The Buntline Special / Mike Resnick

The Buntline Special: a weird west tale by Mike Resnick. 321 p.

This book has a fairly interesting premise: in1891 the United States' western border is the Mississippi, because the magic of the great Indian leaders has stopped expansion. Of course, American supporters of Manifest Destiny have a plan for defeating the Indians: they send the great genius Thomas Alva Edison to Tombstone, Arizona to see whether he can figure out how to counter the magic. After someone tries to assassinate Edison--he loses an arm, so he replaces it with a clockwork one--the government hires Wyatt Earp to protect Edison, and he calls in his friends Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday. Eventually we end up with an alternate-history Gunfight at O.K. Corral.

Basically, this book teems with cool stuff, yet it left me somewhat cold. I think the author's writing style kept me too detached from the characters, but I can't put my finger on why it affected me that way. Still, it's a neat setting, with a Tombstone full of force fields and electric lights and gunslingers wearing brass body armor.

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