Bruce Boxleitner deserves credit for knowing his audience. The cover of Frontier Earth bills him as "Babylon 5's Captain Sheridan," and the author photo is a publicity shot of Boxleitner in the uniform of his B5 alter ego. He may not have the narrative chops to make the New York Times Book Review sit up and take notice, but he definitely knows what it takes to separate the fanboys from their lucre.

Frontier Earth relates the tale of a man called Macklin, who wakes up with no memory of his past in the desert outside Tombstone, Arizona.

As the book rushes to its climactic confrontation, circumstances maneuver Macklin into the archetypal "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" moment.

In proper square-jawed heroic fashion, he makes the right choice, saving the day rather than taking the easy way out. As it happens, this heroic impulse also sets the stage for an eventual sequel.

As a piece of science fiction, Frontier Earth makes a heck of a western. Boxleitner has astutely left the high-tech elements in the background by giving his interplanetary protagonist amnesia, limiting the book's main focus to 1881 Arizona.

Thanks to this narrative dodge, Macklin is free to become the perfect western hero. He is the man without a past, the stranger who blows into town with trouble at his heels. He may not necessarily be responsible for the trouble, but his arrival precipitates it nonetheless.

Boxleitner did his homework to bring the Old West to life, weaving his tale into the myth and history of the O.K. Corral in a way that doesn't stretch credulity too far.

Macklin meets and interacts with characters whose existence is a matter of public record, including Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, but his presence in their story doesn't upset the historical apple cart. Though Macklin's adventures are deeply entwined with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the details prove to be tangential.

In the end, Boxleitner has pulled off the ultimate challenge of historical fiction by using real characters and events to tell a compelling story without allowing the story to overshadow the history.

Unlike other celebrity captains one could mention, Boxleitner is generally kind to the English language. While reading Frontier Earth, I only came across one passage where he tortured his prose enough to provoke squeals. Macklin's first day on horseback was apparently a painful one, "working its way up between the crack of his buttocks there was a burning pain that felt like a white-hot wire."

An accurate description of the sensation? Perhaps. A well-constructed description? Not in the least.

Boxleitner also falls into a common SF trap with his depiction of the alien Kra'agh. As described, the hunters pursing Macklin operate according to a stimulus-response system similar to that of animals in the wild. Despite this supposedly feral nature -- and the horrifying appearance Boxleitner deftly conjures for them -- the Kra'agh still think and react in a decidedly human fashion.

Conveying information while still creating convincingly "alien" aliens is a fine balancing trick. In the case of Frontier Earth, Boxleitner, as many first-time writers tend to do, errs on the side of exposition, and these characterizations suffer as a result.

These lapses aside, he tells a perfectly competent, if ultimately unremarkable tale. It's not destined to become a classic, but Frontier Earth can still provide a welcome diversion for fans of both the SF and western genres, and not just diehard Babylon 5 completists.