Happy Comet Tails to You. . . Until We Meet Again
I live out West, but my heart, my head, and my spirit have always been in the stars.
Mind you, I was born on the East Coast, raised in the Upper Midwest, and lived in the South before heading to Colorado and Arizona, which, I guess, makes me somewhat a traditionalist when it comes to editing Westward travel. But even more than my physical journey, my soul sought out the unexplored places in our universe through science and science fiction.
I could chalk up my youthful corruption to Gene Rodenberry and George Lucas, but that story has been told by me, and many others, who also have the same influences. I’m a nerd, a geek, a dork; probably with influences not that different than you. I fell into anime early, too, with Starblazers and Robotech. Again, it’s a story many of my peers can share. And while on the topic of sharing stories, let me tell you what you’re in for on this Last Train.
In these pages are stories that might surprise you, such as an alien ballad by M. Tod Gallowglas and the “lost” script for The Roy Rogers Show—in outer space!—by David Afsharirad. We’ve got first time Baen authors such as Dr. Chesya Burke and Kelli Fitzpatrick. You’ll also find favorites writing in their most popular worlds like Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Liaden Universe ®), Kevin Ikenberry (The Four Horsemen), and Mark L. Van Name (Jon and Lobo). I always try to approach all anthologies with the idea of covering all angles: old, new, familiar, and experimental. And I’m confident this volume will satisfy all your Space Western needs.
But there is still a question I’m asked, and I don’t know that I’ve ever answered well enough for the questioner’s satisfaction, nor really my own. . .
Why Space Westerns?
The easiest answer I given is that this genre shares more with Space Opera than Weird Westerns and, if Baen is known for anything, it’s excellence in that arena. Many of their authors responded to my call and have honored me with their amazing words.
The other answer I give is that Space Westerns have a long and exciting history, not just in television and movies. Even before Saturday drive-in serials with their jetpacked space marshals, there were stories written that combined the two genres together. Starting as far back as the late ’30s with Catherine Lucille (C.L.) Moore’s Northwest Smith in the pages of Weird Tales, authors have scribed the concept of humanity out among the unexplored stars. Characters like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Gil “The Arm” Hamilton wowed early readers with their exploits, so who wouldn’t want to play in the new frontier of space?
But neither answer truly explains my drive to delve in a cross-genre that some critics have said weakens both of its progenitors. It’s always a risk that with any genre blend, that by breaking established tropes, authors are forced to rely on worn clichés rather than creating something unique. Darin Bradley seconded this idea in his essay, “The Space Western—Genre’s Unwanted, Weird Cousin” (2022), when he writes about early space westerns, “Space is a wild animal that needs breaking, which will mean some bloody noses. However, the Western story is primarily trapped in the past, tethered to the bloody, racist period that gave rise to its central myths. Unless you’re deconstructing old Western motifs, you’re trafficking in the social and cultural norms of the period.” Bradley goes on to talk about “frontier justice” being an excuse for murder hidden beneath a white hat, and that, “like the Westerns before, the space Western’s world is usually a capitalistic, non-egalitarian place that prizes exploration as consumption [. . . ] it takes some of the worst, most competitive, most exploitative aspects of contemporary culture and throws them into the future. Meaning, that we don’t have much hope of evolving or advancing as a species.”
But Bradley is wrong in many ways. He assumes that these types of stories were cookie-cutter [AI produced?] copies of each other. Speculative fiction writing has evolved since the pulps across all genres, not just Space Westerns, with crafters breathing in the reality of space expansion, be it the hardships of war, life, and death and the effect it has on their characters and supporting cast. Choices have consequences and “the good guys” wrestle with the impact their decisions have on both their society and other civilizations.
Steampunk, Paranormal Romance, and Science Fiction Noir have all managed to establish themselves as legitimate cross-genres despite initial criticism and some unfortunate examples of the art. But all it takes is one exceptional story that taps into the zeitgeist and then, as Antonio Garcia Martinez said, “Success forgives all sins.” The same can be said of the Space Western. The cult following of Firefly and the success of The Expanse (in both novel and television forms) demonstrates that a well-told story will bring the people regardless of what genres are conscripted to create it. Guardians of the Galaxy, The Mandalorian, Cowboy Bebop, and many others lend to the idea that those with open minds and hearts will watch science fiction wrapped in a Western motif and enjoy it thoroughly. Publishers have not shied away from the genre, either, publishing novels by female authors who picked up C.L.’s torch, such as Nancy Kress, Susan R. Matthews, Becky Chambers, Essa Hansen, and Valerie Valdez.
When discussing the Western, Lee Clark Mitchell wrote that the Western genre offers “the opportunity for renewal, for self-transformation, for release from constraints with the urbanized East,” which then translates over to Space Westerns as release from the constraints of an urbanized Earth. In the world-building of many science-fiction stories, the idea that our planet of birth can no longer offer the protagonist what it promised is common. Pestilence. War. Famine. Death. Pick the Horseman of your choice. Earth sucks in most space sagas and we just can’t get away soon enough. As is often the case, though, we bring those very things we’re looking to flee from with us, or they follow soon after. This is where the Space Western can separate itself from its Earth-bound predecessor.
Robert Murray Davis analyzed where the genre really begins to create its own, unique voice in his article “The Frontiers of Genre: Science-Fiction Westerns.” It starts with time and setting, and how a Western is time-locked, while the Space Western is not: “In the Western, the outcome of this conflict is in effect decided for the hero by the presence of history, once and for all, in the story’s implied future if not in its dramatic present, while the SF hero, with all of history theoretically before him, is free, or condemned, to define himself by motion.” We know how the Old West turned into the New West or Modern West. Short of delving into alt-history, we cannot change that. But future history is always evolving, and can never be “tamed.”
