Bruce Boxleitner and Cowboys & Aliens
Aug. 22nd, 2011 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI was in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago for a friend's birthday dim sum. While chatting afterwards with him and his wife afterwards, they mentioned that Bruce Boxleitner, Commander Sheridan from Babylon 5, had written a couple of science fiction westerns. Phoenix and Tucson being what they are with having one of the best used bookstore chains in the country, was able to supply me with one of them. Las Cruces, also having an excellent used bookstore chain (Coas, not that you're likely to come out here), supplied me with the other.
I'm almost done with the first book, and I saw Cowboys & Aliens again yesterday. The similarities are quite significant.
* The hero has no memory.
* The hero has unusual skills (but no alien blaster)
* He remembers a woman
* He has flashbacks
* A woman with full memory helps him
* The aliens are very nasty and will take over the planet
The aliens in Boxleitner's book are more like Predators, they want to hunt and eat humans and THEN strip mine the planet, but still, very close. Boxleitner does a very realistic feeling Tombstone, complete with Earps, Clantons, and Holliday.
Bruce only wrote two books, Frontier Earth, and Frontier Earth: Searcher. I'll be finishing the first in the next day or so and immediately starting the second. They're pretty good stuff, could definitely lay the groundwork for a Deadlands scenario or campaign around them.
I'm almost done with the first book, and I saw Cowboys & Aliens again yesterday. The similarities are quite significant.
* The hero has no memory.
* The hero has unusual skills (but no alien blaster)
* He remembers a woman
* He has flashbacks
* A woman with full memory helps him
* The aliens are very nasty and will take over the planet
The aliens in Boxleitner's book are more like Predators, they want to hunt and eat humans and THEN strip mine the planet, but still, very close. Boxleitner does a very realistic feeling Tombstone, complete with Earps, Clantons, and Holliday.
Bruce only wrote two books, Frontier Earth, and Frontier Earth: Searcher. I'll be finishing the first in the next day or so and immediately starting the second. They're pretty good stuff, could definitely lay the groundwork for a Deadlands scenario or campaign around them.
