Yellowed Perils: Thoughts and Comments on the World of the Pulp Magazines

PulpFest is nigh

This year's The Pulpster features a H.C. Murphy Jr. painting that originally appeared on Black Mask.

Here it is Monday night, July 26. PulpFest is just a few days away, and like many of you, sadly, I won't be attending this year.

Pulp festivities kickoff at 9 p.m. Thursday, July 29, and continue until around 10 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 2.

It looks to be a terrific pulp gathering. The PulpFest committee � Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, Mike Chomko and Ed Hulse � has put together a calendar packed with events I'd love to attend. Sigh.

It's been a while since I have written anything for Yellowed Perils. I've spent most of my "pulp time" writing an article for, then designing, The Pulpster (the annual zine edited by Tony Davis and published for the summer's pulp convention).

I'm pretty excited about this year's Pulpster. Tony has put together a great selection of articles: PulpFest Guest of Honor William F. Nolan writes about Sam Spade, Destry and Dr. Kildare; Don Hutchison, on pulpster David Goodis; Frederick Painton, on Arthur Burks' plot trick (reprinted from a vintage Writer's Digest); John Locke, on pulpster Paul Ernst; Nick Carr, who answers 10 pulp questions he's been asked; Wayne Leighton (aka Rex Layton), on L. Ron Hubbard; David L. Fox, on Max Brand's first year writing for Western Story Magazine; Bruce Stirling, on Carroll John Daly's "Three Gun Terry"; and my article, on a forgotten 1978 Doc Savage TV movie script.

I have to give kudos to Francesco Francavilla for drawing a wonderful Doc Savage illustration to accompany my article. You can take a sneak peak of the illustration on his Pulp Sunday blog. (While you're there, check out all of his other terrific illustrations.)

This year's Pulpster sports its first color cover (that's it above left) and runs 44 pages. If you've registered for PulpFest (to attend or as a supporting member), you'll receive a copy. If not, check out the PulpFest website after PulpFest for details on purchasing one.

If you, like me, can't make it to PulpFest, consider some of the other pulp gatherings. There may be one near you. I'll be attending the Arizona Doc Con in November. (More details to come regarding that, so stay tuned.)

There's a listing of Pulp.Events on the TPN home page. Hope you can check out one of the gatherings. Getting together with fellow pulp fans is a great experience.

� William

What's with those skimpy spacesuits?

Earle Bergey's cover painting for Fredric Brown's "What Mad Universe" features Betty Hadley in her space girl outfit.

Brian Earl Brown used to have on his Web site a page devoted to "Earle Bergey and the Wonderful Brass Bra," with several examples of science-fiction pulp covers by Bergey.

Bergey specialized in painting gorgeous space girls (barely) clad in boots, briefs and, as Brian described them, brass brassieres � apparently the standard outfit for spacefaring females in the '40s and '50s.

The first pulp cover in his Bergey gallery was the September 1948 number of Startling Stories, which featured "What Mad Universe" by Fredric Brown. (Click the image at left to see a larger version of Bergey's cover.)

Well into that story, Fredric Brown addresses the issue of the "brass bra" outfit:

Betty said, "Come in, K-Keith Winton."

He didn't even notice at first that she'd called him by his right name. She still wore the costume she'd worn at her desk that morning at the Borden offices. Yes, there were green trunks to go with the green bra. They were very brief trunks, very well shaped. Green leather boots came halfway up shapely calves. Between the boots and the trunks, the bare golden flesh of dimpled knees and rounded thighs.

She stepped back and, scarcely daring to breathe, Keith went into the room. He closed the door behind him and stood leaning against it, staring at Betty, not quite believing.

The room was dim, the shades already pulled down. The light came from a pair of candles in a candelabrum on the table behind Betty. Her face was shadowed, but the soft light behind her made a golden aura of her blond hair and silhouetted her slim, beautiful body. An artist could not have posed her better.

Then about a page later, Fredric Brown picks up the topic again with Keith speaking to Betty:

"I can't seem to believe in anything here, really, except � No, I don't even believe in you � in that costume. What is it? Do you wear it all the time?"

"Of course."

"Why? I mean, other women here �"

She looked at him in bewilderment. "Not all of them, of course. Only a very few in fact. Only the space girls."

"Space girls?"

