Re: [DL] Period Fiction?

["Sean Briggs" <lucifiel@compuserve.com>]

> I was wondering (as the lady who lives on top of me begins her daily
> wailing... don't ask) whether anyone can recommend good period fiction?
> Anything from Civil War to Western, and preferably with a bit of an edge
to
> it.

Pinnacle used to have a list of inspirational fiction on their website. I
don't know if it's still there, but it's a good place to start. For my own
part, here are some of my favorites...some of them are probably rather hard
to find now, but I think they're worth keeping an eye out for. I'm afraid I
haven't progressed too far into "traditional" western literature, so these
tend to reflect a Deadlands slant.

Nancy Collins has two "Gothik Westerns" to her credit, Walking Wolf and
Lynch. Lynch is a *lot* of fun; it's a takeoff on the Frankenstein myth, and
is possibly the most cinematic novel I've ever read. If Hang 'Em High had
been made as a Deadlands movie, Lynch would have been the result. While I
didn't enjoy Walking Wolf quite as much, it does feature one of my favorite
bit characters of all time, a vampire gunslinger called the Sundown Kid.

Joe Lansdale wrote the infamous Dead in the West, the most perfect piece of
Deadlands fiction I've ever seen, and has apparently just come out with
another genre book, Zeppelins West, which I'm going to try to get my hands
on. He also edited Razored Saddles, an anthology of weird west fiction by
different authors. The last is a mixed bag, but has some good work.

Karl Edward Wagner wrote three of my favorite horror western short stories,
which are collected in his final anthology, Exorcisms & Ecstasies. One of
them, One Night in Paris, demonstrates why cap and ball revolvers are
perfect weapons for taking on werewolves. <g> Another, Hell Creek, combines
Civil War-era zombies with a Sawney Bean-style family.

There's also a brand-new horror/western fiction anthology out, edited by
Richard Laymon, called Skull Full of Spurs. I haven't yet picked up a copy
(hoping to do so tomorrow, actually), but it looks very promising.

Richard Matheson, the famous horror author, has written a number of western
novels, each of which I enjoyed quite a bit. Shadow on the Sun is the only
one that has a real supernatural element, but all of them (By the Gun, The
Gunfight, Journal of the Gun Years, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok) are
worth a look.

Finally, the novelizations of both Wild Wild West and The Quick and the Dead
were also very good, I thought.

Hope this helps a bit.

- Sean Briggs