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.