PulpFest‘s Friday activities started off with registration for those just arriving, followed by the opening of the dealers’ room.
I spend much of the day in the dealers’ room, but didn’t take as much time actually looking through the pulps, magazines, books, and much more as I’d hoped. That’s okay, because I was talking with a number of different pulp fans.
Mike Chomko‘s table had a couple of irresistible books, then around the corner, I picked up a number of The Shadow reprints, which were marked down considerably.
Just after that, I ran into Rick Hall and Scott Cranford at Rick’s table. We started talking about pulp premiums, and Rick pulled out his display box.
I had my case with my duplicate pulp premium pins, so Rick and I made a trade. He had a duplicate Hollow Tree Gang pin from Western Story Magazine that I traded a Pete Rice Club pin for. That gave him a complete set of all three versions of that pin.
After talking a half hour or more, it was time to move on. I ended up making a couple of small purchases of Doc Savage material: an old newsprint fan publication relating to the 1975 movie, and a movie still.
Actor Ron Ely will be the guest of honor at this year’s Doc Con in Arizona, and I’m hoping I can get him to autograph the movie still for me.
The morning flew by, so Scott and I headed across the street for what ended up to be a long lunch. (We first went down to the food court area, but it was packed. Matsuricon, an anime convention, is going on concurrently at the hotel, so there a lot of fans — many in costume — here, too.)
It was close to 2 p.m. before we got back to the dealers’ room, which gave me less than an hour to look around. While the dealers’ room would be open until 4:30 p.m., I wanted to head over to the panels’ room to hear about the Pulp Magazines Project at 3 p.m.
Patrick Belk and Nathan Madison talked about how the project began, what it has been doing to make scanned pulps available for reading and study, and what the plans are for the project’s future.
By the time the panel was over, the dealers’ room was beginning to close up for the day.
Patrick, Nathan, Lohr McKinstry, David Earle, and I headed over to a nearby Irish pub for dinner, and more pulp discussions.
After dinner, it was time for the evening panels, including talks by editor Leo Margulies‘ nephew, PulpFest Guest of Honor Chet Williamson, and Weird Tales artist Jon Arfstrom, and discussions of Philip Jose Farmer‘s weird fiction, H.P. Lovecraft‘s Cthulhu mythos, and the Thrilling Group’s pulps and comics. (Remember, I will be posting audio recordings of the panels once I return home.)
It was close to midnight when those finished up, so I headed upstairs rather than watch two movies based on Lovecraft’s works.
I forgot to mention yesterday that I’m posting regularly to ThePulp.Net’s Instagram and Twitter feeds, which also show up on TPN’s Facebook page. So you can keep up with PulpFest 2015 through those. If you’re here at the con (or just want to comment), please do. I’m using the hashtag #pulpfest2015.
The dealers’ room is about to open for Saturday shopping, so I’d better wrap up. More tomorrow.
