What is it about the American West that continues to inspire? There’s the romanticized notion of expansion, the simplistic morality of white hats and black hats, of cowboys vs. Indians. And there’s the post-modern Western that does not gloss over the era’s exploitation and violence; all the birth pains of a new nation. Then there is the Weird West, a genre-hopping category that uses a lot of the Western window-dressing—gunslingers, railroads, Pinkertons—and mashes them up with cosmic horror, alternate histories of American icons, and a vast landscape of cruel promise and harsh awe. To celebrate the release of a new batch of novels set in the Weird West world of the RPG Deadlands, beginning with Jonathan Maberry’s Deadlands: Ghostwalkers, it’s time to saddle up for a ride into a booming frontier of creepy thrill.
Not all of it is written, not all of it is American, but it’s all definitely rich in the weird.
Mood Music
Our soundtrack through the badlands surely must contain the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The obvious choice of song is the go-to spooky tune of “Red Right Hand,” featured in The X-Files, Scream, BBC’s Peaky Blinders, and the trailers for too many boring horror movies. But dig even an inch deeper into Australian rocker Cave’s discography and find stories of Elvis Presley’s dead twin brother (“Tupelo,”) a vengeful woman who “measures .32-.44-.38” picking off drunken miners (“Crow Jane”) and a murderer marked as Satan’s own (“Up Jumped the Devil.”) Cave’s songs often take the form of full narratives and few beat the complete fury of “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry,” from 1992’s Henry’s Dream with it’s jangling Ennio Morricone-inspired guitars, drought-stricken ghost towns, shrieking reverends, brothel massacres, and apocalyptic plagues.
Honorable mention: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ moaning, groaning, melancholy motion picture score for 2006’s The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat. Yup, another Australian into the Western genre.
Top Weird West Reads
Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of Weird West edited by John Joseph Adams
Vampire shootists, magical decks of cards, steampunk bordellos, and lots of dead guys populate this great anthology featuring fiction by Orson Scott Card, Joe. R. Lansdale, Seanan McGuirre, Tobias Buckell, Jeffrey Ford and more.
Jonah Hex created by John Albano & Tony DeZuniga
Forget the terrible movie. (You know Josh Brolin wishes he could.) The original 1977 DC comic is considered one of the first popular representations of the Weird West. The bounty hunter marked by a demon’s brand seeks out the West’s worst and also, sometimes, less earthly quarry. He also sometimes time travels and gets into a gun-fight with a T-Rex. Jonah Hex‘s best and creepiest run was written by east Texan horror master Joe R. Lansdale and come highly recommended.
The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
Gun-slinging cavalier Gwynn is chased across the desert of Copper Country by the winning soldiers of a vicious war. With him is Raule, a medic, who follows Gywnn to the decadent, pseudo-Victorian city of Ashamoil, teeming with canals, crocodiles, and succubi. Reviews compared The Etched City favorably to China Miéville’s Iron Council, which released around the same time, and it was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Australian author Bishop’s fiction is perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer, Margo Lanagan, and M. John Harrison’s Viriconium novels.
Territory by Emma Bull
What could elevate the legends around Tombstone to the truly mythic? World fantasy Award-winning author Bull imagines a West where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday were sorcerers jockeying for a land grab in a West run over with black magic and shaky alliances. While this isn’t strictly Weird West, it does have some macabre moments and, hell, anything written by Emma Bull is worth a reader’s attention.
The Half-Made World and The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman
Are you an agent of The Gun or The Line? The frontier that psychologist Liv Alverhuysen travels to doesn’t get much more chaotic than this superb pageturner of Western icons, primordial magic, and steam-powered manifest destiny. The Great War between magic and industry continues with inventor Harry Ransom in an even more tightly-paced follow-up novel. The Rim may be half-formed, but Gilman’s Western world world is fully realized, down to the tiniest mote of dust kicked up by spur-adorned boots.
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King
“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.” With that image the most popular dark fantasy of our time begins. While the series moves beyond the parallel Western dimension, we’d be remiss to leave this off the list. Also, there are atomic slugs. That should count for something.
