Six-Gun Planet

by John Jakes

Warner 84-721 $1.75

Genres: Science Fiction, Westerns, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections, Fiction

176 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

John William Jakes, the author of more than a dozen novels, is regarded as one of today’s most distinguished writers of historical fiction. His work includes the highly acclaimed Kent Family Chronicles series and the North and South Trilogy. Jakes’s commitment to historical accuracy and evocative storytelling earned him the title of “the godfather of historical novelists” from the Los Angeles Times and led to a streak of sixteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers. Jakes has received several awards for his work and is a member of the Authors Guild and the PEN American Center. He and his wife, Rachel, live on the west coast of Florida.

Also writes under pseudonyms Jay Scotland, Alan Payne, Rachel Ann Payne, Robert Hart Davis, Darius John Granger, John Lee Gray. Has ghost written as William Ard.

Reviews

[Dragisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Six-Gun Planet was released in April 1970 and from the opening lines you’re dropped onto Missouri, a backwater planet in the 23rd century where the locals - descendants of revolutionaries - decided that the best way to fix society was to rewind the clock all the way to 1880… complete with saloons, holographic communications to high noon showdowns, and robot ponies that occasionally short-circuit in spectacular fashion.

Zak Randolf is the perfect reluctant hero. He’s a civilized, gun-hating civil servant who loathes the macho code, the dust, the casual violence, and especially the fact that he keeps having to strap on a Sharp’s Six-Shot anyway. Watching him navigate the planet’s cartoonishly dangerous culture while nursing a secret passion for growing beautiful crystal jewelry in his walled garden is comedy gold. He’s equal parts fish-out-of-water and surprisingly tough customer. His job is to round up specimens -Living Antiques, they're called - to act out showdowns and other examples of frontier thrills for tourists. Unfortunately, one of his is contracts, Hansi Bonn, has gone AWOL, and it is up to Randolph to retrieve Bonn or else he will be held responsible. But since Randolph is a pacifist, he's going to have a hard time wrangling the hardcase Bonn to go back to being a Living Antique
The supporting cast is just as memorable: the hard-drinking, hard-shooting locals, the mysterious Buffalo Yung legend that refuses to stay buried, the cheerfully amoral peddler Dr. Buster, and the galaxy’s most exasperated interstellar importer, Mickolas Safrun. Every scene crackles with dialogue that feels like it was lifted from a classic Western… until someone casually mentions “zoogs” or a robot pinto’s wiring starts sparking. The blend of sci-fi tech and Old West swagger.

Jakes keeps the action relentless - midnight chases through cactus-spiked badlands, barroom brawls, and honest-to-goodness high-noon showdowns - but he never loses the heart. Underneath the gun smoke and robot hooves is a sly, affectionate poke at nostalgia, and the eternal human urge to romanticize the “good old days” that were actually pretty awful.

What starts as pure rollicking fun takes a sharp, sobering turn, revealing a biting political allegory about a culture that romanticizes violence and profits from its endless spectacle - especially resonant for a book published in 1970 amid real-world unrest. Jakes skewers genre clichés with clever flair yet never loses the heart or the thrills, delivering the perfect balance of laughs and deeper commentary that satisfies both western and sci-fi fans.

Six-Gun Planet critiques a culture that is obsessed with the spectacle of violence and that has created an economy that exploits and profits off its perpetuation, and even Zak Randolph isn't exempt from being complicit in this process. John Jakes also seems to be channeling Plato's parable of the cave in his depiction of a government that rules based on the shadow of threat.

Beneath the lampooning is a sobering political allegory for a society that idealizes the worst, most violent aspects of history with complete disregard for progress.

[Darnoc Leadburger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before he started writing familial sagas set in the Civil War, John Jakes (who died right before I bought this book at my favorite Nashville used bookshop, the event which encouraged me to pick this oddity up) wrote pulpy science fiction. That was enough to pull me in, but throw in the cool and colorful cover art and the western flavor and you've got me hooked. *Six-Gun Planet* succeeded in its quest to be an entertaining Western adventure, but it also reached for some deep themes that, while not entirely convincing, make this book worth your time if you're interested in obscure early 70s' science fiction.

*Six-Gun Planet* starts with the book's main character, Zak Randolph (an immigrant to backwater Missouri whose pacifistic streak runs contrary to the planet's culture) being attacked by Savages during his commute between the town of Shane and the nearest spaceport, where Zak speaks to his employer about the matter of a rogue Living Antique. Randolph - in addition to facilitating the offworld trade of Missouri-made trinkets - is in charge of hiring out natives as objects of curiosity to rich space-faring folks; don't worry, it's more of a historical amusement service than slavery. One of those reluctant entertainers, Hansi Bonn, broke his contract and ran away to hide in Shane. Zak is tasked with recovering him while on the phone with his employer, and after buying a new robotic pinto (horse), Zak heads home. He meets his old friend Buster Levinson the travelling salesman along the way and they chew the fat about the legendary gunfighter Buster Young, specifically about how someone supposedly killed him a couple towns over. Afterwards, Zak gets home to both his beautiful crystal gardens (which his neighbors make fun of him for) and to Belle, Shane-born prostitute who dates Zak on the side. Unfortunately, Zak fails to bring in Bonn promptly, leading to harassment from both his Cosfed (Cosmic Federation) boss and the other local outlaws...

