Over at Suvudu, Lisa Hannett performs a guest essay on the Weird West in Fiction, which is well worth a read.
Thinking of the American mid-West conjures up images of cowboys and desperadoes, dusty plains and wild mountain ranges, Stetsons and sheriffs and shoot-outs. Usually, calling a story a ‘Western’ leads our imaginations back to the past: we visualise the O.K. Corral, the Alamo, and Billy the Kid. But call it a ‘Weird Western’ and this picture changes.
The rest is here. 