The pulps are more than just the stories and characters depicted on the covers and inside of the magazines.
The pulps are the thousands of writers, artists, and editors who churned out the popular fiction magazines from 1896 through the mid-1950s.
Around this time in 2012, I started noting the anniversaries of births and deaths of pulp writers, artists, and editors on ThePulp.Net’s Facebook page and in its Twitter feed. It started out with just a few a month as I began collecting names and dates in a spreadsheet.
SF fictioneers Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick share a birthday today (Dec. 16). Clark was born in 1917; Dick in 1928. #pulpmags
— ThePulpNet (@ThePulpNet) December 16, 2012
A year later, pulpsters’ births and deaths were being posted almost daily. Today, I’m noting anywhere from two to over a dozen anniversaries a day.
Earlier this year, I moved the tributes off of ThePulp.Net’s Facebook page, so now they are strictly on ThePulp.Net’s Twitter feed. (With so many each day, it was clogging up the Facebook page’s feed; and with a change in the way Facebook distributed new posts from Twitter, fewer folks were seeing them there.)
In November 2014, my spreadsheet listed names and dates of around 450 pulpsters. I’m adding new names and dates to my list regularly. This month, for instance, I added 86 more names to the spreadsheet, bringing the total to 1,074 names.
Yet, that only scratches the surface of the vast number of folks working on the pulps. I will keep adding to the list, and continue posting the tributes on Twitter.
In addition to the effort of logging new information and getting the tweets scheduled, there’s a benefit for me in doing this. I’m discovering writers such as Norman Elwood Hammerstrom, who apparently published only one story (in Weird Tales), and others such as Allan R. Bosworth, who sold over 360 stories to the pulps (from Adventure, Argosy, and Top-Notch to Doc Savage, Texas Rangers, and Thrilling Sports). Both are mostly forgotten today, and I was unaware of them until adding them to my spreadsheet.
I hope you’ll check out the tributes. You don’t have to have a Twitter account to read them. Just head over to ThePulp.Net’s Twitter page to see that latest tweets.
Fictioneer Katharine Haviland-Taylor died on this date (Nov. 28) in 1941. She was 50. #pulpmags
— ThePulpNet (@ThePulpNet) November 28, 2016
You will need a Twitter account if you want to like, comment on, or retweet any of them.
You can see the latest tweet from ThePulp.Net on the right side of the foot of most pages on the site.
Our tweeting schedule begins at 8 a.m. Eastern time on days with a pulp convention or gathering (see the Pulp Events page for upcoming cons). At 10 a.m., new posts on The Pulp Super-Fan, That’s Pulp!, or Yellowed Perils blogs will appear. Then at 11 a.m. begin the pulpster tributes, on the hour or every half-hour depending on the number scheduled for that day. You also may see likes and retweets showing up from time to time.
If you notice that I’ve not marked the birth or death of a pulp fictioneer, artist, agent, or editor, and you have the dates, please let me know. I’d be happy to add their names to the listing.
In the meantime, continue reading the pulps, and remember all of the many folks involved in creating the classic fiction that we love.
