The past few years, I’ve been actively bulking up my collection of pulp fanzines. I’ve purchased scores of Echoes, select issues of Xenophile and dozens of issues of other zines.
They are packed with a mix of terrific research, articles, illustrations, opinions and letters, as well as a fair share of, well, goofy articles. In general, though, they are great reference material.
If you look at the defunct pulp zines page in the PulpWiki, you see a long list of zines that have come and gone since the 1960s. The current zine list is relatively short.
Back in early 2000, the idea of The Pulp Companion was germinating. What I wanted to create was essentially an online pulp fanzine, with articles, columns, news items, etc., that would be updated regularly.
It would be a couple of years before The Pulp Companion would actually come to fruition. But in the development stage, I contacted several possible contributors. One, who has been a regular contributor to just about every pulp zine since the ’70s, wrote back with this comment:
However as long as people are publishing fan journals on the pulps, I don’t think it is fair to the publishers of these journals to write original articles on the pulps which the fans can obtain off the Web.
Eight years later, that comment still comes to mind occasionally. Did he have a point? Is the Web hastening the end of the printed pulp fanzine? Are Web sites taking the place of the fanzine? How fair is it to the zine publishers?
Years ago, someone might start a zine as an expression of his or her interest in the pulps and to reach out to other pulp fans. These days, that same fan might start up a Web site.
You can certainly reach more people on the Web than in print. Where some zines’ total press run might be 200 copies or so, Web sites can have that many visitors every day.
For instance, ThePulp.Net sees between 100 to 200 unique visitors each day. I’m sure other pulp-related Web sites would report similar results.
It’s great to search TPN or use the Pulp Gumshoe to search other pulp Web sites for something you’re looking for at the very moment you want the answer. But there’s also something to opening the mailbox to find the latest issue of Blood ’n’ Thunder waiting, or searching through the zines that line one of the shelves in my pulp bookcase.
Have you dropped a pulp fanzine subscription because the Web offers a cheaper, more immediate alternative? Or do you prefer the hard-copy version of the zines?
– William
