things from the Eastern Woodlands folklore, and they had some real nightmares. This story was so good we made it the cover for SS#16.
“Long Cold Wish,” by Laura DeHaan - Also in SS#16, a really creepy and first-rate paranormal mystery that I’ll probably tap for our Best of anthology, if we ever do one.
“Red Dust and Dancing Horses,” by Beth Cato - Just because a girl is growing up under a dome on Mars, that doesn’t mean she can’t be obsessed with horses, does it? This one first appeared in SS#5 and has been anthologized so many times since then that it almost seems unnecessary to reprint it, but I am really proud that we were the first to publish this one.
This is just a short list of the stories that spring immediately to mind. I’m sure there have been more.
1 comments:
The reason hard sci-fi and westerns don't mix is because there is not now nor was there ever such a place as the Wild West. It is a mythos derived from real places,events, and people who do not easily fit into the tropes assigned to them from the very beginning. Ultimately, hard science fiction has to fall back on reality, and the reality of the time and place that was being misrepresented in fiction even as it was happening, are so different from the legends that they are effectively an unrelated realm that just shares some names.
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