Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and a Genre by Michael K. Johnson (review)

Reviewed by: Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and a Genre by Michael K. Johnson Travis Franks Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and a Genre Michael K. Johnson University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2023. 30. 00 paper. As the subtitle suggests, Michael K. Johnson's Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and a Genre is as much about the West as a place as it is about the western as a genre. Johnson groups together texts he identifies as speculative westerns: "hybrid western forms created by merging the western with one or more speculative genres or subgenres (science fiction, fantasy, horror, alternate history, steampunk, time travel, etc. ) " (3). The archive of primary texts that Johnson assembles reflects this expansive and inclusive definition, as single episodes of television shows are read alongside films and novels. Working within the parameters of what Johnson terms speculative regionality—that is, considering "imagined, fantastic, and future western places" (15) — Speculative Wests poses two important questions to readers: "What if we could imagine the western differently? What if we could imagine a different past, present, or future West? " (4). Having previously authored several books on Black experiences in the American West and, more recently, having co-edited a volume of essays on weird westerns, it is no surprise that Johnson focuses on racial identities and genre blending in Speculative Wests. Indeed, race and ethnicity provide an organizing structure for the book's six body chapters. Following the introduction, chapter one, "Race, Time Travel, and the Western, " provides definitions and theoretical frameworks that inform Johnson's analyses throughout the remaining chapters. Time travel figures as a recurring theme throughout Speculative Wests, particularly in chapters two, four, and five, with End Page 84 Johnson offering thoughtful insight into how the writers of shows such as Timeless, Watchmen, and Undone, as well as Chicano authors like Rudolfo Anaya and Alfredo Véa, have used this well-known sci-fi narrative technique to revisit traumatic moments that have shaped the West. Chapter three primarily focuses on futuristic representations of the Navajo Nation in Nanobah Becker's film The 6th World and two novels by Rebecca Roanhorse. Johnson similarly incorporates Afrofuturist theory into chapter six, "Speculative Slave Narrative Westerns. " In a brief afterword, Johnson reflects on writing the book during the political and social unrest of the last several years, and, in returning to the questions he raises in the introduction about the future of the West, hopes for "the potential emergence of a new society in a future West that is imagined as a starting point rather than as a manifest destiny" (224). Johnson demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of canonical and less-known western narratives and a thoughtful engagement with scholarship emerging from Chicana/ o, Indigenous, and Black Studies. Occasionally, references to other fictional works and deference to other scholars compete for space with Johnson's own insights and close readings. Nonetheless, Speculative Wests should strongly appeal to graduate students and professional scholars studying the West or race and ethnicity in popular culture more generally—and, in doing so, it will provide them with a wealth of primary and secondary sources to pursue. Travis Franks Utah State University Copyright © 2024 Montana Historical Society Press