Lohr McKinstry answers “3 pulp questions” in the fifth installment of the series.
Back in the heydays of the alt.pulp newsgroup, Lohr was one of the regular participants. I recognized his name from the cover of “The Hero Pulp Index” that he and Robert Weinberg produced back in 1971.
Lohr says he and George Vanderburgh are working on an updated edition of the “Hero Pulp Index.” Weinberg, of course, has been involved, as has John DeWalt. There’s no publication date as yet.
Lohr also wrote the introduction to a collection of stories by Robert R. Mills. “Enter Tiny David,” to be published by Black Dog Books, will feature 16 adventures of Lt. Edward “Tiny” David of the New York State Police Black Horse Troop. The stories originally appeared in Blue Book between 1929 and 1936.
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3 Pulp Questions
3 Pulp Questions is an opportunity for you to get to know fellow pulp collectors a bit better and, maybe, introduce you to pulps, authors, stories or characters that you haven’t explored.[/box]
I finally had a chance to meet Lohr — and quite a number of other pulp fans that I “knew” online — at Pulpcon 35 in 2006.
Now here’s your chance to met Lohr, as he answers “3 pulp questions”:
1. How were you introduced to the pulps?
I was in junior high school in Pennsylvania and when classes got out for the summer, I went to the local bookstore to look for reading material. On the shelf were the first few Doc Savage reprints from Bantam Books. I choose “Meteor Menace,” went home, sat in a chair behind my house and started reading. I couldn’t believe how great it was — blue meteors turning men mad, Russian jail escapes, supermachine pistols roaring — I think I finished it by nightfall. The next day I went back to the store and bought every Doc reprint they had.
I soon got the Conan reprints, “The Weird Adventures of The Shadow” hardcover and the Corinth reprints. I was hooked.
I started buying pulps by mail, starting with Doc Savage and The Shadow. I corresponded with other pulp fans and began trading indexes with them.
In 1967, I went to Phil Seuling’s first comic convention in New York City. There I met Bob Weinberg, who had a table in the dealers’ room. We became friends and at some point I showed him all my pulp indexes. He decided we needed to print them, because no one had ever done something like that before.
The result was the Weinberg-McKinstry “Hero Pulp Index.” It sold out.
I went to college, studied journalism, and pretty soon I was moving around the country, working for various newspapers. I lost contact with pulp fandom, but I never stopped reading. About six years ago, I went to Pulpcon and renewed my ties. I’ve been to Pulpcon/PulpFest every year since. This year I will be at Windy City in April and PulpFest in August.
2. What is your most prized pulp possession?
My complete set of Unknown/Unknown Worlds magazine. There’s an incredible amount of great fantasy reading in those 48 issues.
3. What overlooked (pulp magazine, story, author, character, or series) would you recommend to pulp fans and why?
Jean Milligan, who wrote for Weird Tales and Short Stories under the “Alison V. Harding” penname, is definitely an underappreciated author.
Her Damp Man trilogy is fascinating. She wrote 36 stories for Weird Tales, but no one has ever done a single collection of her work. Her husband, Charles Lamont Buchanan, was assistant editor at Weird Tales. Her characterization wasn’t strong, but her plotting was. She is mostly forgotten today.
Lohr mentions the importance of UNKNOWN WORLDS. Issues are still fairly easy to get and if you are a pulp collector, then you must have a set of the 39 issues. I love the magazine so much that I have two sets. One is John Campbell’s own personal bound set. He inscribed it to George Scithers with the comment about “finally getting my set”. The other set is the 39 loose issues.
So actually, I guess you can say that you can never have too many sets of UNKNOWN!
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In 1967, I went to Phil Seuling’s first comic convention in New York City. There I met Bob Weinberg, who had a table in the dealers’ room. We became friends and at some point I showed him all my pulp indexes. He decided we needed to print them, because no one had ever done something like that before.
Lohr mentions the importance of UNKNOWN WORLDS. Issues are still fairly easy to get and if you are a pulp collector, then you must have a set of the 39 issues. I love the magazine so much that I have two sets. One is John Campbell’s own personal bound set. He inscribed it to George Scithers with the comment about “finally getting my set”. The other set is the 39 loose issues.
So actually, I guess you can say that you can never have too many sets of UNKNOWN!