Today – five years after the appalling attacks of Sept. 11 – it’s hard not to think of terrorism. Over the past few days, the idea of terrorism as depicted in fiction has been turning over in my mind.
John Updike’s recently published novel, Terrorist, has gotten some attention. In 1975, Thomas Harris published Black Sunday, made into a memorable movie about a terrorist strike on the Super Bowl. But the idea of terrorism in fiction isn’t something that’s come about because of recent events.
Turn the clock back 70 years and you’ll find that terrorism was a prime plot mover in many popular fiction stories.
Whereas today’s real-life “religious” terrorists are fueled by hate and bent on the destruction of Western society, the terrorists of the pulps were more often driven by greed or conquest. (Though hate was a motivator, too.)
For instance, in the fall of 1939, the air above a major U.S. city was filled with the droning of an airplane, then a tall office building collapsed. The goal of “The Sky Walker” was to terrorize the population of Chicago. That was in the November number of The Avenger.
Terrorism – acts of mass violence to frighten the populace – turns up in a variety of pulp titles, such as The Spider, Operator #5 and, even, Doc Savage.
But the sad and unfortunate aspect of this is that today’s terrorism is real and not just the product of a fictioneer hammering out story after story on a typewriter for a living.
– William
What’s in a name. Hi Bill, your post today about 9-11 and the pulp villains made me recall that while writing
a pulp stories a while back, Martin Powell and I stop to ponder if the actual word “terrorist” was something
post-9/11 in day to day usage. What we discovered was that this was not the case and the word appeared in many, many pulp yarns.
Too bad we couldn’t have let remain fiction.
Ron
All the more reason we should ‘learn’ from even our fiction! Terrorism has been around since the beginning of civilization, and we should realize that. Alot of people just float thru their daily lives as if everything is ok, when it isn’t. Evil and Terrorism are a very big part of this world, and it must be combated.
It is too bad it rises from things like the pulps and comics to become real, but I think it just proves that pulps and comics do reflect real life more than people think.
Here’s to the American Dream, not politics, politicians, or parties – but just to the American Dream!!!!