jackrollins

My fascination with Victoriana has been pretty much lifelong, but it took me a while to really appreciate some other historical genres, on film and in literature.

Particularly, I had written off western movies as being for old folks. Sunday afternoons at my Grandparents' sort of forged that idea and branded my brain with it.

It took me until I was about 19 to get into the Western movie genre, beginning with Unforgiven. It was a further 3 years before I read a Western novel, in this case a battered old paperback from my grandfather called "Hard Times and Arnie Smith". It was a great little story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Last night I reached the end of a little e-book anthology called "Whiskey and Wheelguns: Foreshadows". This is the first time I have read Weird West fiction, but I loved some of the Western ghost story movies like "Pale Rider" and "High Plains Drifter" (although when I was a boy, the TV show Bravestarr probably planted some seeds too).

I enjoyed this collection, it serves as a little taster to draw you into the Whiskey and Wheelguns universe. There are a few stories in there that made an impression on me and I think I'll follow them up and see what happens next.

The other sub-genre (although some would argue that it is a genre in its own right - and maybe they'd be right) I've taken up with, is Steampunk. I'll bang on more about that when I've finished reading "The Immersion Book of Steampunk", which I must say, I am quite enjoying.