"1910-1915 America discovers science fiction in the form of Tom Swift. And it is a different thing altogether. It is not about giving dire warnings for the future, it is about saying: look how great America is going to be in the future. It’s almost...I suspect like...the tendency in older nations, when we wanna big ourselves up is to reach back to the past… to something imaginary past, like King Arthur or something like that. America hasn’t got that amount of history to deal with so in some ways what America needs is science fiction. When we’re trying to say “look at what we were” then America more or less has to say “look at what we will be.” And so their science fiction from the 1920s with the boom of the pulp magazines it was all of this bright, optimistic New Frontier stuff. Where it was going to be Cowboys & Indians all over again, only it was going to be Earthman & Neptunians. But you could just go through all of the entire tropes of the Western genre and pioneer fiction, but in space. And it became this… in my opinion it was probably one of the worst things to ever happen to Science Fiction..."
Space Western: The most pernicious suite of "Used Furniture". The grizzled space captain swaggering into the spacer bar and slugging down a Jovian brandy, then laying down a few credits for a space hooker to give him a Galactic Rim Job.
On the High Frontier is the space opera to end all space operas, a wild western hardwired with the argot of cyberpunk that gleefully subverts every cliche of the subgenre. Any author who can nudge readers in the ribs with a line such as, "Many a spacer has come to grief with his ship tuckered out megaclicks from the nearest gas cloud," and make them envision a Gary Cooper type saying it with a straight face, is worth his weight in cybercash, and then some.
— Publisher's Weekly review of On the High Frontier by Michael Flynn
"Hoping to draw down on the Asteroid Miner's Wild West Reenactment Society?"
— Demonica, Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space
If, as Gene Roddenberry always said, STAR TREK is Wagon Train IN SPACE!, think of DEEP SPACE NINE as Fort Laramie on the edge of the frontier.
— Deep Space Nine writers bible
"In the year 3031... It's cowboys and aliens."
—Tagline for Oblivion (1994)
"Wild West, Y2K style."
—Toonami tagline for Outlaw Star