"Of course. Girls who work, or have worked, on spaceships. Or ones who are fiancees of space men. Being Dopelle's fiancee would entitle me to wear it, even if I hadn't done exploring in space, on leaves of absence from Borden."

"But why?' He floundered. "I mean, is it so hot in a spaceship that such an � an abbreviated costume is necessary? Or what?"

"I don't know what you mean. Of course it isn't hot in spaceships. Mostly we wear heated plastic coveralls."

"Transparent plastic?"

"Naturally. Mr. Winton, what are you getting at?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "I wish I knew. The costumes. Transparent plastic � Like the covers on Surprising Stories."

"Why, of course. Why would cover pictures like that be put on Surprising Stories unless we really wore such costumes?"

He tried to think of an answer to that; there wasn't any.

I just finished reading "What Mad Universe" and highly recommend it for pulp fans. Not only is it a fun � and sometimes funny � read, the main character is an editor at a pulp magazine company, so you get a bit of an inside look at the pulp business in the 1940s.

� William

Pulp artist Ernest Chiriacka has died

Ernest Chiriacka holds his Guest of Honor plaque at PulpCon 35 in 2006.

Walker Martin on the PulpMags group at Yahoo posted a notice that pulp artist Ernest Chiriacka died Tuesday, April 27, 2010. �Darcy,� as Chiriacka was known, was 96.

Several tributes, with his artwork, are available:

��Newsday: A short obituary for Chiriacka appears on the Newsday Web site.

��Pulp Artists: David Saunders has a short item about Chiriacka on his Web site. On the Chiriacka page inside the site are a number of his pulp covers.

��Killer Covers: This weekly blog talks about Chiriacka and features a number of his paperback covers.

��Today�s Inspiration: Leif Peng has posted several of Chiriacka�s later work on his blog.

Sadly, with the passing of Chiriacka and Philip Klass, we've lost this year both Guests of Honor from PulpCon 35.

��William

Updated: Added Newsday obituary link.

Digital pulps on the iPad

I've been in the market for an e-reader for a while. My wife bought one of the original Amazon Kindles several years ago and loves it. I had my eye on the Plastic Logic Que reader (also an E-Ink type of device) after news of it was released over a year ago.

The Que debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January and looked great. It will have a black-and-white E-Ink screen (like the Kindle), measuring 10.7-inches (diagonal), and weigh just over a pound. It is expected to support .pdf, .epub, .txt and a variety of graphics files. Unfortunately, the Que's release was delayed until late summer.

It will come in two versions: a 4-gigabyte, Wi-Fi edition for $650; and a 8-gigabyte, Wi-Fi/3G edition for $800.

Meanwhile, Apple announced the iPad shortly after CES.

The iPad features a slightly smaller 9.7-inch (diagonal) screen, but it's a higher-resolution LED color screen. And the unit weighs about a pound-and-a-half.

The iPad has the Que beat on price and capacity. The iPads run $500-$600-$700 for 16-gigabyte, 32-GB and 64-GB Wi-Fi versions; $630-$730-$830 for the Wi-Fi/3G versions.

The real selling point for the iPad is that it is more than just an e-reader: it's a computer, complete with e-mail, Web browsing and apps.

I was curious about the iPad, so I ventured down to the store on release day, April 3. After watching others testing out iPads and spending a bit of time using one myself, I took the plunge.

Okay, enough with the tech rundown. The real question is: How well does it work as an e-reader?

After almost two weeks of using it most every day, I have to say it works great. The screen is sharp, bright and easy on the eyes. I've spent time reading .epub, .pdf and .cbr files. The .epub and .pdf files are crisp and easy to ready. The .cbr/.cbz files are made up of scanned pulp pages (usually .jpg files), so their readability depends on the quality of the scan and the quality of the pulp magazine or microfiche/microfilm scanned.

I've tried out three apps for reading digital pulp stories:

��iBooks (the free e-reader software from Apple) displays .epub files. The beta .epub files from Project Gutenberg transfer fine, but the formatting is not always right (and the proofreading isn't always great). I've tinkered around with creating a few .epub files on my own, and they work great. You get all of the benefits of the e-reader (bookmarks, resizable type, etc.) with the .epub files.

