I think most pulp fans today are unaware of the many fanzines that used to exist in the larger work of pulp and sf fandom in past decades.
Today, there are only a handful of fanzines; most being replaced by blogs or the like. And the fanzines today, thanks to modern technology, are much slicker and more professional than those in the past; some taking advantage of print on demand such that they are always available. I’ve taken a look at a few already, and plan more to come.
In the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, fanzines were largely typed on typewriters, not on word processors, and usually mimeographed (a sort of primitive photocopying) often on cheap paper. Going into the ’80s we would see more use of word processing, and photocopying for reproduction. The better ones were offset printed or even professionally printed.
Most are hard to find today. If one is lucky, a collection of articles from a particular pulp historian, such as Nick Carr or Will Murray, might be collected. But that leaves a lot of good works unavailable to modern fans.
A recent pair of collections rectifies this for one particular fanzine, The Pulp Era. Originally published for about 15 issues in the 1960s, the complete run has recently been reprinted in two large volumes as “The Collected Pulp Era.” I got copies of them, and this is what I found.
The Pulp Era was published by pulp fan Lynn Hickman. He had been publishing a fanzine called JD Argassy for several years, and had decided to change the focus of it to the pulps. This was done with #60 (Winter 1963) and the next issue would be renamed The Pulp Era. The new focus would mean articles, reviews, and bibliographies on pulp magazines. Two to three issues — or about — came out each year.
Volume 1 of the collection has JD Argassy #60 and The Pulp Era #61-67 (1963-67). Volume 2 has The Pulp Era #68-75 (1967-71) along with The Pulp Era, The New Series #1 (1993). Volume 2 is rounded out with extra materials, including information on Hickman, who passed away in 1996. The volumes were put together by his son, Mark Hickman, and shot from original copies. Sadly, this means that some pages aren’t very well reproduced, due to the originals not being printed well. But the material contained is worth the bother.
Overall, there are many interesting items. It was neat to read about the various pulp hero reprints coming out at the time the zine was running — not just the Bantam Doc Savage reprints, but also the various Corinth reprints, the Berkeley reprints of The Spider and G-8 and others. There are several interesting articles scattered through out. Some interesting ones include:
- A Weird Tales Memoir by August Derleth (#60)
- A article on the “sort of” pulp era of England (#61)
- A personal remembrance of The Shadow (#61)
- A review of Walter Gibson‘s new Shadow novel from the ’60s (#62)
- Writing a Tarzan pastiche called “Bantan” by its author (#62)
- Various indexes, including one on pirate stories (#62) and one on Argosy (#62-63 )
- A look at Don Diavolo and Red Star Mystery (#63)
- Flying Aces pulp, and the heroes that appeared there (#66)
- “Air War 1914-18”, article and art portfolio (#66-67)
- The Columbia pulps (#67)
- Henry Steeger on Popular Publication‘s pulps (#67)
- The Many Lives of Nick Carter (#71)
I left a lot out. As noted, there were also many reviews and notices of pulp-related works that were coming out at the time, and other articles and columns like “Down Memory Bank Lane.” And there are letters from various fans and luminaries that are almost mini-articles in their own right.
Also, there were some things that were started, but never finished, like “A Comprehensive Survey of The Spider” (#66-68,70,71). It was supposed to be collected when finished, but I have no idea if the whole thing was written or not, as it didn’t finish in The Pulp Era. A complete index of Frank Gruber was promised for a future issue, and that never happened.
Furthermore, all issues were rounded out with various black-and-white line art that ranges from intentionally cartoonish to very fine work. In some issues there would be an “artfolio” focused on a single artist.
Both volumes are available from Amazon. I think any serious fan would benefit from getting this works. I also wonder if we will see some of the promised works ever published?
I bought these. I never subscribed to the Pulp Era when it was originally printed, so I wanted to read it now. Some good articles here, but some very outdated ones, too (a Shadow article that muses that Maxwell Grant might have been a pen name). These are rare in their original form, so the publishers should be praised for making them available.
Yeah, reading old fanzines is interesting. At time you get to read the original articles that lay out facts that we all know today, but which was new information then. And sometimes you get articles that we now know are totally wrong.