Wild Wild West Revisited: A Few Last Words

 

Previously: Part One | Part Two

Whenever we talk about the Wild Wild West fiasco, I usually let it slip that one of the reasons why I found the project appealing was that someone over at Warner Books suggested that if the book was a commercial success, it could lead to a series of WWWest-branded steampunk westerns, to be authored by yours truly. 

Whether this idea was mere speculation or bait to get me to sign the contract doesn’t matter now. The movie flopped. The book flopped. Even if the movie and book had been wildly successful, though, the people who owned the Wild Wild West intellectual property had sold all other book rights to another publisher, thus there would never be another Warner Books Wild Wild West novel. End of story.

Still, whenever we wander through the back roads of this particular bit of my personal history, someone invariably asks, “Well, why not write your own non-WWWest steampunk western novels?” After all, there are tons of successful SF/F series out there that are basically Not Exactly Star Trek, or Not Quite Star Wars, or Not Entirely Starship Troopers. The sheer volume of Not Precisely Tolkien novels that are out there—and selling very well, thank you—boggles the mind. So why not write Not Close Enough to Wild Wild West to be Actionable?

Even my own interior monologue, which I hope you can’t hear, chimes in to amplify and add to the question.

You’ve loved the Desert Southwest ever since you first visited Arizona in 1964. Your heroes have always been cowboys. [No, they weren’t. Shut up, Willie.] You’ve always been fascinated by the historical period from the end of the American Civil War to the beginning of World War I. It was a time of incredibly fast technological innovation and scientific advancement, coupled with dramatic social and political ferment. Why not write your own series of western steampunk adventures?

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five compelling reasons.

1. The time to have done this was twenty years ago. 

At that time we would have been talking about developing a series that was already pre-sold to a major publisher, that had at least some promotional and advertising muscle behind it, and for which there would have been a decent on-signing advance. If I was to attempt to do these novels now, I’d have to do them on spec, and either hope to find a publisher or more likely self-publish them. That’s something I don’t have the time or patience to do now.

2. Western fiction ain’t quite dead yet, but it’s coughing blood and lookin’ a mite peaked. 

Louis L’Amour Western Magazine is dead and buried. Western Story is but a dim memory. A very small handful of fiction magazines devoted to publishing new Western content still exist—e.g., Frontier Tales—but they pay in contributor’s copies and/or chump change. If you look for a Western section in your local bookstore, you’ll find it’s full of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey reprints, and maybe a few Larry McMurtry or Tony Hillerman novels. If you look for Western fiction online, you’ll find far more cowboy and cowgirl porn than you ever thought possible. Yippee-ti-yay, ride ‘im, Reverse Cowgirl!

There is a subgenre of Weird Westerns, but it’s quite small, has a limited readership, and is mostly full of horror stories.

3. Steampunk isn’t dead, but it sure does smell funny.

When steampunk began, with Gibson and Sterling’s The Difference Engine, it did so with a genuinely interesting sci-fi premise: “What if Charles Babbage’s mechanical computers had actually worked, and brought serious computational power to Victorian-era society?”

Sadly, while steampunk began with great promise, it quickly became apparent that after a very short list of seminal works (e.g., Paul Di Filippo’s Steampunk Trilogy), it really did not have much to say. Even faster than cyberpunk decayed into LitRPG, steampunk became a style: all set-dressing, no substance. Instead of interesting excursions into possible alternate histories we got clockwork and corsets, which ultimately morphed into steampunk-flavored paranormal romance.

Admittedly that subgenre sells well, but it bores the living crap out of me.

4. You can’t fight the legacy of Bat Durston, Space Marshal.

Science fiction fans do not like Western in their science fiction. Do not, do not, do not. To some extent this is because of John W. Campbell Jr. and how he actively worked to deform the science fiction genre and make it a thing apart from all other pulp genres, but even more so it’s the fault of Horace Gold, founding editor of Galaxy magazine. I could go on and on at great length about this, and perhaps another time I will, but I want to get this column finished today. Therefore, suffice to say that I want you to imagine this scene:

[EXTERIOR, DAYLIGHT: A busy city street corner. A science fiction fan, head-down in a pulp magazine as he walks, rounds the corner and accidentally collides head-on with an equally distracted Western fan coming from the other direction.]

WESTERN FAN: “Hey! You got science fiction in my Western! What is this weird shit?”

SCI-FI FAN: “Hey! You got Western in my science fiction! It smells funny!”

BOTH, IN UNISON: “I HATE IT!”

5. Finally…

To put it simply: you cannot write a period Western—even an alternate-history period Western—without including Native American characters. And while I’ve lived my entire life around Native Americans, gone to school with, worked alongside, and even been related by marriage to Native Americans, I know that just as soon as I write a Native American character, some idiot White Savior is going to take it upon herself to school me on what a horrible person I am for doing so, given that I myself am not a Native American.

Seems far-fetched? In the world of 1999, it might have been. But we live in the world of now, where the NCAA can force the University of North Dakota “Fighting Sioux” to change their name and mascot, even though a significant percentage of the student population is Sioux, and at least two tribal councils passed resolutions supporting the old name and objecting to changing it.

Like I need to deal with that aggravation…

_______________

For every example, someone can always cite a counter-example. Most science fiction fans reading this likely will jump straight to Firefly and say, “See! We can accept Western themes in science fiction!”—in the process completely disregarding the fact that Firefly was a dismal flop in its initial run and only became a fan favorite and cult classic years later, when it was re-released on DVD. A few others might cite Cowboys & Aliens, which I’ll admit I have watched, and classify as stupid fun. (Aliens have come here to steal our gold? Seriously, were they inspired by watching Battlefield Earth?)

Personally, I would rather direct your attention to the TV series from which I lifted the above photo, of beloved science fiction and horror movie star Bruce Campbell, in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. 

To which you’re most likely to respond, “Huh? Never heard of it.”

Wherein lies the problem. For me to write my own series of steampunk westerns would not just require me to write the books, and would not just require me to create yet another new subgenre: I would have to create an entirely new audience.

Believe me, that’s a lot harder than it looks.