‘Pulp Fictioneers’

An interesting source of information on the pulps are the various letters and articles from pulp fiction authors and editors publishing in various writer’s magazines like Writer’s Digest. I was surprised to learn it is still being published. Some of the pulp fanzines and pulp convention program books I’ve reviewed have reprinted one or two of such articles in some of their issues.

But if you’d like to read a whole book of such writing, check out Pulp Fictioneers. Edited by John Locke (of Off-Trail Publications) and published by Adventure House in 2004, it’s 240 pages of “adventures in the storytelling business.”

Collecting several dozen works (short articles, letters to the editor, etc) taken from the Writer’s Digest, Author & Journalist, The Writer, The Editor, Writer’s Review and even Writer’s Markets and Methods and Writer’s Monthly. These run from 1921 to 1955. John provides a good intro/overview for the whole work. Further, he contribute a brief intro to most of the articles here, which can be a few sentences to a longer paragraph, which helps put it in context.

He avoided the more boring “how to write” type of articles for articles that give the inside information on the pulps. Add to this are publisher blurbs (“news chats”) on various pulps magazines, which are meant to inform potential authors of possible markets. Spicing things up are a variety of pictures, artwork, and ads. (One was for the “plot robot.”) And we even get an index.

Contributors are a virtual who’s who of pulp writers and editors: H. Bedford-Jones, Pauline Bloom, Allan Bosworth, Arthur J. Burks, Hugh B. Cave, Allan K. Echols, George Allen England, Robert O. Erisman, Erle Stanley Gardner, William C. Gault, Hugo Gernsback, Walter Gibson, William Hopson, Henry Kuttner, Leo Margulies, Chuck Martin, Aron Mathieu, Carson Mowre, Joel Townsley Rogers, Joséph Shaw, Harry Steeger, Rogers Terrill, Tom Thursday, Robert Turner, Farnsworth Wright, and many others.

I think I was more disappointed by who weren’t included. Some of my favorite authors are not covered, but maybe they never wrote to these journals.

But we do learn interesting little tidbits. I didn’t know that H. Bedford-Jones wrote a whole series of articles on writing that was collected in hardback. Wonder if Altus Press will reprint this as part of their H. Bedford-Jones Library? Walter Gibson provided an article that gave some insight into his method of writing (after writing a million words a year for 10 years). Another article was an interesting look into the issue of author’s rights, as with some publishers, authors sold all rights (allowing the publisher to make money on reprints they didn’t have to share with the author), where as other publishers only bought first serial rights (many such publishers felt this was the right thing to do).

Another long article from 1951 looks at the state of the pulps and where they were going.  As this was during the twilight of the pulps, you can guess where that was.

If you interested in learning more about the pulps, beyond just reading stories and maybe learning more about the authors, this is an excellent addition to your library. John Locke did two followup volumes titled Pulpwood Days, which I hope I can obtain someday.