‘Keys to Other Doors’

When I was first involved in the pulp fandom world in the late ’90s, I saw ads for Keys to Other Doors. Subtitled “some lists for a pulp collector’s notebook,” it was put together by John DeWalt. There were at least two versions, a first version in 1995 with a revised version in 1998.  I believe the 1995 version has a blue cover and was done for Pulpcon as a preview edition.  I got the 1998 version which has a red cover.

I didn’t get it at the time and only recently got one. I wish I had gotten a copy back then, as I had to work to find some of the information, and thanks to the Internet and various websites, a lot of this information is now easy to find. But, there is information here I was not aware of despite that. So there still is value in getting it.

Here is a breakdown of what is in this volume, which runs 140 pages along with several spot artworks from the pulps.

We get a couple of pages on then-current fanzines. Sadly, most of these are gone, in some cases long gone. I know that The Bronze Gazette, Pulpdom, and The Pulpster are still going. I’m not sure about Yellowback Library, Dime Novel Round-Up, and PEAPS. Can someone update me on these? There are another two pages on defunct fanzines, most of which I am aware of, but it does give some info I didn’t know.

There where many fanzines that focused on pulp reprints over the years, as well as some fanzines that did occasional reprints. We get a listing of the contents of several that existed at the time, such as Astro Adventures, Attic Revivals, Behind the Mask, ERB-dom/Fantastic Collector/Pulpdom, Pulp Review/High Adventure, as well as the occasional reprints from Nemesis Inc., Pulp, Pulp Adventures, and Pulp Vault.

Various small presses during the times were also putting out books of pulp reprints, either as anthologies or as reprint series. We get listings of some two dozen publishers and what they put out. Some I was familiar with, such as Bowling Green Popular Press, Fax/Starmont, Hanos, Pulp Press/Dimedia, and the many works of Robert Weinberg. But several were listed I wasn’t aware of, either specific publishers or additional works from smaller presses I didn’t know of.

The next section covers other reprints in various large anthologies. I was aware of some like The Pulps (1970) edited by Tony Goodstone, but others I didn’t know about.

Next is an index of pulp heroes, more focused on the lesser-known heroes from Thrilling and other smaller publishers. This runs about 50 pages. This is followed with similar checklists for Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. Thanks to the Internet, most of this information is now more readily available.

A list of pulp-hero reprints covers several pages.

The rest is taken up by several other lists that index the contents of several recent works on pulps, such as Robert Sampson‘s Yesterday’s Faces (a work I hope to highlight here once I get the one volume I’m missing), a listing of info on Pulpcon (later replaced by PulpFest). There is even a listing of the Echoes Awards for 1992 through 1997.

Maybe the data that is collected here can be duplicated on one of the websites devoted to pulp fiction and kept up-to-date. As I said, I found some value here; it pointed out some works I hope to get a hold of and review.