Deadlands: Ghostwalker by Jonathan Maberry
The Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns, and a mysterious substance called “ghost rock” fuels exotic steampunk inventions as well as plenty of bloodshed and flying bullets. In Ghostwalkers, a gun-for-hire, literally haunted by his bloody past, comes to the struggling town of Paradise Falls, where he becomes embroiled in a deadly conflict between the besieged community and a diabolically brilliant alchemist who is building terrible new weapons of mass destruction… and an army of the living dead!
The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana by R.S. Belcher
Golgotha, Nevada, home to a failing silver mine, is digging up more than precious metal deep within the earth. A fugitive, an indestructible sheriff, and his clever deputy wrestle with old evils, occult secrets, and Chinese and Native American lore in this rollicking new series.
Iron Council by China Miéville
Th
e last of the author’s Bas-Lag novels focuses on a revolution on a railroad. Cacti people abound, and so do corrupt industrialists, golem-conjuring natives threatened by the tracks’ expansion, and a murderspirit threatening to destroy the city of New Crobuzon. Iron Council, the perpetual train, is a socialist society on wheels and revolution leader Judah Low is one of Miéville’s best characters. I’ve come to appreciate this book even more on a second reading and the ending is a killer. While this isn’t our West, it’s the idea of the West and the tone of Iron Council that impresses.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Is this a Western? Is this literary? Is this a horror story? Why can’t one of the foremost novels of early Americans at their ugliest be a bit of everything? Like many of McCarthy’s works, there is a dark force propelling the action forward. Is it Fate? Is it Evil? Look to the hulking, bald creature leading a pack of scalp-hunters. The Judge is preternatural in his malevolence, less a man than a monster. Less of our world than straight from Hell. Blood Meridian is full of angry, beautiful prose and eyeball kicks of strangeness, like storms so violent, they impale birds on the spines of a cactus. Whatever this novel is, it’s mesmerizing.
Six-Gun Snow White by Cat Valente
Similar to Bull’s Territory, this fairytale of the half-Navajo daughter of industrialist George Hearst is more of an alternate history than a Weird piece… until the origin of the Evil Queen’s magic mirror is revealed. While Valente’s West is a land of Native American magic, coyote spirits, and the mystery of wide open spaces, the East hold forests choked with ancient dark magic that reaches up from the earth in twisting black tentacles. Tentacles are never attached to anything wholesome in fiction.
Honorable mentions: The Preacher series by Garth Ennis; Vermillion by Molly Tanzer; The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan; High Cotton by Joe R. Lansdale; and select stories from The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron.
Film
Dust Devil (1992), directed by Richard Stanley
Another worthy entry into Western lore by a foreigner. Like Sergio Leone before him, South African director Richard Stanley captures the swirling sands and sun-bleached landscapes of the desert with perfect majesty. Only this time, the gunslinger is actually the embodiment of an ancient demon who beds and bleeds his lonely victims in this stylish thriller. Composer Simon Boswell provides a moody, Morricone-inspired score. Dust Devil is available now on Netflix streaming and is worth you time for performances from the devilishly handsome Robert John Burke and South African character actor Zakes Mokae as the skeptical police detective tracking down a monster.
Honorable mentions: A snowy military outpost in the Sierra Nevada mountains is home to wendigos/cannibals in the black comedy Ravenous (1999), and The Burrowers (2008) sees an incomprehensible race of creatures being displaced by European settlers to horrific and gory effect in this creepy, pointed commentary on Western expansion.
Games
Set in 1879, Deadlands is cowboys vs. zombies vs. giant scarabs vs. evil hucksters selling potions way worse than a little snake oil. The backdrop of this world is much like our own, until an event in 1883 involving a Sioux shaman trying to oust European settlers opened up a door to another dimension whose inhabitants feed on fear. This tabletop RPG kicks up the Western fun with character creation tools that include decks of cards and poker chips in addition to more traditional dice.
Honorable mention: Red Dead Redemption‘s Undead Nightmare DLC sees Rockstar’s gorgeous Western territory overrun by zombies, chupacabra, sasquatches and the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. And a unicorn that trails rainbows. And a costume nod to Ash in Army of Darkness. This mini-game is a full-fledged makeover for the award-winning game, just as fun—and definitely funnier in tone—than the original property.
