Weird Fiction discussion

Do you ever read westerns? I read straight westerns on occasion. In fact, I have read and enjoyed three in the last three months. The weird western is its own sub-genre. Maybe we should consider it here. Give it one month per year as a group read.

There have been films made in it, books and comic books too. But I don't think I've ever seen or read a film or book in the sub-genre. I'm a little more familiar with the comic book aspect. However, Jonah Hex as a character never did much for me. I bought one Scalphunter in the late 1970s and never bought another. I am referring to this entire comic book series devoted to the sub-genre: https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TI...

This book about weird westerns looks to be of interest: Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television and Games.

So, can any fans here of the weird western expound on what makes it worthwhile? I obviously can't.

I'm trying to decide if Tim Curran's Skull Moon or Skin Medicine count as Weird Western, or if they're just straight horror.

The nuances, they are too subtle for me.

Jonathan Moon's Hollow Mountain Dead is probably closer to the mark.

Well, there are some GR lists, if we're looking for books:

1) https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8...
2) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
3) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

are the three most helpful; maybe of tangential aid, we find:

4) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
5) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Looking over these lists I see I've read two weird westerns after all:

1) The Gunslinger, which I gave 3 stars. I remember continuing the series by trying to read but just not liking the second one either; dnf'ed it without rating.
2) Ghost Town, which I gave a generous 2 stars because the writing style was strong even if its content was not.

Maybe this isn't the genre for me after all. I'll let your work be my next go at it, Thom. We can make it a buddy read here at the group when you say it's ready.

Oh, jeez. The stories are never ready to leave the nest, but we got to kick them out at some point, yeah? Ha

Dan wrote: "I'll let your work be my next go at it, Thom. We can make it a buddy read here at the group when you say it's ready."

I finished it.

It sits unedited.

(For shaaame.)

Will update when edits are finished.

To prepare myself I watched Cowboys and Aliens last week, a Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford film. It was better than its rating. Not a film classic, mind you, but I enjoyed it. Is your book like that, aliens abducting westerners at random as part of a scouting research mission for an eventual Earth invasion?

You know, I saw Quentin Tarantino on The Late Show last week. He was there being interviewed by fellow South Carolinian Stephen Colbert to promote a novelization he wrote of one of his recent films. I imagine it was actually ghost written; these things usually are. But Tarantino was trying to convince that he truly wrote the book with his name on it as author. To sell himself as author, perhaps, he said that one of his favorite literary genres was novelizations of popular films. One reason he said he was so interested in it is because the genre gets no respect. Zero. Tarantino said he was all about disrespected genre work. You know, he had a point there. I mean Shakespeare when he was writing was considered to be just a hack writing popular crap not worth preserving either. I've read a fair number of novelizations, especially in my youth when they were even more popular. They're usually pretty decent, sometimes even better than their films, like most of the Star Trek novelizations were.

This is a roundabout way of saying that the film Cowboys and Aliens has a novelization: Cowboys and Aliens. Sure enough, it has the sub-par Good Reads rating one would expect a novelization to have. But it's written by Joan D. Vinge. I have read some of her other stuff. She is a writer of considerable merit. Can this novelization really be as bad as its rating?

Dan wrote: "Is your book like that, aliens abducting westerners at random as part of a scouting research mission for an eventual Earth invasion?"

You know what, I'm going to go ahead and say yes, in a very, very roundabout way. It's only a short story, at about 10k words.

I've read very few novelizations, but the ones I have were penned by some very good authors. Craig Shaw Gardner and Alan Dean Foster are the two who leap out in my memory the quickest, for Batman: The Novelization and The Last Starfighter, respectively.

Tie-in work is a work of fiction or other product based on a media property such as a film, video game, television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property.

Tie-in work gets disrespected.

But I read a tie in work that has some value, in my opinion. It is X-Files: The Truth Is Out There, a collection of short stories based on the TV show The X Files .

Although I gave the book 3 stars, there were three stories I thought highly of, each of them in the 4 to 5 star range. Three-examples of a tie-in work thats pretty good.

I have to mention the Green Hornet and Lone Ranger anthologies from Moonstone books at this point. There are five books between the two properties, and I think they're very high quality.

... if I say any more, it'll be self-promotion, hehHA