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Pulp magazine

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Pulp magazines (or pulp fiction; often referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines. They were widely published from the 1920s through the 1950s. The term pulp fiction can also refer to mass market paperbacks since the 1950s.

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[edit] Terminology and history

The name "pulp" comes from the cheap wood pulp paper on which such magazines were printed. Magazines printed on better paper and usually offering family-oriented content were often called "glossies" or "slicks". Pulps were the successor to the "penny dreadfuls", "dime novels", and short fiction magazines of the nineteenth century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines are perhaps best remembered for their fast-paced, lurid, sensational and exploitative stories and thrilling cover art. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered descendants of "hero pulps"; pulp magazines often featured illustrated novel-length stories of heroic characters such as the Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Phantom Detective. However the pulps were aimed more at adult readers whereas comic books were traditionally written for children and adolescents.

Because of the copyright laws at the time, there were distinct lines of this sort of magazine in Britain as well. These magazines, called "story papers", were distributed throughout the British Empire. Story paper characters such as Sexton Blake and Nelson Lee were similar to American pulp characters. At the time, there was no global media market, so even though these were written in the same language, there was no recognition of the characters by each nation, just as in much of television today.

Pulp covers were famous for their half-dressed damsels in distress, usually awaiting a rescuing hero. Cover art played a major part in the marketing of pulp magazines, and a number of the most successful cover artists became as popular as the authors featured on the interior pages. Among the most famous pulp artists were Frank R. Paul, Virgil Finlay, Edd Cartier, Margaret Brundage and Norman Saunders.

The first "pulp" is considered to be Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy Magazine of 1896. At their peak of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, the most successful pulps could sell up to one million copies per issue. Among the best-known titles of this period were Amazing Stories, Black Mask, Dime Detective, Flying Aces, Horror Stories, Marvel Tales, Oriental Stories, Planet Stories, Spicy Detective, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Unknown and Weird Tales.<ref name = "Haining"> Haining, Peter (2000). The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines. Prion Books. ISBN 1-85375-388-2.</ref>

The pulp format eventually declined (especially in the 1950s) with rising paper costs, competition from comic books, television, and the paperback novel. The 1957 bankruptcy of the American News Company, then the primary distributor of pulp magazines, has sometimes been taken as marking the end of the "pulp era;" by that date, many of the famous pulps of the previous generation, including Black Mask, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Weird Tales, were defunct. Most remaining pulp magazines are science fiction or mystery magazines now in digest form. The format is still in use for some lengthy serials, like the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan (over 2300 issues as of 2005).

[edit] Genres

A common misconception is that 'pulp fiction' is limited in scope to 1940s adventure fiction in the vein of Indiana Jones. While such fiction is, in fact, encompassed under the heading of 'pulp fiction', the heading itself is by no means limited to describing only that type of fiction.

Pulp magazines often contained a wide variety of genre fiction, including, but not limited to, fantasy/sword and sorcery, detective/mystery, science fiction, adventure, westerns (also see Dime Western), war, sports, railroad, men's adventure ("the sweats"), romance, horror/occult (including "weird menace"), and Série Noire (French crime mystery). The American Old West was a mainstay genre of early turn of the century novels as well as later pulp magazines, and lasted longest of all the traditional pulps.

Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialized in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Black Mask.

[edit] Famous and infamous characters of pulp fiction

While the majority of pulp magazines were anthology titles featuring many different authors, characters and settings, some of the most enduringly popular magazines were those that featured a single recurring character (these were often referred to as "hero pulps", because the recurring character was almost always a larger-than-life hero in the mold of Doc Savage or the Shadow).<ref name = "Hutchison"> Hutchison, Don (1995). The Great Pulp Heroes. Mosaic Press. ISBN 0-88962-585-9.</ref>

Image:Phantom Detective 5-36.jpg

Popular regular pulp fiction characters included:

Kilgore Trout, the perennial character in the work of Kurt Vonnegut, is a fictional pulp fiction writer.

[edit] Authors featured in pulp

Many well-known authors began their careers writing for pulps under assumed names. Well-known authors who wrote for the pulps include:

[edit] Pulp publishers

[edit] Pulp fiction today

After the year 2000, several small independent publishers released magazines which published short fiction, either short stories or novel-length presentations, in the tradition of the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. These included Blood 'N Thunder and High Adventure. There was also a short lived magazine which revived the title Argosy. These were specialist publications printed in limited press runs. These were pointedly not printed on the brittle, high-acid wood pulp paper of the old publications, and were not mass market publications targeted at a wide audience. In 2004, Lost Continent Library published "Secret of the Amazon Queen" by E.A.Guest, their first contribution to a "New Pulp Era", featuring the hallmarks of pulp fiction for contemporary mature readers: violence, horror and sex. E.A.Guest was likened to a blend of pulp era icon Talbot Mundy and Stephen King by real-life explorer David Hatcher Childress.

In 2002, McSweeney's Quarterly ([www.mcsweeneys.net]) was guest edited by Michael Chabon. Published as McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, it is a collection of "pulp fiction" stories written by some recently well-known authors such as Stephen King, Nick Hornby, Aimee Bender, and Dave Eggers. Chabon, in explaining the impetus of his vision for the project, writes in the Treasury's introduction, "I think that we have forgotten how much fun reading a short story can be, and I hope that if nothing else, this treasury goes some small distance toward reminding us of that lost but fundamental truth."

[edit] Notes

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[edit] References

  • Lesser, Robert. Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines (Book Sales, 2003) ISBN 0-7858-1707-7
  • Parfrey, Adam, et. al. It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (Feral House, 2003) ISBN 0-922915-81-4

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

de:Pulp-Magazin fr:Pulp (magazine) it:Pulp magazine ru:Pulp-журналы fi:Pulp (kirjallisuus) sv:Kiosklitteratur

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