Phil Klass, who wrote under the name William Tenn, died Sunday, Feb. 7. He was 89.

Mr. Klass started his writing career with stories in Astounding and Weird Tales beginning in 1946 and ’47. He went on to have dozens of stories, often with a humorous slant, printed in a number of science fiction pulps.

He retired in the late 1980s from Penn State University, where he had taught english and literature since the mid-’60s.

I never knew Mr. Klass personally, but I had the great fortune of meeting him and his wife, Fruma, at PulpCon 35 in 2006. He was one of that year’s guests of honor and gave an hour-long talk about his life in the science fiction pulps.

You can hear him reminisce about his writing years in our PulpCon 35 Report.

It’s always sad to hear the passing of a pulpster. Our thoughts are with his wife, family and friends.

— William

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There’s a review onine of a purported script for The Shadow movie that’s been in the works the past couple of years. It’s available on the IESB.com Web site.

I’m not familiar with the Web site or the review’s author, Peter Georgiou, but it’s interesting to hear what may be in the works for a movie. It sounds positive (despite a bit of confused knowledge of The Shadow by Georgiou).

Tip of the hat to “Kent Allard” who posted this on the alt.pulp news group after having it passed along to him by John Olsen, proprietor of The Shadow in Review.

— William

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Saturday at week ago was a “Doc Day” here in the Phoenix area. That’s a day when members of the Arizona Fans of Bronze get together to plan the next Arizona Doc Con (as well as talk pulps, books and movies).

We met at Phil Matthews’ home. He’s been ill recently and was unable to attend November’s Doc Con. So it was great to spend a few hours visiting with him.

It turned out to be a very productive meeting. We set the dates, location and theme for Doc Con 13, and talked about sharing the organizing responsibilities, rather than laying it all on the shoulders of the host.

Doc Con 13 will be Friday-Sunday, Nov. 12-14, at Glendale, Ariz. Friday evening will be the annual old-time radio re-enactment, held this year at Courtney Rogers’ house. Saturday will be the day-long gathering, hosted by uber-Doc Savage collector Jay Ryan. The con ends Sunday morning with a breakfast at a local restaurant.

Yours truly will be the event co-ordinator for Doc Con 13. I’ll be putting together the Doc Con’s Saturday schedule, so if you’re interested in making a presentation, please let me know.

This year’s theme is two-fold. We’ll be celebrating the 70th anniversary of the debut of Street & Smith’s Doc Savage Comics and the 75th anniversary of the introduction of Chemistry the ape into the novels. (Well, “celebrating” may not describe that last one very well.)

You can keep up with developments through the Doc Con group at Yahoo.

Mark your calendar. It’s a great time for Doc (and pulp) fans. Hope to see you there!

— William

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A former sections editor of mine used to have a “happy drawer” in our department that was filled with candy. You could grab a piece whenever you needed a boost. The drawer was always full following Halloween, when everyone would bring in their leftovers.

One year, I got in a routine of pulling out a box of Nerds every day about mid-afternoon. You know, those little pebble-shaped sugar candies. After more than a week of Nerds, my teeth started hurting after the second or third mouthful of the candy. That was it. I couldn’t eat any more, even though I thought they were delicious.

The same applies to pulp stories. After a string of, say, Captain Future or Doc Savage stories, I reach a point where say, “That’s it. I can’t read another one.” This goes on with any pulp series.

You begin to notice how formulaic and predictable the stories are. You start noticing repetitive descriptions of the series’ characters. You’re reading them for pleasure, but they begin to stop being a pleasure to read.

Back when the pulps were being published, it might have been a month between issues, or longer if the series you were reading didn’t have its own magazine. After a month or six months or even a year, when the new story came out, you were eager for it.

It’s certainly not that the stories aren’t worth reading. But like with Nerds, you want to stop before they start hurting your teeth, and switch to another treat.

— William

* Sorry, but there’s no mention of Spicy magazines in this entry. I just couldn’t resist the punning headline.

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As most of you probably realize by now, GeoCities, the 14-year-old free Web hosting site currently owned by Yahoo, shuttered all free sites last fall.

Quite a number of pulp-related Web sites had GeoCities addresses. If you browse around ThePulp.Net, you’ll notice most of the links to those sites are gone (and the few that remain are broken).

If you had a pulp-related site on GeoCities and you’ve moved it to another Web address, please let me know and we’ll get your link restored or updated. (Heck, if you know of one that’s moved, please feel free to let us know its new address.)

You can either add your new link to the comments field below this entry or click on the Contact TPN link at left and send in an e-mail.

I hope those pulp sites aren’t gone forever.

— William

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