The next few weeks are difficult for Zak; the outlaws tease him about his unwillingness to raise a gun (even Belle gets in on that) and his already flaccid reputation around Shane takes a nosedive when he arranges for a couple interstellar tourists to watch a staged gunfight in Shane, a production ruined by Hansi Bonn giving a cameo appearance that leads to Zak stampeding through the show and causing Cosfed to cut off all commerce with Shane. He's able to keep an angry townspeople off his back (or at least afraid of him) by calling in a Cosfed-enforced ban of liquor in the town based off obscure ruling, which only provides a brief respite from the outlaws as they soon return with reinforcements in the form of legendary Buster Yung and his three-man entourage. This shouldn't be possible since he's a *dead* legend (not just a legend), but he's still there, it's enough to push Zak over the ledge he'd been being nudged off for the rest of the book; he grows violent and has Buster implant gunfighting skills in his mind which help him shoot Buster Young and win the fight. After the gunfight's lethal conclusion, Zak meets Yung after he comes back to life - he's a robot, you see - for a talk about how the founders of modern Missouri created him to make sure that the planet's towns didn't turn into *communities*, that they kept on being good little pools of anarchy. The book ends with Zak's return to town, where he starts calculating things like his new life with Belle, what he wants to ban and when he wants to unban it, and how he needs to kill his old friend Buster because he knows too much...

While I didn't realize it until the end of the novel, *Six-Gun Planet* tells two stories concurrently: Zak Randolph's and the people of Missouri's. It treads the fine line between character, worldbuilding, and theme relatively well. There are some issues that prevent it from being a highly notable work of scale and scope, but it's still a good (albeit occasionally oblivious) story which is strung together with pretty competent prose. I use the word "competent" instead of praises like "beautiful" and "fine" because there's nothing really special going on (I don't even remember pointing out any cool turn-of-phrase), but the action is always clear and the dialogue helps bring what depth the characters have to their name vibrantly off the page.

These characters are more or less stereotypes - the drunken horse-riding bullies, the beautiful yet homely prostitute, a town drunk, the wandering trader, etc - but they're distinct enough to make the town of Shane feel lived-in. The only character with any real growth is Zak Randolph, which is kind of a double-edged sword; while he starts this book as a pacifist, we barely ever find out where he came from or why he has the beliefs that he does. It makes his descent into Western brutality feel a little less grounded, which isn't the end of the world, but it could've been a lot closer to literary catastrophe if it wasn't propped up by *Six-Gun Planet*'s themes. Before that, though, let's talk about the world of Missouri itself.

Missouri is a world whose inhabitants chose to live in a faux-American West after they rebelled and overthrew the more enlightened, technologically advanced human colonies that had existed there before. *Six-Gun Planet* is set several generations downstream of that decision but is nonetheless casted with characters who believes that rootin'-and-tootin' is a more honorable and satisfying way of life than one with advanced technology and rules that ban killin' and the like. It's a bit ironic that their economy and their flow of liquor is bound to the fate of the Cosfed due to its similarities to how American Indians grew dependent on white Americans for goods, but that vector isn't really explored here. What matters is that, despite the robot horses (and the robot gunfighter, whose mechanical existence I called at the beginning of the book), this is a far more enveloping experience than that seen in Chrichton's famous and somewhat similar film*Westworld*.

Speaking of *Westworld*, there's a popular science fiction book with themes that *Six-Gun Planet* reminded me of which I can only write about through spoiler tags because having it ticking away in your subconscious would ruin the last part of the book. That novel is Isaac Asimov's *Foundation* (yes, and its sequels). If you don't know, that book is about how a "psychohistorian" named Hari Seldon predicts the fall of humanity's interstellar empire and puts plans for a "Foundation" (which will serve as a refuge for human knowledge and culture) into place. It relates to *Six-Gun Planet* because Buster Yung reveals at the end of the book that he was created by Missouri's "founders" in order to stifle any towns that start showing respect for "law 'n order" in the bud by going to them and getting shot down by the kind of men whom they presumed would be good ambassadors of backwater brutality. When Zak Randolph, Lifelong Pacifist hears this, you'd think he'd hate Yung and what his creators stand for, but he actually finds himself subtly seduced by the doctrine and ends up a gun-toting tyrant back in Shane, which the town is bound to welcome. It's a really interesting bit of psychohistory and fictional insight into human nature which would've been really chilling if Zak Randolph had been a better-written character. Still, the book's even handling of characters, worldbuilding, and theme are all neccesary to make it work as well as it does.

