Frontier Earth

1881

For those who have felt intimidated by the fact that everything I've reviewed so far was written over 100 years ago, I will now write a post on something written in 1999. But which takes place over 100 years ago.

First let's talk about the author, a man who arguably deserves a post just covering his career. Bruce Boxleitner. Not a household name... But he arguably should be.



The bio and backcover of this paperback highlight Bruce's role as John Sheridan on the nineties sci-fi show, Babylon 5. I never watched the show, as it always seemed to come off as a Star Trek rip-off with shiny special effects. Well, I did like the shiny special effects- they held my attention during late night TV watching sessions where my senses were altered. I originally knew Bruce from his role on Scarecrow and Mrs. King, although I didn't know it was the same actor until wikipedia was invented. Where Bruce really shined, though- the real peak of his performance career- was as the title character in the movie Tron.



Bruce is re-appearing in the highly anticipated 3-D sequel this winter, Tron: Legacy. Although no one applauded his appearance in the trailer- we were all waiting to see the Dude glowing like a mythical slacker video game hippie doing yoga. Bruce is simply not a real celebrity or household name- and the fact that he's been writing campy sci-fi westerns like Frontier Earth isn't helping, I guess.

I summed this book up by calling it Tombstone meets Predator, and that about says it all.

While Victorian fiction in the late 1880's was probing the edges of mankind's capacity for intellect and technology, we Americans were exploring a wild frontier- which didn't leave time for all that intellectual philosophising, I guess. As quaint and exciting as the western genre can be, it never interested me so much. Even when a sci-fi element is injected, such as using a steam engine locomotive to push a time machine, I struggle to get through all the square dancing and repetative barroom brawls. Hell, when Firefly was described as a sci-fi western, I almost didn't tune in! (Glad I did, though... Maybe I should give Babylon 5 another chance, knowing what it did for J. Michael Straczynski...)

Frontier Earth isn't so different from any other western story that ends in a big shootout between cowboys that are mostly good fighting cowboys that are mostly bad and most of them dying. The fact that aliens crashland and try to blend in while evading bad-ass alien hunters never actually changes the core dynamic of a western story. Sure there are some fun and funny moments- and the Apache shaman is an interesting fellow with a tad more depth than most indians in westerns who get killed by cowboys or cavalry- but at the end of the 322 pages Frontier Earth never delivered anything more than what it promised on the front cover illustration: a cowboy meets an alien. And then a bunch of people die.

Next week we will stay on the topic of wild frontiers, as we meet another Extraordinary Gentlemen in the unexplored dark reaches of Africa.