Theresa DeLucci is a regular contributor to Tor.com, covering book reviews, gaming and TV, including Game of Thrones. She’s also discussed entertainment for Boing Boing and Wired.com’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy. A student of the 2008 Clarion West Writers’ workshop, her short fiction has appeared in ChiZine. Follow her on Twitter.
I don’t read a lot of weird western myself. The Gilman is very good, and a different Gilman, Laura Anne Gilman, has a weird western coming in October, SILVER ON THE ROAD
Also on the RPG front, White Wolf’s Werewolf: the Wild West is fun (if long out of print)
Thanks for this article. I’m probably of the last generation of men who enthusiastically spent much of our early grade school years playing what we called “Cowboys & Indians” which is just the term for playing being in an imaginary Westerns.
Louis L’amour Westerns were some of the first novels I ever read and I’ve been trying to find a recommended list of Weird Westerns to try. So far had hadn’t had a whole lot of luck finding Weird Westerns that I really enjoyed other then Jonah Hex comics.
Speaking of Jonah Hex, I highly recommend the DC New 52 Jonah Hex series, All Star Western in which Jonah finds himself in 19th century Gotham City working with Armadeus Arkham, the founder or the infamous Arkham Asylum.
If we can have a “Six-Gun Snow White,” we can certainly have Rapunzel’s Revenge, by Shannon Hale. It’s a graphic novel intended for the juvenile market, but a lot of fun for older readers as well (you’ve never seen hair like this Rapunzel’s hair!), set in a beautifully detailed Wild-West landscape.
For games you should also mention Malifaux, a skirmish miniatures game about a 1906 expansion into a rift to another world that is basically Old West filled with undead, demons born of mortal nightmares, and a mysterious past to be discovered. Some great fiction there too and their own roleplaying setting.
I’d throw in Guy Adams’ Heaven’s Gate trilogy–where a magical city linked to Heaven and Hell spring up in the American mountain west.
Movies: how about Pale Rider? Never made explicit, but Preacher is probably a ghost–and an avatar of Death.
And of course the B-movie classics Billy the Kid vs Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.
@@@@@ TumbleCoyote: Werewolf: the Wild West is available through DriveThruRPG.
In the music category I would also mention the band Murder by Death. Especially their album Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them? about a small desert town that goes to war with the devil after someone shoots him in the back at a bar. I think it owes a lot to both King’s Gunslinger character and the Saint of Killers from the Preacher series. Plus it has child zombies.
How about Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson’s Children of the Drought series?
http://www.thetexfiles.com/p/works.html
I particularly like Bob Shaw’s time war spaghetti western short story “Skirmish on a Summer Morning” (in Cosmic Kaleidoscope).
Cullen Bunn’s “the sixth gun” is the best comics series I’ve read in years. I also recommend Tim Truman’s “Hawken.”
Any fan of the genre needs to listen to Ghoultown, especially their “Tales of the Dead West,” which features a song about Jonah Hex.
Some of Robert E Howard’s stories are firmly in Weird Western territory.
“The Wild, Wild West” was an early steampunk Western.
The “Kung Fu” series occasionally strayed into weirdness.
Thanks for all the cool additional recommendations! @10 – I did have The Sixth Gun and Dingess’ Manifest Destiny comics series in here originally, but felt it was getting too long and that Preacher was just so well executed.
@3 I didn’t really get into the Western genre until that new wave of post-modern Western movies, like Unforgiven and then, especially, The Proposition. Then I played Red Dead Redemption and just wanted more of that world. (Yes, this post was just a sneaky way to mention everything I love, from Nick Cave to Richard Stanley to KJ Bishop to RDR, in one post. If there was a way to shoehorn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I would have.)
@9 I’ll have to check that out. For short stories I almost included “A Dry, Quiet War” by Tony Daniel, but felt it skewed very SF, not Weird. But I do love seeing the Western tropes used well.
Cherie Priest’s Weird West “Clockwork Century” books, from Boneshaker to Jacaranda are pretty well perfect, especially for anyone looking for Deadlands rpg inspiration.
“Tex Arcana” started out as a serial comic in Heavy Metal, and it’s collected (unfinished) at http://www.texarcana.com/
Thanks for the suggestions to add to my to-read list.