That being said, Zak Randolph is still underdone enough to seriously undercut the emotions that this book could've stirred, and its virtues still may lie more in what I think this book could've been rather been instead of what it really was. With that in mind, while I still enjoyed this book and probably liked it a little bit more in retrospect, it still only gets 7/10. The modern reader might not find too much pleasure in it, and I must admit that I had to revisit its pages while reviewing because I forgot a good chunk of the book's middle sections. Still, it's a science fictional western with something to say (even if that something is quite theoretical), and I'd definitely pick up more Jakes' of a similar vintage if I found them in the wild. I look forward to reading more SF-westerns this year, and hope you'll join me in exploring this nearly-forgotten corner of literature that might still have something to teach us after all...

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this way back in the day and don't remember a whole lot about it. It was set on the planet Missouri and the main antagonist was a robot outlaw named Buffalo Young.

[Zachary Naylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

An inventive if palavering sci-fi story.

There were some shining moments, and the concept of a far-off future western (wrought by an ironic attempt to inspire order after a messy revolution) is so memorably weird that it carries the story early on. The trappings and satirical character mesh well enough--it's a very literal "space western", but takes the logic behind such a situation in a different direction.

Faults of this book are basically inspired by its "satire". It's a "funny" book, but not really a "ha-ha" book, expressing most of its commentary through cynical weariness, aggressive and unlikable characters, and a surprisingly downbeat conclusion. These faults are mostly seen through the central character Zak: suffice to say, whether the forlorn underdog or the up-and-coming top dog, he's not terribly enjoyable and seems victim to the whims of the narrative voice's eye-rolling.

The plot starts to drag a little towards the end (though short, I found this oddly hard to get through), which is held aloft by some effective twists, readable prose, some decent action, and a well-rounded denouement. Not the best western, sci-fi, satire, comedy, or commentary you're likely to find, but is there really any other book like this? That's harder to say, and will likely give it a place on my shelf as a result.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was provisionally on board with switching out the usual "post-apocalyptic feudalism" conceit with a "post-apocalyptic Western" conceit, but that isn't where Jakes was going. On the surface, yes, the inhabitants adopted the tropes as filtered through centuries of media for reasons that I never bothered to understand, but it is all propped up by advanced technology and is sort of a boutique culture within a galactic civilization.

Jakes plays with the artificiality and self-awareness of the situation--the horses are robots and the inhabitants manufacture trinkets for export--but the execution never seems to grab hold of either elevator pitch. Instead, it mires in a protagonist worse than 'unlikeable'. He is boring, and he does boring things. This could be part of the satire, where Westerns usually waste no time to hook the plots and start the action, but I just couldn't get interested in what was happening or what could possibly happen.

[Tobias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unterhaltsamer Mix aus Western und SciFi. Dabei wechseln sich slapstickartige Szenen mit ernster, fast dystopischer Gesellschaftskritik ab.


Notizen an mich:

Die Bewohner des Planeten Missouri haben die Werte des „wilden Westens“ idealisiert, obwohl sie in einer technologisch fortgeschrittenen, postatomaren Ära leben. Das kann wohl als Allegorie auf damalige politische Verhältnisse gedeutet werden, die auch heute noch relevant ist.

Die Figuren und ihr Ringen um Macht, Recht und Moral sind oft widersprüchlich und regen zu philosophischer Reflexion an.

Die Frage nach dem Recht der Stärkeren spielt eine zentrale Rolle, insbesondere durch Figuren wie Yung, die das Gesetz durchsetzen oder herausfordern. Es ist zweifelhaft, ob Macht wirklich durch „Stärkere“ ausgeübt wird oder ob die eigentliche Kontrolle und Manipulation komplexer ist.

[Noah Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a blitz read Spaghetti Western set in a sci-fi future. It's a tight delivery, very short.

The twists were interesting enough, a lot of the characters are one dimensional, but definitely worth burning an hour on.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

First I must point out: Zak is the biggest freakin’ whiner. I’m not sure whether we were supposed to identify with him or find him funny – all I felt towards him was distain. And that’s pretty disheartening since the novel takes places very solidly around him. Yet, as a whole, the novel was interesting. It did a great job fusing old west with the future and I could clearly picture what the town looked like. The tension was good too: the plot moved fast enough that you were never bored reading it. And it was fun; it was clearly a novel that wasn’t meant to be serious, but it wasn’t stupid by any means. Some of these strange sci-fi novels I buy at used book stores are terrible – I’m not sure who decided to publish them or why – but this one was well done. It was a solid novel. It had a purpose. It was funny at times but also serious; it was a pastiche of a Western in a very roundabout way. Overall, it was a good book – I enjoyed it.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An example of what Jakes wrote before he did his bestselling historic sagas. A witty satire of the western and space opera that has some interesting world building. The shoot-'em-up get thoughtful about galactic colonization and what revolution can create.