However, since Green was one of the first people to put this down in print in this manner, they’re fairly foundational for how this sub-genre is understood (broadly speaking). To that end, Green outlines five main types of weird westerns: weird menace westerns, science fiction westerns, space westerns, steampunk westerns, and weird western romances.Īre these the only categories for weird westerns? Not necessarily. Westerns that include, for instance, zombies or aliens. Instead, it’s meant to describe westerns that, in essence, are genre mash-ups. In his Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns, Paul Green points out that the “weird” of “weird westerns” isn’t meant to describe things that are simply rare or unusual. But hopefully you get my drift: it’s the rogue cowpoke roving about on that trusty horse, six-shooter always within reach as the west is gradually populated by settler colonists. There’s a lot more to westerns than this, and a lot of interesting work has been done in the genre that’s worth paying attention to. Conventionally, they tend to feature archetypal characters (almost all male: cowboys, lawmen, outlaws, etc.) moving through a vast frontier that is alternately empty, antagonistic, or lawless. American histories of westward expansion. If you’re familiar with westerns (as a genre) you probably know the genre has its roots in U.S.
Before I go any further, let’s pause to think about westerns and weird fiction. Up until recently, the term has most frequently been used to talk about cinema, which is ironic given its roots in print media. As Anna Bogutskaya points out in her essay “ Where to Begin with the Weird West?” the term has its roots in the 1972 DC Comics anthology Weird Western Tales even though the genre-bending tendency for western mash-ups can be traced back at least a few decades prior to that.
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