"'No, sir, I regret I do not even know what a cowboy is,' his companion replied."
-A Stone In Heaven, XIII, p. 173.
The spacesuited speakers, Dominic Flandry and Chives, are about to ride a missile through space. See A Death-Horse And The Milky Way, here. The notion of spacesuited missile-riders discussing cowboys inspire reflections already expressed in Westerns And SF but see also that post's extremely informative combox discussion.
"Cow" and "boy" each mean something different whereas "cowboy" means something else. "Cattle man" might be more accurate although we do not think of them as herding cows. At least, I don't. In my childhood a "cowboy" was a man on horseback wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a holstered pistol for use against either Indians or outlaws whereas a "spaceman," not yet an "astronaut," was a man in a spacesuit wielding a futuristic gun for use against Treens or other aliens. It is good to find an echo of those old days in this Flandry-Chives dialogue.
2 comments:
"Boy" in American English often meads roughly what "lad" means in Britspeak. Cowboy is an archaism dating to the 17th century -- it just became more widespread in the 19th and 20th.
Kaor, Paul!
For the most part, of course, "cowboys" of the classic cowboy era of 1870-90 were precisely that, cattle herders.
And the Rogaviki of Anderson's THE WINTER OF THE WORLD herded or managed buffalo.
Ad astra! Sean
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