The 2021 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention was held earlier this fall, and the new Windy City Pulp Stories #20 is out. Unfortunately, as with the previous issue, it’s not available through Amazon as POD. You’ll need to check with some of the pulp dealers to get a copy. Not sure what is going on, as many prior years are available on Amazon.
This year, the focus is on Dashiell Hammett and Black Mask magazine, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020. (There was no Windy City con in 2020 due to the pandemic.) We get a good collection of articles on both topics, as well some fiction.
Hammett (1894-1964) is probably well known to many for his several detective characters, having created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon, etc), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), the Continental Op, and Secret Agent X-9. His early work, including Sam Spade and the Continental Op, appeared in Black Mask, of course.
So in the section for him, we get almost a dozen pieces of various sorts, many being reprints. This includes a quartet of pieces by Hammett himself. We get a couple of early, short articles about him.
We get a couple of new articles on Hammett. John Locke provides a look on how Hammett moved from being a detective to being a writer. Tom Johnson provides some interesting little bits of info in his piece.
Next are an interesting couple of works: one collects ads and promos for Hammett’s works in newspaper, radio, TV, and movies; another collects artwork from the newspapers that ran his stories.
In the section on Black Mask, we get another collection of new and old articles. Will Murray provides a couple of works. One looks into pulp author Ed Lybeck, of which little is known. While the other is on the prolific author Prentice Winchell (1895-1978), who also wrote as Stewart Sterling.
For reprinted pieces, we get several on well-regarded Black Mask editor Joseph Shaw. One is a rebuttal by Shaw himself against Vanity Fair‘s article that attacked pulp magazines in general and Black Mask in particular. I know you can read it in Pulpdom #47 (December 2006). There is an interview with him from Writer’s Digest. And there’s an obituary on him.
We also get several selections from a newspaper column by Eugene Cunnigham.
Another interesting section is a group of book reviews done by a trio of Black Mask authors.
And we get a pair of fiction pieces from Black Mask.
A final piece gives a historical look at the development of wood-pulp paper over rag paper. I think any pulp fan should read this.
So it’s another great issue with an eclectic mixture of pieces. Again, I wish this was more readily available to readers. I look forward to next year’s issue.
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