Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds Share a Common Ancestor
Science fiction fans love a roguish and handsome hero. Harrison Ford’s Han Solo captured a lot of hearts, and Nathan Fillion’s Malcolm Reynolds in the tragically single-season series Firefly is an absolute delight. These men have a lot in common, both space smugglers who get into lots of trouble but tend to emerge the hero.
Before these characters stole our hearts, there was Northwest Smith. First introduced to the world in the 1933 short story Shambleau by C.L. Moore, Smith is a space pirate, though his adventures take place in our own solar system. Readers will find him clad in leather with his trusty ray gun at his hip. Stubborn and cool under pressure, he seems to find himself entangled with a beautiful woman in each of the stories about his adventures.
I was fascinated to learn about this character while reading “Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction.” While I have not been able to find any hard evidence one way or the other that George Lucas or Joss Whedon have read C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories, there are many fans who have suggested it is possible, if not likely, that Northwest inspired Han and Captain Mal. Having devoured an anthology of Northwest Smith stories, it is hard for me to imagine that Lucas and Whedon haven’t also consumed these tales.
