Sector 930

Normally when a film or novel attempts to combine to seemingly disparate genres, they tend to do so with limited success. However, there is one combination that I feel succeeds more often than not: westerns and science fiction. We were first introduced to the idea in an early Gene Autry serial, The Phantom Empire. The success of this serial proved a boon to the infant genre and can be attributed to the later success of both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. This genre would go on to include novels such as Stephen King’s critically acclaimed Dark Tower Series, comics such as Iron West, tv shows like the cult classic Firefly and films such as Westworld, Mad Max and Serenity (a reincarnation of the aforementioned Firefly). There is now one more addition to this list, the newly announced Cowboys and Aliens which is based upon a 2006 comic of the same name.