Sideshow

Beans, Blades, & Bullets: A Pulp Tale of Grit & Zen, by Steve Logan, was an unusual space samurai/cowboy tale.

Is anyone else slightly saddened that we haven’t been back lately?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon… we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

Delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas on 12 September 1962 by John F. Kennedy

Young as the Mountains by C.J. Henderson is a second tale set in Bruce Gehweiler’s world of Byanntia.

I had scheduled an Interview with Mark L. Van Name while at Balticon 41. I was initially a bit hesitant, although his work sounded like it would be a good fit, I was still a bit unsure. Mark gave me additional insights into what a Space Western is, and about the tropes of the Western genre that found their way to Outer-space.

Parasite Planet, was written in 1935 by Stanley Weinbaum, a science fiction writer whose career was all too brief.

Time of the Gr’nar, by Bruce Gehweiler & C.J. Henderson, is the first story in the Byanntia series, and was published as a two part story.

In technological terms we have the interstellar equivalent of canoes (I’m being kind with that comparison, it’s probably closer to the level of kick boards). We haven’t even left the kiddie pool, and yet Rocket Scientists Say We’ll Never Reach the Stars.

Yes, I understand that it will take a phenomenal amount of energy to reach even the nearest star in anything approximating an endurable amount of time. But this pronouncement is being made just a bit too soon, given that we haven’t yet been able to send human beings much farther than the Moon, our nearest neighbor. European civilization had hundreds, nay, thousands of years of naval experience before they had the ability to colonize the Americas (even once the Americas were “discovered” it took another 200 years for Europeans to establish permanent residences). Will we reach the next star over in my life-time? I honestly doubt it, but never? That dog won’t hunt.

Science Fiction Trails Review, was the first review on SpaceWesterns.com. It started out as an anthology edited by David B. Riley and has since become an annual magazine. I’d really like to see more people submit reviews of Space Western works. Check out The (Nearly) Complete List of Space Westerns to see works that I’d still like to have reviewed.

Using a powerful computer model, researchers discovered clumps and streams (trails even) of Dark Matter winding their way through the Milky Way.

How Beautiful the Herd on the Dark Matter Range was the first story submitted to SpaceWesterns.com by Jens Rushing. He later revised and expanded the story to receive an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest.