The Weird West Subgenre In Fiction, Explained

gamerant.com:

Cowboy stories are heavy on classic tropes, packing in everything from drunken bar brawls to taciturn bounty hunters to high-noon gunfights. However, when the tropes of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror get into the mix, they create a new setting referred to by fans and authors as the Weird West.

The archetypal nature of western stories isn't exclusive to the genre, but it does shape the nature of every entry in it. Every modern western must decide whether it's doing the conventions straight or adding some outside-the-box element. Sometimes it's as simple as a more accurate view of history, but sometimes the author wants to throw in ghosts, vampires, and aliens.

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The Weird West is, simply put, any Old West narrative with additional supernatural elements that radically change the setting. A regular western might see a stoic lawman sent into a sleepy mining town to bring in an outlaw dead or alive. A Weird Western might see that same lawman enter that same town, only to discover that his renegade charge is actually a vampire. Or that the town was built on top of a Native burial ground, leaving it lousy with spirits. Or UFOs might begin to appear overhead, leading to an alien invasion. Whenever supernatural, science fiction or fantastical elements enter the archetypal western narrative, that work is added to the Weird Western canon.

One of the first examples of the Weird West subgenre came in the appropriately-titled Weird Tales magazine. The mainstay of 20s horror is best known for the works of H. P. Lovecraft, but it also contained plenty of well-known authors' great works. Writer Robert E. Howard, best known for his Conan the Barbarian franchise, crafted «The Horror from the Mound» in 1932.