![\"Collectors](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/files\/2026\/08\/pulpfest-2026-2685.jpg?w=1320&ssl=1\")
<\/a>As I’ve said before, PulpFest<\/a> is the people who attend. You can buy pretty much any pulp magazine on your want-list online, but you don’t often have a chance to talk face-to-face with almost 500 pulp fans. I end up getting only around five hours of sleep each night because of that.<\/p>\n Bull sessions broke out across the hotel lobby, with FarmerCon<\/a>, Doc Con<\/a>, and The Shadow Con<\/a> folks congregating around tables to catch up from last year or debate hot topics related to Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer<\/a><\/strong>, Doc Savage<\/a><\/strong>, or The Shadow<\/a><\/strong>, often into the early morning hours.<\/p>\n There were a lot of familiar faces in Mars, Pa., last week. But there were quite a number of first-timers, too. Some longtime fans finally made it to PulpFest<\/a>, and there were also a lot of BookTubers<\/a>.<\/p>\n We had a few BookTubers last year, and more showed up this year. PulpFest plans to devote a panel to them next year.<\/p>\n (Watch for more on the BookTubers in a separate post next week.)<\/p>\n For the first time, PulpFest opened on Wednesday evening. The program was \u201cA Century of Robert K. Abbett<\/strong>,\u201d a retrospective by Henry G. Franke III<\/a><\/strong>, of the Burroughs Bibliophiles<\/a>, and artist Mark Wheatley<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Abbett did a few pieces of art for Zane Grey’s Western Magazine<\/em> and Argosy<\/a><\/em> (after it had become a men’s adventure magazine) in the early 1950s, but is better known in the pulp community for the covers he painted for Edgar Rice Burroughs<\/strong> paperback reprints.<\/p>\n Programming continued Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, for a total of 16 presentations, many of them tied to this year’s anniversaries: the 100th of Amazing Stories<\/a><\/em> and Ghost Stories<\/em>. (Stay tuned for new episodes of the Pulp Tales<\/a><\/em> podcast, which will include audio recordings from most of the panels.)<\/p>\n Issue number 35 of The Pulpster<\/a><\/em> debuted at the convention. It covered both of those anniversaries and marked a third: 130 years since the first pulp magazine, The Argosy<\/em>.<\/p>\n But as always, the formal programming was only part of PulpFest. Much of the convention’s real traffic, and many of its conversations, flowed through the dealers’ room.<\/p>\n Collectors consulted their want-lists and browsed through boxes and boxes of pulps, paperbacks, and other materials.<\/p>\n The 2026 Munsey<\/a>, voted on each year by previous recipients, went to longtime fan Chris Kalb<\/strong>. He has run two hero-pulp websites, The 86th Floor<\/a> and The Spider Returns<\/a>, for decades, and he created the first PulpFest website. He’s also co-publisher with his brother David<\/strong> at Age of Aces Books<\/a> and a go-to designer for Murania Press<\/a> and other pulp reprints.<\/p>\n Capping off the con was Saturday evening’s auction. There were quite a number of hero pulps, but many bidders held back so that Daryl Morrissey<\/strong> could complete his collection of all 181 Doc Savage<\/em> pulp magazines.<\/p>\n It’s always great to see longtime friends at PulpFest, but the influx of new faces is what will keep PulpFest \u2014 and pulp collecting \u2014 alive in the years to come.<\/p>\n My buddy Jeff Shanks<\/a><\/strong> made it this year and gave a talk on the Shaver Mystery<\/a>. He lives here in Tallahassee, too, so he made the same two-day, 2,000-mile drive that I make every year \u2014 and he was lamenting the fact that it took him so long to finally do it.<\/p>\n Be like Jeff and attend; don’t keep putting it off.<\/p>\n![\"2026](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/files\/2026\/08\/munsey-winner-chris-kalb.jpg?resize=350%2C525&ssl=1\")
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