Fanzine focus: ‘The Pulpster’ #25

PulpFest 2016 has come and gone, but we have the latest issue of The Pulpster to savor afterwards, now up to #25.

The main focus of this issue is the 90th anniversary of Amazing Stories, similar but different with the recent Windy City Pulp Stories and its focus. For this we get an article that actually complies a group of articles by seven former editors of Amazing from the beginning to more recent years. Another short article is on Philip José Farmer‘s contributions to Amazing.

Rounding out the issue are a wide range of articles and some fiction. We first get an article about planning what to do with our collections when we pass on. This may not be a subject some of us want to face, but something we need to consider if we want to ensure what happens is what we want.

Another article looks at the transformation of Street & Smith’s long-running Detective Story Magazine from a nickel weekly to a pulp magazine. I did enjoy learning more about the various serial characters who ran in DSM, many from Johnston McCulley.

We also get a look at black pulp writers from the 1930s. This includes a look at the short-lived (two issues) pulp magazine Harlem Stories, which seems a girlie magazine aimed at this market. And we get a short story reprinted from an issue.

A somewhat unusual article is about Walker Martin working to collect two sets of the long-running pulp, Western Story Magazine. Yes, there is a reason, but you’ll have to read it to learn it. Probably more importantly is highlighting the importance of this magazine by the great fiction and art that it contained.

Rounding out the issue is a short article by our own Bill Lampkin on a pair of second-string pulp heroes from Street & Smith: The Whisperer and The Skipper. I really hope this will lead to Sanctum Books completing both reprint series.

It’s another great issue of The Pulpster. Some day I hope to attend PulpFest. Until then, get this issue!