Science Fiction Western

At the age of 48, film critic David Denby returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, to re-experience the core humanities courses he had taken as a freshman 30 years before. Facing the question of what he really knows, Denby re-examines the besieged Western classics, ranging from Homer, Sappho, and Sophocles to Dante, Nietzsche, and Woolf. What relevance do the writers and thinkers of the past have to our current life? The answer surprised Denby and will surprise and enlighten his listeners.

I'm sure you've heard of Calamity Jane, but this is not a novel about Calamity Jane. At least not the Jane you may have heard about. Calamity Jane is part of the legends of the Wild West, but long before she scouted with Custer or "Wild Bill" Hickok, she was a 15-year-old girl with a fiery temper. Violence and tragedy turn young Jane's world upside down and soon she finds herself riding with an alien gunslinger — the Green Man — through a landscape of revenge and betrayal.

After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives—AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz—has finally run out of lives. Shot down into a backwater at the system’s edge, she is rescued by Deputy Air Marshall Havemercy Grey. Hav is a true soul, trying to uphold what is right in the heedless wastes. Hav is determined to see justice done. And Hav could sure use that twenty-million bounty … But escorting the most dangerous fugitive in the system across the stars is no easy task.

A princess to save. A god to kill. With 20 million lives on the line, Alex will do whatever it takes to reach the city of Baidushi. No matter how many obstacles his foes put in his way. With his fangtian ji now as sharp and bitter as heaven’s tears.... He will cut through them all. Even after his enemies do the unthinkable. Destroying his ability to reincarnate, as did every other soul, his countless lives now reduced to one. So be it. Now Alex would hold nothing back.

A Rocky Mountain winter has left Breck reeling from the carnage unleashed by bloodthirsty trapper Judd Carnahan - and readying a quest for vengeance as ruthless as their prey. It gets even deadlier when Carnahan lays siege to a trading post on the Yellowstone River. He’s left the owner dead and kidnapped a pretty hostage who can turn a nice profit once he puts her to work. Following his trail takes Breck clean to Santa Fe, where Carnahan’s set up a brothel bursting with hardened beauties, a saloon for cutthroats and thieves....

A Hasidic gunslinger tracks the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers across the demon-haunted American Southwest of 1879. In this acclaimed first volume, four sequential novellas and one bonus short story chronicle the weird adventures of the Merkabah Rider. Featuring The Blood Libel, The Dust Devils, Hell's Hired Gun, The Nightjar Women, and "The Shomer Express."

Once he was a young, happily married businessman. Then he lost his wife to human madness and that young man was gone, replaced by the Loner, the wandering son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan, and now the current occupant of a cell in the brutal and unforgiving Hell Gate prison. The Kid's crime? He looked too much like an outlaw who escaped from this very prison. So the Kid teams up with a fellow inmate with an escape plan, vowing to hunt down a look-alike killer on the loose.

Written first as a series of stories in the late 19th century and published later as the quintessential Western novel in the early years of the 20th century, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister contains elements of breathtaking adventure, courage, grit, conflict, humor, and heartfelt emotions that continue to resonate in the 21st century.

"A sucker punch to the senses...a killer story with real heart and soul."-Alastair Reynolds When a young man's planet is destroyed, he sets out on a single-minded quest for revenge across the galaxy in Nophek Gloss, the first book in this epic space opera trilogy debut -- perfect for fans of...

More than any writer before or since, Louis L'Amour brought the American West to life. His action-packed stories deal with eternal themes: honor, deceit, passion, betrayal, loyalty, courage, love. His settings are historically accurate, his prose riveting, and his characters colorful: good guys, bad guys, toughs, roughs, sidekicks, and saints.

As a mountain man, cowboy, and cavalry scout, Jedediah Braddock handled every challenge on America’s Western frontier. Then he’s transported to Tardoon, a magical world full of deadly predators, gorgeous monster girls, and brutal centaurs. Most men would have died on arrival, but Braddock has enough love and courage to forge a new destiny in this mighty land. Filled with tough optimism and pioneering spirit, he vows to build the desperate monster girls a sanctuary in the wilderness. There is much to do.

Almena Guillory, better known as the Grizzly Queen of the West, has plenty to recommend her for the noose, but US Marshal Apostle Richardson enforces the law, he doesn't decide it. When a posse tries to lynch Almena ahead of her trial, Apostle refuses their form of expedited justice - and receives a bullet for his trouble. Before escaping, however, Almena unexpectedly saves his life by absorbing his wound through the use of dangerous flesh magic.

Alex survives a Silver Alchemist’s best efforts to destroy him, but not without paying a terrible price. He soon finds himself stripped of all aid, allies, and resources, with all hands turned against him. Even worse, if Alex can’t make it to the capital city while dodging all the perils and traps his enemies place in his path, millions of innocents, including the first girl to ever touch his heart, will perish in terror and flame.

A deal goes bad...and Van Delano is left to die in the desert. But most folk say he’s been cursed with a double-barreled shotgun of mulishness. So, when his first attempt at bargaining for his kidnapped sister’s freedom lands him with a dead horse, a bullet in his leg, and miles of desert between him and the nearest town, he’s not about to give up. He’ll fight and claw, cheat and steal, even kill, if he has to.

For fifteen years Bethany Western has kept the family witchcraft secret, but now she is moving to a school where everyone will know what she is. Maybe having everyone know she is a witch won't be such a terrible thing? Maybe, for the first time in her life, she'll be free to be herself? But when her new friends show her their strange gauntlets, Beth is drawn into a world of secrets, demons, and worst of all... boys.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts - mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war - and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains west with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

In 1885, President Grover Cleveland commissioned a special group of agents to investigate paranormal activities plaguing the nation. Unwilling to accept failure, he granted each the authority to operate outside the law. His directive was simple. No rules. No excuses. Just get it done. Remy Kincaid, the son of a pugilist and sharpshooter, is recruited with the promise of discovering those responsible for his father’s abduction. With the help of his cynical steed, Fable, he heads to the town of Wharton, Texas, to investigate the disappearance of several young children.

In the aftermath of a chaotic gold rush and the resulting war, a mega-corporation emerges, seizing control of the nation’s gold and the technology produced from it. Those defeated scattered to the coasts, left to fend for themselves. The once vibrant California now contends with radiation, harsh elements, and bandits. Cassidy moves to one of California’s last two surviving towns for one thing: to save her life. Suffering from a mysterious illness, Bell Valley is her last chance at finding a cure. Despite her best efforts to keep her distance, she’s drawn to the town and its locals.

Act 3 - A Will to Power follows Caroline on her drive to power in the heart of the wild Comanche empire, turned thriving Texas Hill Country, turned desolate and violent and ruthless once more. A harsh landscape and a society without technology, laws, or base human agreements to guide us. Here in the New West, three lives intertwine in a quest for meaning, pleasure, and power.

Connor Mills is only trying to earn some summer money for school by working the Green River Drift cattle drive in Wyoming. The Fates have something else in mind for him. Thrust into a dark realm both familiar and eerily twisted, Connor finds himself at the center of a struggle between goblin tycoons, corrupt wolf-kin lawmen, and a town full of people who’ve had all the hope wrung out of them. Connor is only one man, but the strange energies of the Faerie world have made him much more than he was.