{"id":622,"date":"2010-02-20T23:45:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-21T06:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepulp.net\/PulpBlogs\/YellowedPerils_test\/?p=622"},"modified":"2016-03-21T16:12:20","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T20:12:20","slug":"the-future-of-pulps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2010\/02\/20\/the-future-of-pulps\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of pulps?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of the stories and novels I like to read are ephemeral. Literally.<\/p>\n

\"Apple<\/a>
What if you used your Apple iPad to read digital versions of vintage pulps?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m afraid of spending too much time holding my pulp magazines for fear they will turn to dust in my hands. They range from 55- to 114-years-old, and they are disappearing sliver by sliver. So I rarely open them up to read.<\/p>\n

Is it worth paying $20, $50, $150 or, sometimes, much, much more for a pulpwood paper magazine that may not be around much longer? You seal them in a mylar bag and put them on the shelf, afraid to do much more than pick them up to look at the fade cover that once was vivid in its yellows, reds and blues.<\/p>\n

I keep thinking about the quote attributed to publisher Frank Munsey<\/a>: \u201cThe story is worth more than the paper it is printed on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are the stories what you collect or the containers of the stories, the pulp magazines themselves?<\/p>\n

Clearly there\u2019s a market for printed pulp reproductions. Girasol Collectibles<\/a>, Age of Aces<\/a>, Sanctum Books<\/a>, Wildcat Books<\/a>, Altus Press<\/a> and others are regularly producing pulp facsimiles or reprints.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m thinking about just the stories and artwork alone. In e-book form.<\/p>\n

The crew over on the Yahoo Group, Pulp Scans<\/a>, have been scanning pulps and microfilm of pulps for several years now and have accumulated quite a selection of vintage fiction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree years ago I started the Pulp Scans group,\u201d Dave Reeder<\/strong> says, \u201cand have been incredibly fortunate in attracting a number of dedicated pulp scanners, keen to preserve our heritage. I haven’t kept count, but I think we\u2019ve shared around 350 pulps so far, from early saucy titles to mainstream science fiction to western. The hero pulps we\u2019ve stayed away from after a wake-up mail from Conde Nast’s lawyers!\u201d<\/p>\n

Reeder says the group focuses on pulps that aren\u2019t being reprinted, so as not to compete with reprint publishers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense, I see our role as cultural archivists,\u201d Reeder explains. \u201cIf this material is lost then nobody will ever be able to reprint it commercially. Plus it\u2019s great to read! …\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past crumbles. Digital preserves and shares. I guess it\u2019s as simple as that,\u201d Reeder says.<\/p>\n

Is this the future of pulp collecting? As much as a lot of us are loath to admit, it probably is.<\/p>\n

What if the cover of your pulp was vibrant? The text and interior illustrations a solid black on crispy white? What if you could tap twice to zoom in to make the story more legible? And you could carry your entire pulp collection around with you in your Apple iPad or other digital reader, without worrying about it crumbling to bits?<\/p>\n

For me, the concept is getting more and more likable.<\/p>\n

\u2013 William<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of the stories and novels I like to read are ephemeral. Literally. I’m afraid of spending too much time holding my pulp magazines for fear they will turn to dust in my hands. They range from 55- to 114-years-old, and they are disappearing sliver by sliver. So I rarely open them up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[8,19,11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-pulppreservation","category-pulps"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-a2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4914,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/4914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}