Okay, so it’s only a little Wild West-y, but The Alloy of Law, you guys…
I just like Sanderson a lot. I just re-read the original Mistborn trilogy, and I’m just getting into Alloy (re-reading in preparation for the next book, of course), so perhaps I am unduly enthusiastic at the moment. Still, it kinda fits.
#12: I bounced off of the Priest series very early — mostly, I think, because as a native I know just enough Pacific Northwest history to have been annoyed by parts of the worldbuilding. That said, it’s certainly both successful and popular.
A couple of suggestions in other directions:
Devil’s Tower and Devil’s Engine by Mark Sumner, from Del Rey in the mid-1990s, are really interesting “six-guns and sorcery” novels with strong alt-historical grounding, but didn’t get nearly enough buzz at the time. The duo is definitely worth tracking down.
Thirteenth Child and its sequels from Patricia Wrede are absolutely Weird Western, but absolutely not alt-history (I have a longer discussion about that over here); I recommend the series notwithstanding the kerfuffle that erupted when the first book appeared.
For music, I highly recommend Lord Huron’s new album, STRANGE TRAILS.
And *ahem* my own novel, THE CURSE OF JACOB TRACY, is coming from Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s in December.
Alan Dean Foster’s MAD AMOS?
While I appreciate the weird western genre getting some attention, and I understand that every list is going to be incomplete, I think no survey of the weird western is complete without mentioning Robert E Howard, who more or less invented it. Also, Joe Lansdale’s “Dead in the West” is pretty important… speaking of Lansdale, his run of Jonah Hex mini-series’ were honestly the only time that character could be called weird western. The other Jonah Hex series were far more traditional westerns (and really good ones, too!). And one last critique, if I may: calling Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” a weird western is really a stretch. A dark fantasy story doesn’t become a weird western just because you throw a guy with a cowboy hat and a six-gun in it.
Other than those points, I enjoyed this piece! It’s nice to see my pet sub-genre get some love.
Add Ed Erdalac’s Merkabah Rider book series, a combo of the Frisco Kid meets Dr Strange in a very Lovecraftian WIld West, into the mix. Also his latest novel, Terovolas, finds Professor Van Helsing v.s. Werewolves in the Old West, is a worthy followup to the classic Dracula.
I was gonna mention Ed’s Merkabah Rider series. Seriously, it should be required weird west reading at this point. A few extra suggestions.
Music: Ghoultown. They are a weird west band. Full out punk/metal/psychobilly filtered through spaghetti westerns and horror movies. They even have a song about Jonah Hex.
The Deadlands team also released their own little soundtrack way back. You can get the CD from their official shop still.
Books: I’m gonna be shameless and mention my own book here, A Demon in the Desert, which stars an orc gunslinger and demon hunter. Beyond that, you the Brackett Hollister series by Quentin Wallace, Ghost Marshall by John Hamilton, The Hopewell Conspiracy by Philip Morgan, and, again, Ed’s wonderful series. Seriously, I’ve been singing the praises for those books for years now. Though a caveat for Merkabah Rider’s first (and soon for the second book as well): if you want a copy, you’ll have to contact Ed himself for an ebook. The rights are reverting back to him and he’s waiting til book 3 returns so the first book is out of print now, and book 2 is going out of print basically as we speak. Book 3 reverts at the end of the year.
Movies: Sundown: The Vampire Retreat was a fun one. Very silly, starring Bruce Campbell in a small role as Van Helsing’s great great grandson.
Dead Birds is one almost no one seems to know about. It was very good, very surprising too.
Gallowwalkers is a great big mess but it’s as weird as you can get in a weird western.
Comics: East of West, stars the Four Horsemen in a sci-fi western setting.
Pretty Deadly, stars Death’s daughter, Ginny.
Just a Pilgrim, pick up the 1 volume trade. By Garth Ennis, so expect some black humor.
I would have died if someone hadn’t mentioned the horror-punk outfit Ghoultown, thanks guys!
Also I’d throw out there –
The Haunted Mesa by Louis L’Amour a very weird-westish story involving a dimensional portal.
