It’s another end of an era.
After 15 some years, Ed Hulse‘s excellent magazine, Blood ‘n’ Thunder, comes to an end with the Fall 2016 issue: #49/50.
Blood ‘n’ Thunder covered not just pulps, but their dime-novel forerunners, movie serials, and early radio. But every issue has something of interest to pulp fans, and this one is no exception, having both new articles, and reprints of both fiction and non-fiction. If you have not gotten this fanzine, there are two collections of articles from the first 22 issues, and the rest are available through Amazon, thanks to print on demand.
So what do we have in this issue? Another great collection of non-fiction, fiction, new and old.
In the area of reprints we get an article on selling detective stories from Writer’s Digest in 1933, along with a longer article going over the process of writing and selling pulp stories. Here the author actually shows the process by creating a story, which he then sells. I wish that story had also been reprinted.
A more recent reprint, from the third issue of BnT, is Joe Rainone‘s article on the early dime-novel character, The Man in the Black Cloak, and his possible influence on The Shadow. Rainone actually reprinted that story, and it may still be available.
Then we have an article on Rear Window — yes, the Alfred Hitchcock film — and it’s beginning as a pulp story, which appeared in Popular’s Dime Detective Magazine.
Ed includes an article from his books on early silent era movies on the cliffhanger The Diamond in the Sky, which starred Mary Pickford’s sister.
A different reprint is a collection of short reviews on early sf yarns from 1928 to 1932 that ran in various Gernback science-fiction pulps. We also get reprints of several covers, which are always nice.
And we get one fiction reprint, one of L. Patrick Green‘s Major stories from Short Stories in 1938. Altus Press has reprinted the Major series, so if you haven’t read it, this is a good introduction.
New articles include one on the radio adventures of The Spider from the 1930s. I had never heard of this, and this article brings together all information known on these shows.
Pulp historian (and Wold Newtoner) Rick Lai takes a look at the history of Robert E. Howard‘s wizard Skelos.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an article focused on the storing and display of pulp collections, but now I have. I would have loved to have seen more pictures. This is accompanied by an article on the finding and selling the “Yakima Collection” of pulps, which I had never heard of.
Several of the pulp-hero magazines had premiums, such as pins and rings, and I have seen pictures of a few of these items. Chris Kalb has a presentation he does on them, and we now have that presentation in article form. I wish the pictures were in color, but I saw items I never knew existed.
I will enjoy this issue and all the rest, and they reside on my shelves with the other pulp works. What’s next? Ed Hulse plans on a series of “Blood ‘n’ Thunder presents…” bookazines. I look forward to what comes next. I may not get all of them, but I know whatever ones I do get will be great.
Maybe my concept of a fanzine is out of date, but Ed’s periodical is pretty professional to qualify as a fanzine (as this article calls it) in my mind. I’d classify it as a magazine that could be sold on any newstand (the few that are left).
It’s a fanzine because Ed is pretty much a one-man shop self publishing. Thanks to technology of desktop publishing & print on demand, he can put out a product that rivals what professional magazines can do. But I think it would still be considered a fanzine, maybe a semi-pro zine.
A fine, thoughtful appreciation; “Blood ‘N’ Thunder” went out on a high note!