Page "Western (genre)" Paragraph 61

In many of Robert A. Heinlein's books, the settlement of other planets is depicted in ways explicitly modeled on American settlement of the West.

For example, in his Tunnel in the Sky settlers set out to the planet " New Canaan ", via an interstellar teleporter portal across the galaxy, in Conestoga wagons, their captain sporting mustaches and a little goatee and riding a Palomino horse — with Heinlein explaining that the colonists would need to survive on their own for some years, so horses are more practical than machines.