The collection Westerns of the 40s (1977) surprised me when I saw who the editor was, Damon Knight. That pillar of the Science Fiction community published the award-winning anthology series Orbit for decades. But he also did a couple of books about Pulp SF from the 1930s and 1940s. So why not some Cowboy stories from the same time period?
The bigger surprise was who he chose for that book. Not your usual W. C. Tuttle, Luke Short and Walter Tompkins stuff. Nope, Clifford D. Simak, John D. MacDonald and Murray Leinster. Three of the seven were written by Science Fiction authors. Now you can make the case for John D. MacDonald’s true fame is in the detective/suspense field. This is true, but old John D. did write Science Fiction for a spell before he quit it because it was too easy.
Science Fiction Writers who wrote Westerns shouldn’t be too big a surprise for anyone writing during the Pulp era. Most Pulp publishers had Sports, War, Hero, Western, Mystery, Science Fiction and other lines of Pulps. The editors did not usually see much difference between them, and certainly didn’t think of their writers as a bunch of SF snobs. Here are some authors who penned a one-off Western sale or made a good living writing them:
The 1920s
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote his Tarzan and John Carter novels but in between he penned the Apache Devil series and The Bandit of Hell’s Bend. Burroughs had the advantage he had actually ridden with the U. S. Calvary in his youth.
Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins) got his start writing all kinds of stories. He began his SF career in Argosy in 1918 with “Atmosphere”. He wrote Northerns set is Alaska as well as mainstream stuff, along with this Western for Adventure, January 1, 1927, “Black Sheep”.
The 1930s
“The Sheriff Rides Alone” (Thrilling Adventures, December 1933) by Oscar Schisgall is pretty standard stuff from a guy who wrote 4000 stories. Schisgall’s SF contains the Baron Ixell stories, a super crime fighter, a little like Doc Savage.
“Gunhawk Trail to Purgatory” (Complete Western Book, November 1938) by Ed Earl Repp is one of dozens of Westerns this early SF writer did. Repp split his time evenly between the two genres. Some critics feel his SF reads too much like his Westerns. (This criticism was frequently aimed at other writers like Anthony Gilmore (Harry Bates & Desmond W. Hall) and their Hawk Carse series.)
The 1940s
“Smoke Killer” (Lariat Story Magazine, May 1944) was one of several Westerns written by Clifford D. Simak in the 1940s. Unlike some SF writers, Simak was never embarrassed by his Westerns. They contain the same kind of compassion his SF does, focusing on the town doctor or livery agent rather than sheriffs and gunmen. Unlike many young writers, Simak wrote of the Old West after he had established himself in SF.
“Windmills Mean War” (Western Story, February 19, 1944) by Robert Moore Williams, who wrote so many SF pieces, most for Ray A. Palmer. And yet this Western doesn’t appear in Mammoth Western but the top market, Western Story. Palmer edited Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures out of Chicago. If you wrote for RAP, it might be for any of his many Pulp titles.
“Soul of the Vulture” by Chester S. Geier appeared in Mammoth Western, October 1946) was written for Ray A. Palmer. Geier had several pseudonyms he used as well.
“Thunder Over the Mesa” by Berkeley Livingston (Mammoth Western, December 1946) was another Palmer choice. Livingston’s SF isn’t well remembered, being satirical stuff for Palmer, much of which felt written to order or in a hurry.
“Yellow Streak” by Emil Petaja (Mammoth Western, December 1946) was another Palmer edit. Petaja wrote Horror for Weird Tales but also SF for the ACE Doubles.
“The Town That Bullets Built” (Dime Western, April 1948) by Gardner F. Fox. Fox was a many genre guy, writing Sports and detective stuff as well as Horror and Space Opera for Weird Tales and Planet Stories. All that and he still had time to write over 3000 comic book scripts including inventing Batman’s utility belt. He continued his high production writing well into the paperback era.
“Guns at Gallows Crossing” by Dwight V. Swain appeared in Giant Western, August 1949. Swain wrote for the lesser paying magazines like Imagination and Imaginative Stories. In the 1970s he wrote how-to books for writers. Like Gardner Fox, he shifted into paperback writing pretty easily.
The 1950s
“Queen of the Wild River” by Frank P. Castle (William P. McGivern) appeared in Mammoth Western, December 1950. Another RAP content provider, McGivern worked Westerns, detective and SF equally well, though he chose the Mystery genre for his paperback career after the Pulps.
“The High Iron Killer” (aka “Hell on the High Iron”) (Big Book Western, March 1953) by John Jakes was one of a dozen or so Westerns Jakes wrote. He is best remembered for the phenomenal success of The Kent Family Chronicles in the early 1970s, but from the 50s on, he wrote SF, Sword & Sorcery, detective fiction as well as historical novels as Jay Scotland. He wrote one Western for the Ace Doubles: Wear a Fast Gun (1956).
“First Kill” by Robert Silverberg (yes, old SilverBob!) appeared in Western Action, January 1957. This was during Silverberg’s super-production days before he slowed down to produce quality Science Fiction and win Hugos and Nebulas.
Others SF/Western writers include Joseph Payne Brennan, Noel Loomis, Robert A. W. Lowndes, Joseph Samachson (William Morrison), Robert E. Howard, Lester Del Rey, Robert W. Krepps (Geoff St. Reynard), Theodore Sturgeon, Arthur J. Burks, Louis Trimble, Herbert Kastle, Bryce Walton, V. E. Thiessen, Paul S. Powers, H. B. Hickey, Frances M. Deegan, J. J. Allerton, Henry Bott (Charles Recour), Paul W. Fairman, Oscar J. Friend, Thomas Clavary McClary, Laurence Donovan, Michael Avallone, Steve Frazee and others I have forgotten. (Let me know who I missed!) Many of these men were also editors and wrote filler stories for every type of Pulp.
Paperbacks
For some the Western wasn’t part of their Pulp days but the lucrative paperback that exploded in the years after World War II.
Leigh Brackett may have been the Queen of Space to us, but in Hollywood she was the lady who wrote The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo. She published a straight Western called Follow the Free Wind (1963).
Gardner F. Fox wrote novels for the paperbacks in the 1970s, like Blood Trail (1979). Check out James Reasoner’s take on the book here.
Richard Matheson, author of I Am Legend and The Shrinking Man, wrote several Westerns in the last part of his career. The first was Journal of the Gun Years (1991).
Chad Oliver, the respected archaeologist and SF writer, penned three Western novels: The Wolf Is My Brother (1967), Broken Eagle (1989) and The Cannibal Owl (1994). His work is known for his deep understanding of First Nations culture.
Conclusion
Science Fiction Writers who wrote Westerns worked out of an economic necessity. In the earliest days, SF barely paid and there were few places to sell it. Later, as SF became more sophisticated, a writer like Ed Earl Repp had to choose which genre they would work in primarily (like Fredric Brown and Henry Slesar choosing the Mystery genre). Before the Old West left the territory of rockets and robots, it would leave its mark on the genre, especially Space Opera. When Luke and Obi Wan walk into that saloon to find a gunslinger….
Robert Bloch had two tales, “The Indian Sign” and “Chinaman’s Chance”.
There are more, of course. Lee Hoffman is possibly best known as a famous sf fan of the 50’s but she later wrote a handful of sf novels and even more western novels. Her best known western, THE VALDEZ HORSES, won a Spur award.
Sturgeon wrote two Western movie adaptations. Beside _The Rare Breed_, there was _The King and Four Queens_.
He also wrote enough Western short stories to fill a (small) collection, _Sturgeon’s West_.