.L. Gold, the talented and cantankerous editor of the fondly remembered Galaxy sci-fi magazine of the 1950s, used to publish a statement of sorts on its back page.
It was two columns of type. On one side you had a text that said, roughly, "As Bart Smith and his faithful steed cleared the ridge above the Lazy-J ranch, a shot rang out." Right next to it, you had a different text reading, "As Bat Durston guided his spaceship to a landing on Planet X, a ray gun fired."
Gold's then announced, "You'll never see it in Galaxy!" "It," of course, was space opera, which to a classic sci-fi reader might be defined as a story from another genre (in this case, a pulp magazine western) turned into SF by simply translating terms.
But it is a reminder of the opinion, strongly held within the sci-fi community then and now, that mixing genres doesn't work.
It might explain the failure of Joss Whedon's Firefly.
Firefly was a one-hour sci-fi series that premiered on Fox on Sept. 20, 2002. It celebrated the adventures of a starship called the Serenity and its diverse crew of nine, who were trying to survive on the fringes of a repressive interstellar society some 500 years in the future.
The world of the Alliance and the Serenity was unique in recent filmed sci-fi in that the only sentient beings were humans. "No aliens, monsters or robots," according to one account.
Firefly was born of a bad marriage
On the surface, this sounds like a perfectly workable concept for a sci-fi series, a variation on the venerable model of Star Trek, Farscape, Andromeda and even Battlestar Galactica. (Some quite well-known written sci-fi posits a future in which humans are the only sentient beings in the known galaxy—check out Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels.)
In interviews, creator Joss Whedon cited the inspiration of Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. (Shaara, by the way, was a contributor to Galaxy magazine in the early 1950s.) The goal, apparently, was the creation of a future in which spaceflight was taken for granted, in which human struggles on an endless frontier took precedence over the wonders of the universe.
I've already written of my admiration for Whedon's work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His shows are smart, funny and clearly the work of a writer who understands his material.
Yet Firefly was troubled before it even aired. Fox was reportedly unhappy with the pilot, and insisted that Whedon and co-writer Tim Minear craft a new "first" episode.
(This in itself isn't necessarily fatal. After all, the same thing happened with the original Star Trek—twice, I believe.)
Firefly premiered, the ratings were indifferent, and by December 2002, after a run of less than a dozen episodes, it was "on hiatus," and has now, I hear, been officially canceled.
Mixing genres is a noble and often successful strategy. Dean Koontz does it in many of his novels, blending the thriller with sci-fi. I've even tried it myself.
But there is something about the marriage of sci-fi and the western that is as fatally flawed as it is irresistible.
Don't go west, young astronaut
Look at Peter Hyams' feature film Outland (1981). This story of the sheriff of a mining colony on one of Jupiter's moons must have seemed like a slam dunk. Film it, and wait for the money to roll in. The pitch—"A sci-fi High Noon"—sold itself. It starred Sean Connery; it had a gritty, post-Alien production design.
But Outland failed, too, another sci-fi western biting the interstellar dust.
The problem is the nature of the two genres. A western story is all about nostalgia for a lost frontier. (A frontier that almost certainly never existed.) Look at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which begins with a bank robber bemoaning the newfangled high-security banks that have destroyed his lifestyle. Look at John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which tells the tale of a U.S. cavalry scout who is retiring. Or Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, the adventures of two retired Texas Rangers making one last cattle drive to Montana.
A book publisher once told me that readership of western novels is almost exclusively restricted to men over the age of 55.
Then look at sci-fi, where the classic stories, from Dune to Stranger in a Strange Land to Neuromancer to Star Wars, are about young men who possess amazing, almost magical powers—and don't know it.
The classic sci-fi story is not, by the way, about science—though some sort of speculative element is usually helpful.
When Star Wars was first released, a number of sci-fi publications criticized it as "space opera"—that is, a western posing as sci-fi. Nope. Star Wars uses all the basic elements of real sci-fi. Young dirt farmer Luke Skywalker is really a Jedi in training, etc.
How do you tell a story in which a hero's best days are behind him (western) and at the same time, yet to be lived (sci-fi?)
As we say in the writing trade, you fall between two stools. Before you know it, you're on hiatus.
But then there's Star Trek—originally pitched by Gene Roddenberry, the story goes, as Wagon Train to the stars. (Wagon Train, for those of you born after the Nixon administration, was a western television series.) I have a tough time seeing the classic "young man discovers his powers" in any of the Treks.
Yet they have worked for 30-some years.
This is television we're talking about, right? Where eight out of 10 new series fail to survive two seasons on the schedule. Where no new drama of any genre has been an immediate hit since E.R. Where X-Files and C.S.I. took two seasons to find an audience.
Could it be that Fox had insufficient faith in Whedon and his concept? Is it possible that if Firefly had been given at least a whole season to find itself creatively, and reach an audience, it might have become another Star Trek?
We'll never know.
Michael Cassutt has written scripts for a number of sci-fi series, from Max Headroom to Odyssey 5, but no Westerns. His new novel, Tango Midnight, will be published by Forge in November 2003.