��ComicZeal4 is really geared for comic books formatted as .cbr or .cbz, but works well with the similarly formatted pulps. You drag a .cbr file over to the ComicZeal Sync application (I'm using it on my Mac laptop), which re-compresses the file to a .cbi file. Then you can wirelessly sync it to the iPad. It looks as sharp as the .cbr files do on the laptop, but I find it much easier to read them on the iPad. You can zoom in as needed.

��GoodReader handles .pdf files. I've uploaded a couple of large (18-megabyte) .pdfs using it � it also lets you transfer the files wirelessly from a computer to the iPad. Other than being a bit slow the initial time you open one of the files, it does a fantastic job of displaying the PDFs.

The battery life has been amazing. I've recharged it three times in the past week-and-a-half, despite using it daily, mostly for checking e-mail, surfing the Web and reading. (The iPad's a much better alternative to my laptop for using in the living room.)

My only complaint is the weight. A pound-and-a-half doesn't sound like much, but after reading for a bit, it feels better to rest it on something.

I've put together a brief video showing the three e-reader apps in action on the iPad. (Plus there's a funky moire pattern in the video, but it's not there on the actual iPad screen. Also, the caption should be iBooks, rather than iBook.)

Anyone else reading pulps on an e-reader?

� William

When pulps were the size of the Sears, Roebuck catalog

Amazing Stories Quarterly is nearly 2-inches thick.

If my kids read that headline, first thing they would ask would be: "What's a Sears, Roebuck catalog?" But that's another story.

Back in the late 1990s when we were living in the Tampa Bay area, I first visited pulp dealer David Alexander's Tampa warehouse. It was the largest single collection of pulps I'd ever seen. The warehouse housed not only the pulps he had for sale, but also books, movie memorabilia, etc.

Beside the rows of shelved pulps, what really caught my attention were the monsters high on a shelf to the right.

The pulps I was familiar with were of the standard half-inch thick, around 128-page variety. What were these behemoths?

Turns out they were quarterly editions of science fiction pulps.

Can you imagine plunking down your 50 cents and hauling home a nearly 2-inch-thick collection of outlandish entertainment

Amazing Stories Quarterly is nearly 2-inches thick.

? That would last a kid days.

Years later I broke down and bought one of the monsters � the Winter 1950 number of Amazing Stories Quarterly � and discovered the secret. It wasn't some fantastically large single issue; it was actually three unsold monthly issues � June, July and August 1950 � glued together to form a single magazine. The only thing missing were the front and back covers of the individual magazines.

For a 50-cent cover price you got 75-cents worth of pulp science fiction. Would you have waited for the quarterly to save a quarter?

� William

Will Google Books benefit pulp fiction?

I've been talking about the future of pulps in a couple of previous posts, but haven't discussed it in respect to the Google Books project.

The project � Google's attempt to scan entire libraries of books � got mired in copyright lawsuits. The Web site io9's Annalee Newitz attempts to explain the latest developments in "5 Ways the Google Book Settlement Will Change the Future of Reading."

What might be of most interest to pulp fans falls under her last point: "5. Pulp science fiction will make a comeback in ways you might not expect." Here are a couple of paragraphs:

The good news for science fiction fans is that a merger of libraries and bookstores can only mean one thing: More pulp fiction, or cheaply-produced and distributed novels. We will have unprecedented access to pulps published in the first half of the 20th century. Many of those novels and stories were classics that deserve a wide readership today � but they've been lost in the depths of libraries and archives.

More importantly, I think we could see a renaissance in contemporary pulp fiction. We can once again have access to weird, unusual stories that are both awesome and not sustainable under publishing's current blockbuster model. Writers of small and midlist SF books could start making money on their writing again. This is a good thing for authors and readers who love imaginative fiction.

I certainly agree with her comments that pulp stories � not just science fiction ones, I might add � deserve a wider readership.

� William

The future of pulps, part 2

What if you read digital pulps on your handheld device, such as an iPad?

Ed Hulse, Barry Traylor and Walker Martin made some good points in their comments to my �Future of the pulps� entry a few weeks back.

Certainly, there is something intrinsically fulfulling when you hold a pulp magazine. You hold a bit of history in your hands, knowing that it was purchased off some magazine stand a half-century or more ago. Knowing that someone likely bought it for the excitment depicted on its cover and detailed inside.

The collecting of physical pulp magazines shouldn't � and won't � go away.

