Historical Inspiration

David F. Ellrod  
Oz offers untapped resources for science fiction writers seeking a fresh twist on the space western.

Historical Inspiration (or, Australia and the Space Western)


Science fiction writers need look no further for fresh material than the annals of Australian history.

As a historian by training, I'm always looking for ways that past events can inspire fiction — and one of the best venues to do so is in futuristic science fiction. Here the technological advancements and interplanetary settings supply the freshness, while lessons from history inform the ways conflict and culture collide. And sci-fi can take inspiration from any era; a good example is Isaac Asimov's Foundation saga, which relies heavily on Edward Gibbon's landmark History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But science fiction fans have, for generations, had a special place in their heart for the space western, whose historical wellspring is the American Old West.

The similarities are obvious; space has long been called "the final frontier," so where better to look for space story material than one of the best-known frontiers of the last three centuries? Gene Rodenberry famously pitched Star Trek as a "Wagon Train to the stars." Among other elements, Joss Whedon's Firefly universe draws heavily on the postwar aspect of the American West. Precisely because of the usefulness of this period, though, space westerns and regular westerns have plundered the American Old West for stories, to the point of exhaustion.

This is where Australia comes in. Not just a country, but a whole continent's worth of frontier! In addition to being roughly contemporaneous, Australia offers enough similarity to the American West to be readily adaptable to audience expectations: military and cultural clashes between natives and colonists, a need for self-sufficiency caused by isolation from more developed regions, and the harsh, adventurous milieu created by these factors.

Of course, the way Australia differs from the Old West is what is most potentially fruitful for writers today. Works could explore:

  • How European colonists discovered and dealt with the famously dangerous Australian wildlife. How did they learn (or fail to) from the Aboriginal example here?
  • The intersection of western tropes with seafaring tropes, since the Old West is usually portrayed as landlocked and Australia has a rich seafaring history. Navigations to map the coast, shipwrecks and massacres like the Maria in 1840, the intrepid (and as-yet understudied) overseas trade conducted by Aborigines across the Coral Sea, and many other events, can dovetail well with sci fi readers' long conflation of space travel with nautical tales.
  • How conflicts unfolded when natives were numerous and motivated, but outmatched by sparse but heavily armed colonists (compared to Native American tribes, which adapted much more readily to European technology).
  • The drama of native police, fighting in large numbers on the colonists' side against other Aborigines.
  • The New South Wales' foundation as a centrally-organized penal colony, as opposed to settlement by free agents in kinship groups.
  • Imperial competition — namely, the fact that colonizers were not monolithic — as between British, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese in the region.


Space westerns are far from tapped out; they can only benefit from new inspiration!


For further exploration of this topic, see the author's article in the upcoming Issue #165 of Aurealis magazine this fall. Image credit: Author via Nightcafe.

5 Comments

Honzo

Nothing against using Australian history as inspiration for scifi, but I think the points you suggest are pretty much all true regarding American westerns, and also are themes frequently addressed in sci-fi- not always using the American west as model, by any means, but these historical themes are common to peoples in much of the world. One thing that colors the traditional western is that it is almost always approached through the perspective of the invaders. I don’t know if that holds true in Australian narratives, but it is common in Anglophone scifi. Not a lot of books out there told from the perspective of the colonized or about to be colonized. An interesting exception is The Mote In God’s Eye, which has one of the better, more alien, alien cultures I’ve seen. There’s another whose name I can’t recall told mostly from the perspective of enslaved humans, and the sentient spiders that the slave masters want to conquer.

Oct-23 2023

Sreid

There are tons of stories and movies abour alien invaders (collonizers) of earth, so as far as that perspective goes, it’s covered.

Oct-29 2023

Honzo

I know, but we’re the victims/good guys. The perspective of those being invaded by us is relatively rare.

Oct-29 2023

Ronoz

You mention Foundation. I have to say that that series was nearly the most boring thing I’ve ever read. The link you made between that and the study of history amused me. Only because when I was at school I also found history to be so boring. Which was a pity, really, because history is so important in our lives.

I’ve recently been watching the TV series Outlander. There were a few episodes relating to the rise of the Regulators in Carolina. I found myself a little confused and went to the web where I found the Regulators in North vs South Carolina had a different focus. It’s commendable that Gabaldon kept her plot true to that period of history, and I found myself smiling as I was reading Wiki that she had inspired me to read some history. Something I was so bored by in my school days. Perhaps history teachers should strive to make their subject matter more interesting.

Whilst Outlander doesn’t follow the traditional line of science fiction, there are heavy elements of it in the background – time travel. I was interested to see that the author took inspiration from Dr Who.

A lot of Science Fiction stories are modern-day Westerns. (That isn’t my deduction, but something I heard a movie director say on a TV documentary many years ago.) It’s so true of many. Take away the spacecraft and replace the ray guns with six-shooters and a lot of the time you’re left with a Western. In that regard, history could well be a great place for inspiration. Though, I think there are many more interesting themes for science fiction than those that end in a shoot-out.

Oct-29 2023

Robertb

Often overlooked - the most successful criminal reform experiment in history - Australia!

What are recidivism rates in your state? The recidivism rate for the Australian penal colonies was less than 5%. Also, the vast majority of prisoners, on release, were fully employed contributors to society. The number of ex-prisoners who became, inflation adjusted, millionaires was greater than the number of recidivists. Some of those ex-prisoners became among the wealthiest of citizens.

An English visitor to Australia was relaxing on the flybridge deck of my motor yacht on the Hunter River, just north of Sydney. The sun was going down, motor and sail boats were dotted around the broad, placid, waters. A kookaburra was laughing, almost drowning out the annoying sound of a jet-ski in the distance. The cooler was full of fresh fish from our successful angling during the day. As we leant back and drank our icy beer the Englishman said: “Just think - we used to send you blokes out here for punishment!”

Nov-29 2023
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