Davis takes apart Bradley’s earlier comments regarding economic survival and motive, when he writes that while “the ideology of expansion takes greed or at least acquisitiveness more or less for granted as a motive and sanctions force as an instrument, acquisitiveness in the Western is essentially nostalgic, and not only because it is safely in the past but because it was a major feature of the cultural code of America between 1880 and the turn of the century.” Many settlers, such as the ones in Louis L’Amour’s Sacketts series, want to acquire land to settle down, to stop moving. “In SF, however, the economic motive for exploration and expansion is often more a pretext than a serious goal [. . . ] Han Solo and many other SF heroes seek money not to stop but in order to keep going.” Many Space Westerns reflect more the modern ideology that every person is just working to make it to the next paycheck, the next score. Series like Star Trek, which throw away the concept of “economic motives,” replace that big score with the need to answer a riddle of why? Why do some races act the way they do, and should they be left to do that, or create solutions that ultimately turn them into us, a theme seen often in Westerns.
And while the corollaries between the Native Americans and alien races certainly seem to be obvious, there are many differences in how the “enemy” is portrayed. Often, we never see the enemy for a long time or at all, such as in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, or The Expanse (based on the novels by James S.A. Corey). This is in stark contrast to the massive “Indian Wars” presented in Western novels and movies. The enemy is more their technology’s effect on us than their personal presence, with battleships, weapons, and such masking the true wielders behind them. Davis echoes this: “The hero should triumph not because [they have] better technology but because, as numberless good gunfighters have explained [they have] superior moral attributes. In SF, it is typically ‘our’ technology against ‘their’ technology, and frequently the opponents cannot even see each other. In the worst case, they do not even regard each other as sentient beings.”
Finally, Davis summarizes the difference between Westerns and Space Westerns as such: “it is arguable that the Western celebrates the physical, the individual, the instinctive and unarticulated life, the static and timeless. SF, on the other hand, exalts the cerebral, the social, the technological, the changing and developing.” Westerns can rely too heavily on a good ol’ gunfight, or fistfight, to resolve their third act. Space Westerns will conversely set a timer or countdown to that fight, while the heroes race to find a way to avoid it. This analysis cannot cover the breath or scope or all things “branded” Western or Space Western, as anyone can point out a plethora of examples where this critique is betrayed, but when taking in the genre as a whole, these notions are the core of what defined them for decades, and possibly what we seek to defy in modern storytelling.
But there are other things that Davis doesn’t talk about, maybe more due to the era he wrote in than anything else, and that’s how the Space Western has also given rise to more diversity in gender, race, religion, and ideology than the Western ever could. In her introduction to Women’s Space: Essays on Female Characters in the 21st Century’s Science Fiction Western, editor Melanie A. Marotta states that in the traditional Western, most female characters were either prostitutes, assassins, or femme fatales, but the modern Western starting in the ’90s “permits freedom for the female character.” No longer trapped as the dutiful wife or love interest, female protagonists were commanders, engineers, scientists, and doctors. “Killjoys, Dark Matter, and The Expanse, all television series that revolve around the concept of the frontier and the capable female character. With 2015 came televised productions and literary constructions bringing strong female leads to audiences, ones that defy the pioneer woman/prostitute woman constructions standard in representations of the West.”
It wasn’t like there weren’t strong, independent women in the real West. One only has to read biographies like A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, by Isabella Bird, or any book about Molly Brown, Annie Oakley, or Baby Doe Tabor to begin your search of capable Pioneer women. In doing research for my Weird Western novel, The Drowned Horse Chronicle, I’ve acquired dozens of books and read countless essays about women in the Old West who defied the caricature made of them in movies and early Westerns. But with the Science Fiction Western and Space Opera, a reader doesn’t have to go far to find fictionalized women of power, strength, and independence. From the long-running Honor Harrington series and its many Honorverse spin-offs, to the more recent Daisy Kutter, the protagonist of Kazu Kibuishi’s series, the future is rife with great leading ladies.
More Space Western books are published daily with Black, Asian, Indian, Native American, LGTBQ, Hindu, or Muslim protagonists. These stories have become readily available due to the growth in independent and self-publishing over the last twenty years. There is literally no type of protagonist you cannot find in a Space Western or Space Opera. And, to me, that is what makes writing and editing this genre so exciting. I never know what type of story I’ll get (despite asking for two-line pitches beforehand).
As I said at the beginning, I’ve always tried to balance styles, protagonists, and themes because you can’t fully analyze a topic unless you’ve explored it from every angle. And that’s what themed anthologies are supposed to do, present not just a one-sided discourse, but open a discussion among its readers about what worlds they explored within these pages. I hope that when you’ve finished Last Train from Kepler-283c, a story in here will excite you enough, as they have me, to discuss with your peers, your friends, and your family. Post reviews. That’s the only way for me, as an editor, and my authors to know if we entertained, enlightened, and maybe even educated you a tiny little bit. That’s always my goal. I’m honored you allowed me the chance to do it.
So, again, why did I pick Space Westerns for this trilogy of anthologies?
*looks up slyly from his keyboard*
Why else? They’re hella fun.
Faithfully submitted this date, August 23rd, 2023.
DB