Jackson Oakey Blevins Science Fiction 10 April 2017 Understanding Space Westrens Different types of science fiction subgenres have sprung up and dwindled down throughout recent times. One specific example of this is Space Westerns. space Westerns use the themes and tropes of Westerns within science fiction stories while taking place in space. These influences can include subtle things like the exploration of lawless frontiers, or the more extreme side with space cowboys riding robot horses and shooting ray guns. The origin of this sub genre can be traced back to late 1920s and early 1930s space opera comic strips such as Buck Rogers.
When superhero comics declined in popularity in 1940s America, Western comics and horror comics replaced them. Horror comics became untenable in the mid-1950s and science fiction themes and space Westerns grew more popular as a result and have continued to keep growing. This is thanks to works like Firefly and Star Trek along with others that borrow space Western type characters such as Star Wars. When exploring what it means for a work to be a space Western is important to look at a variety of literature and film whether it be influences or actual space Westerns.
Prime examples to analyze are Flash Gordon, Scarlet Dream, Lone Star Planet, Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Firefly, and Serenity. To begin, it is important to look at early influences. One of the earliest and most popular influences is Flash Gordon. The 1934 comic strip features Flash Gordon a famous polo player, his female companion Dale Arden, and Dr. Hans Zarkov. The 1980 movie says true to the comic only changing minor things such as Flash being a football player. The story involves Emperor Ming the Merciless declaring war on Earth and attempting to destroy it using natural disasters.
Flash and Dale are on a small plane, the cockpit is hit by a meteorite and the plane crash lands into a greenhouse owned by Zarkov. Zarkov secretly constructed a spacecraft which he plans to use to investigate the disasters. Zarkov’s assistant refuses to go, so he lures Flash and Dale aboard. The rocket launches, taking them to the planet Mongo, where They come into conflict with the planet’s ruler Ming. While the story is considered a space opera it can be argued as an early space Western because it involves the exploration of a new frontier. The idea of the cowboy with the white hat versus the cowboy with the black hat also appears.
Flash is the cowboy in the white hat and Ming is the cowboy with the black hat. This can be taken literally with Flash being the hero and Ming being as the villain, but it can also be recognized based off their physical appearance. For example Flash has blonde hair with a friendly face and Ming has darker hair with a much more menacing face. To continue, C. L. Moore created one of the first space Western characters NorthWest Smith. She wrote nine short stories that include NorthWest and the strange events that happen to him. While every story is separate from one another, they all share a similar theme of the mixture of light and dark.
For example, in the story Shambleau Smith saves a strange woman, from a group of people trying to hunt her. He takes her back to where he was staying and tells her that she can stay there until he leaves. Smith awakens in the night to see the lady taking her turban off, revealing herself to be a Medusa like creature. He makes eye contact with her, causing him to be too afraid to move. Her wormlike hair starts to enclose him and the experience is described as a ” dreadful pleasure ” (Moore 35). This blending of light and darkness is seen multiple times throughout every short story published about the character.
Other examples include a white mist guardian in a dark cave and women bred to be so beautiful that looking at them for longer than a few minutes would make a man go mad. All of the stories also contain some sort of horror element. From Smith’s conscience fighting for control of his body, him being stuck in a nightmare of a dream, and monsters from mythology trying to kill him it is easy to see why his stories could be considered sci-fi horror. However, all of the stories take the white and black hat idea from westerns and change it by introducing a grey hat proving that these are space Westerns.
Furthermore, John Joseph McGuire creates a world where the entirety of it is like Texas. The story’s main character, Stephen Silk, writes an article, illegally, under a pseudonym and gets found out by his superiors. As punishment he is assigned to be the Solar League’s new ambassador to the people of New Texas. They give him three tasks. they want him to find out why the previous ambassador was murdered, convince the people of New Texas to join the solar league, and forestall or expose the plans of the aliens that plan to attack New Texas. New Texas is identical to what the wild west was like.
The government has very little power over the people and has no army. Instead the people of New Texas possess all the weaponry. Ranchers have everything from tanks to AA guns. The author justifies the people needing this kind of weaponry because they herd 15 ton animals known as supercows. This book presents a world in which the assassination of politicians is accepted practice. People still go to court for killing a politician, however, all the court does is” ‘determine whether or not the politician needed it”’ (McGuire & Piper 28). It is justified that a politician needs to be killed to prevent the government from getting too powerful.
This story is used to show the flaws of technical feudalism and the libertarian notions of the idea that a politician is a servant of the people and lacks the rights of a person when in office. These ideas a criticized by showing that it does work until outside political realities begin to take form, the outside reality of the tale being the alien invasion. Subsequently, Mike Resnick creates a legend in his book Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future. The plot Santiago, who is the most wanted pirate in the galaxy and has evaded capture for thirty years, and the two bounty hunters who are hunting him, Songbird and Angel.
This story also features the white and black hat themes along with the notion that you cannot kill an idea. Songbird is an exrevolutionary who became a bounty hunter after deciding that no one is worth fighting for. It is important to look at his bounty hunter name, Songbird, and his real name, Cain. A songbird is someone who is described as anyone who consciously looks for the best in all people, places, and things and cain can simply be described as a murderer. Cain does not like his nickname, Songbird, because it reminds him of when he fought for revolutionist leaders who became what they fought against.
Angels name is also important to analyze. Someone who is an angel can be defined as a person whose actions and thoughts are consistently virtuous. Angel is also described as having hair so blond that it appears” almost white” having eyebrows that are “barely visible” and eyes that are ” practically clear “(Resnick 201). Based off of the meanings of the two character names, the character description of the Angel, and the notion that they are trying to accomplish the same goal, it is simple to see the mixing of light and dark in the story.
As for the notion that you cannot kill an idea this is represented through Santiago himself. After the Angel kills Santiago and Cain becomes the new Santiago and kills Angel, Cain buries the previous Santiago with two unmarked graves that he finds out where the previous two Santiagos that came before the man he took up the mantle from. The prologue of the book continues the legacy by describing how Cain dies and who the man that continues the legacy after him is. Finally, the show Firefly and the follow up movie Serenity uphold the idea of freedom as the moral absolute along with the importance of loyalty.
Both the T. V. show and the movie follow Malcolm Reynolds and his crew aboard the ship Serenity as they travel across the outskirts of outer space and take any jobs they can get legal or not. When observing the idea of freedom as the moral absolute. In his past Mal was an independent that fought against the Alliance in order to maintain his planet’s freedom. However, this fight was ultimately lost and his planet was forced to unify with the Alliance. To maintain his own freedom he flew outside of the Alliance’s reach, formed a crew and started taking any jobs he could.
The importance of loyalty comes from the connections between the crew. The strongest example of this is with River and Simon. Simon kidnaps his sister from an Alliance center where they were experimenting on her. They board Mal’s ship as transport to another planet and become a part of the crew due to Simon being a doctor. River is hunted by the Alliance because she contains information that they do not want to spread across other planets. Despite several opportunities to turn River and her brother in there is only one attempt to do so from the hired gun Jayne.
When this happens Mal makes it clear to Jayne that if he tries to betray any member of his crew, no matter the money, that he shoot him out of the ship. In conclusion, when looking at Flash Gordon, Scarlet Dream, Lone Star Planet, Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Firefly, and Serenity they provide a basis of which one can tell common themes and ideas of space Westerns. Examples of common themes include white hats vs. black hats, the importance of freedom, along with some others such as loyalty and not being able to kill an idea. Word Count 1696