Also on the anthology front:
Gutshot (edited by Conrad Williams), which won a World Fantasy Award – very horror-y and some terrific stories
Razored Saddles (edited by Joe Lansdale), which is kind of the bible of the genre – as Mirrorshades was to cyberpunk, Razored Saddles is to Weird Westerns
A Town Called Pandemonium (edited by yours truly, because I’m classy like that) – which is, I think, a great deal of fun – also a shared world, with all the authors romping in the same Weird Western playground. It also picked up some award nominations – for anthology and for Sam Sykes’ contribution (demon mermaid in a New Mexico well, seriously).
Less weird – and not an anthology – would be Stark Holborn’s Nunslinger, which is a cracking revisionist Western that does what it says on the cover. And Molly Tanzer’s Vermillion – about a ghost-hunter in the Wild West – is another must-read.
I say to ye, ye sunset denizens of the mountain site: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian needs be held up, as all things must on this the ethereal wings of our timed and unexplainable existence, as both the pinnacle of “weird” westerns and the foremost stack of paper a felled weald contained in the 20th of our known centuries.
(Seriously – put me up against any villain in any book over the Judge!)
This article hits on one of my biggest passions, and there are so many good additions so far. Let me see if I can add anything…
Film:
Seraphim Falls – I LOVE this movie. It’s a fantastic revenge tale in the West, and you don’t expect the “weird” elements until you’re already in them. Highly recommended.
Grim Prairie Tales – It’s basically a set of short horror stories told by a drunken James Earl Jones. Very hard to find because it wasn’t released on DVD. The VHS Preservation Society (VHSPS) has a bootleg that they sell at film cons.
Oblivion – Completely ridiculous B-movie “space western”. You have to see it to believe it.
Undead or Alive – A western “zombedy” featuring Chris Kattan (?!). It’s actually a lot of fun if you’re just looking to laugh.
The Living Coffin – Another hard to find one. It’s a Mexican film from 1958 about a ranch that’s haunted by a mysterious crying woman.
Music:
Demons & Wizards – Touched by the Crimson King – Most of this album is themed around The Dark Tower series. This is a power metal studio collaboration between Iced Earth and Blind Guardian, but I find myself listening to it more than either of their other bands.
Fields of the Nephilim – This band has a unique goth-western aesthetic. Their early music was more traditional goth-rock with western elements thrown in. I recommend the album Dawnrazor.
Stagecoach Inferno – This is my “heavy metal wild west” project. :) We started it to celebrate our love for all things weird and western. As of this writing, we’re trying to fund a full length album on IndieGoGo, and I’m working on a “dime novel” to explain the story of the album in more detail.
Comics:
Graveslinger – This is a short series about an old gunslinger that has a knack for putting zombies back in the ground. Very enjoyable, quick read.
Dead Irons – I’d fully place this in a “horror western” category. It’s extremely dark and very engaging.
The Sixth Gun – I only have the first trade of this series, but I am beyond impressed. It strikes a good balance between lighthearted humor and a grim storyline.
Games:
Far West – This is a tabletop RPG that was Kickstarted back in 2011 and is finally nearly complete. It’s a blend of “western” and “wuxia”, so I’m expecting a fair amount of Western grit and Eastern mysticism.
Writing:
I saw someone mention Robert E. Howard. He’s one of my favorite authors, and often considered to be the father of the weird western. I’m going to call out some specific favorites.
Valley of the Lost
Pigeons from Hell
The Horror from the Mound
I’m convinced Lovecraft was inspired by Howard and wanted to try his hand at a weird western. His entry was The Mound.
I could write about this all day, but it’s time to make a list of all the other recommendations here that I need to check out.
Web comic The Next Town Over has some a steampunk aesthetic, but with a pyromancer as an antagonist and located in what appears to be the American Badlands, definitely falls into the Weird West genre:
http://www.nexttownover.net
The Next Town Over is very good, yes. In the same spirit (but much darker) is Guns of Shadow Valley.
Great article Ms. Delucci.
We are having our third annual Weird West Party in Sacramento; you should come!
https://www.facebook.com/events/1007627622668886/
Adios!
@28 If only this was July 25th! Then I’d at least be in your state. Looks super fun.
I read all 8 TDT books and The Little Sisters of Eleuria and I really enjoyed all of it.
There’s also a series of weird westerns by writer/editor Mike Resnick, the first of which is THE BUNTLINE SPECIAL.