Hopefully the first evening of PulpFest 2015 set the stage for the rest of the convention.
There was a great slate of panels, then a chance to meet up with a number of other pulps fans that I hadn’t seen since last year.
I drove into Columbus, Ohio, around 4 p.m. Got checked in and unloaded my stuff into the room, then headed downstairs to pick up my registration packet for PulpFest in the ballroom was slowly being converted into the dealers’ room.
By 6 p.m., the dealers’ room was officially open. But fewer than a third of the dealers had set up or were in the process of doing so. I wandered around to see who was there, and to get a broad overview of what folks were selling. I was making mental notes about which tables I wanted to return to first on Friday morning.
I ran into Anthony Tollin of Sanctum Books. While talking with him about his upcoming new reprint series featuring The Black Bat, Lohr McKinstry wandered up.
Lohr and I grabbed a bite to eat for dinner down in the food court at the only vendor still open for the day. We ran into several of the attendees for the anime convention that’s also going on this weekend at the Hyatt Regency convention center.
(From what I understand, they will out number the pulp fans something like four to one. I’ve heard estimates of between 3,000 and 4,000 attendees for that gathering. Quite a few of them are into cosplay, too.)
After dinner, we headed upstairs for the opening evening of programming.
Tim King kicked things off with a terrific presentation on spycraft in The Shadow adventures, something he knows about firsthand, having worked in intelligence roles for the U.S. government.
Next up, the “two Johns” — John Gunnison and John Wooley — offered a lively talk about the Thrilling Group’s detective pulps and characters.
A panel discussion noting the 75th anniversary of Street & Smith’s comic books featured moderator Tony Isabella and participants Anthony Tollin, Will Murray and Michelle Nolan.
Ed Hulse presented a slideshow and discussion of Thrilling’s lineup of western pulps.
Michelle closed out the evening’s presentations with a talk about the often-ignored sports pulps.
Next up was a screening of two films based on H.P. Lovecraft stories, “Out of Mind” and “Pickman’s Model.”
Rather than watch those, I dropped my bag off in my room, and headed up to Bill Mann’s informal con suite to spend a hour or so catching up with quite a few pulp friends.
I will be posting audio recordings of the PulpFest presentations once I return home next week. So please keep an eye out for updates to the Pulp Events Podcast.
The dealers’ room will be opening for Friday’s business just as this entry is being posted, so I’d better hurry down. Please check back tomorrow morning for a report on the day’s events.
