Ride 'em, Cowboy ...

In my checkered past, I did a couple books for a packager, Bill Fawcett, after having written some short fiction for some anthologies he put together. The novels were Stellar Ranger and Stellar Ranger: Lone Star. I count these two novels as westerns, although they are obviously marketed as science fiction. I think the old Texas Ranger quote is, "One riot, one ranger." Our version was "One planet, one war, one ranger ..."

(How to tell if something is science fiction? If you can take all the science out and the story still works, then the tale is probably something else. If you can substitute a six-shooter for the raygun, horses for the rockets, and it works just as well? It's a western ...)

Um. Anyway, they were fun to do, and while I never had any desire to pen any more in the series, I recall them fondly.  I recall that Bill came up with the ranger's name: Cinch Carsten. At one point, when I was feeling particularly dull, I cast about for a name for my ranger's planet, and my gaze fell upon the reference book shelf,  just there to the left. It lit upon the thesaurus ...  and thus the name of the world became ... Roget ...

Turns out a lot of the books Fawcett did, like The Fleet series, are now being put forth as ebooks, and so Stellar Ranger is about to join these. 

The original cover had somebody who looked kinda like Chuck Norris in a sliver jacket and cowboy hat, a blaster in one hand. The new cover goes right to fringed buckskin and oilskin duster and matching hat, with a silvery earpiece com and high-tech gun in a cross draw holster. I don't think that's the Horsehead Nebula in the b.g., but it ought to be ...