Have You Heard of Weird Westerns?

Recently, I saw a story call for weird western flash fiction. I knew flash fiction was usually less than 1,000 words, but I had not previously heard of weird westerns. The website reachyourapex.com, which offers affordable professional workshops for authors, sponsored this submission opportunity. The contest was called Weird West Quick Draw and closed on July 15, 2025. The judge was “award-winning weird west author, KC Grifant.”

KC Grifant

The contest call described the following elements as making a weird western story: (1) taking place in a time period around the 1880s and at a location in the United States west of the Mississippi River; or (2) having tropes, themes, aesthetics, and settings similar to the “Old West;” and (3) combining that with a science fiction, fantasy, or horror genre.

Examples of weird westerns would include Cowboys and Indians, Back to the Future 3, The Mandalorian, and The Wild, Wild West.

Judge KC Grifant’s books include Melinda West and the Monster Gunslinger and Melinda West and the Gremlin Queen. She also has edited and contributed to a number of anthologies.

According to Wikipedia, the term weird west “originated with DC‘s Weird Western Tales in 1972, but the idea is older as the genres have been blended since the 1930s, possibly earlier, in B-movie Westerns, comic books, movie serials and pulp magazines.” For those of us who grew up watching Gunsmoke and Bonanza perhaps it seemed like a natural progression to the original Star Trek where space was proclaimed the final frontier.

The Wikipedia article entitled “Space Western” credits Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek) as calling the original series “a space Western (or, more poetically, as ‘Wagon Train to the stars’).” That article also makes a distinction between the space Western and a “science fiction Western.” It provides that: “The genre can be contrasted with science fiction Western, which generally relies on traditional Western frontier settings. while the space Western, having its roots in science fiction, contains plots, tropes, or archetypes of the Western genre, but is generally set in outer space in a futuristic setting.”

I think a weird western may be differentiated from a science fiction western in that it may have elements of horror or fantasy as the unknowns being faced by the pioneers.

Through the weird western and the space western, readers and viewers have the chance to experience what explorers might have encountered and how the indigenous natives might have reacted to newcomers. It’s an interesting way to combine the lessons of the past with the possibilities of the future (or the imagination).

I think I might just have to give writing a weird western a try!