Certainly, you can travel to PulpFest or Windy City or Toronto or elsewhere and pick and choose among the thousands of pulps on sale at those pulp conventions. Or you can place your bids on eBay. Or purchase directly from a pulp dealer or fellow collector. I, like many of you, have done all three of those.

Agreed, there are pulps in fine to near-pristine condition.

But I would wager that the vast majority of pulp magazines aren't in that condition. And, more than likely, not every number of every pulp title could be found in such condition. This may be more likely for those less-desirable titles � less desirable because they don't include the better fictioneers or illustrators.

The point I was trying to make the last time was that it's time for us, the pulp community, to start thinking about long-term preservation of pulp fiction. The magazines are here today, but what about 50 or 100 years from now?

I would hate to find out that stories by only the key fictioneers or featuring the most popular characters are all that survive from this significant, but largely ignored, period of America�s literary heritage.

Last time, I mentioned the Pulp Scans group at Yahoo, a collection of pulp fans that has been scanning mostly science fiction pulps the past few years. They've done an admirable job with their limited resources.

What is needed, though, is something on the scale of Google's book scanning efforts. Something organized and well planned, so it isn't haphazard.

The drawback of that is cost. Both in acquiring the pulp magazines to scan and the actual equipment and scanning.

How could that be financial mountain be overcome? Would some sort of nonprofit organization � say, a Foundation for American Popular Fiction of the 20th Century � be the way to go?

It would be a shame if the vast majority of true pulp fiction disappeared in the years to come. What should we do?

� William

Will Murray: 'The rumors are true'

Doc Savage expert Will Murray posted this on several of the Yahoo news groups Monday afternoon:

The rumors are true. After a seven-year negotiation � I am not kidding � I've acquired from Conde Nast/Advance Magazines, the right to market seven new Doc Savage novels. All seven will be based on unused and unfinished Lester Dent ideas, outlines and manuscripts.

In anticipation of this, I've written The Desert Demons, which reunites the entire Doc Savage cast for a far-out adventure that sprawls from 1936 Hollywood, Calif., to the alligator-invested interior of Florida.

Other Docs are in various stages of execution, with Horror In Gold fully drafted. I'm likely to complete The Infernal Buddha, which I began as my eighth Doc in 1993, next.

These will be kicked-up, over-the-top stories. Which is why I'm calling this new series, The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage.

Next stop: Finding a publisher. With a new Doc Savage film in the works, this shouldn't be hard.

� Will Murray (Kenneth Robeson X)

Should be a wild ride indeed.

� William

Pulp convention season nears

It used to be a big deal when the PulpCon flier arrived in the mail. There would be numerous posts on the Yahoo pulp groups and the pulp news groups about what was in it.

The PulpFest flier arrived in the mail recently, but there was hardly a peep online about its arrival.

It wasn't because no one is interested in what is in it. No, it's because the PulpFest folks � Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, Mike Chomko, Ed Hulse and Chris Kalb � do a wonderful job keeping us up-to-date with the second annual PulpFest developments through the convention's Web site and with their posts to the various pulp groups.

(Check out its Web site for complete details on the July 30�Aug. 1 convention in Columbus, Ohio.)

No more waiting with baited breath for the postman to bring pulp convention news.

Speaking of pulp conventions... It's less than a month away from the Windy City Pulp & Paperback Convention, near Chicago.

You can find all the pertinent information regarding the April 23-25 convention on its Web site, too.

Following quickly on Windy City's heels, the 14th annual Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale will be Saturday, May 8, in Toronto, Ont. See the Girasol Collectable's Web site for details on this show.

To see what other pulp-related gatherings are coming up, keep an eye on ThePulp.Net's own Pulp.Events listing right on the front page of the site.

� William

Preview the upcoming 'Doc Savage' comic

DC Comics kicks the week off with a teaser to its upcoming Doc Savage comic book series: artist John Cassaday's cover to the first issue. It's posted on DC's blog, The Source.

The Man of Bronze already has appeared in two DC comics in past few months. First was Batman-Doc Savage Special, a one-shot comic dated January 2010. Then came his appearance with Batman and The Spirit in First Wave no. 1, dated May 2010.

The first issue of Doc Savage, written by novelist Paul Malmont and illustrated by Howard Porter, is due April 14.

� William