WHAT WORLDS MAY COME

Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne — these authors brought their earliest readers to the edge of the known world then pushed them over the cliff into a thrilling, chilling, possibly boundless unknown where science, fantasy, and the persistence of human failure were allowed to coexist.

James Fenimore Cooper, Owen Wister, and Zane Grey opened up very different, and sometimes equally frightening, frontiers. They stirred together a modern definition of the Knights’ Codes of chivalry with the more base human instinct for exploration, for seeking out a possible Utopia from which to carve out their own definition of ‘Home’. From that vigorous imaginative stirring came what many refer to as Cowboy Fiction, or Westerns.

The real literary magic occurred when science, fantasy, and that dash of realism that spiced up the Cowboy Code, was mixed together to produce a truly modern cross-genre, or genre, depending on what fiction lecturer you favor.

In Week One, you were tasked with…