Pulp magazine

Pulp fiction redirects here. For the 1994 film, see Pulp Fiction.

Pulp magazines (or pulp fiction; often referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines. They were widely published from the 1920s through the 1950s. The term pulp fiction can also refer to mass market paperbacks since the 1950s.

Terminology and history

The name "pulp" comes from the cheap wood pulp paper on which such magazines were printed. Magazines printed on better paper and usually offering family-oriented content were often called "glossies" or "slicks". Pulps were the successor to the "penny dreadfuls", "dime novels", and short fiction magazines of the nineteenth century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines are perhaps best remembered for their fast-paced, lurid, sensational and exploitative stories and thrilling cover art. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered a descendent of "hero pulps"; pulp magazines often featured illustrated novel-length stories of heroic characters such as the Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Phantom Detective. However the pulps were aimed more at adult readers whereas comic books were traditionally written for children and adolescents.

Because of the copyright laws at the time, there were distinct lines of this sort of magazine in Britain as well. These magazines, called "story papers", were distributed throughout the British Empire. Story paper characters such as Sexton Blake and Nelson Lee were similar to American pulp characters. At the time, there was no global media market, so even though these were written in the same language, there was no recognition of the characters by each nation, just as in much of television today.

Pulp covers were famous for their half-dressed damsels in distress, usually awaiting a rescuing hero.

The first "pulp" is considered to be Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy Magazine of 1896. The format eventually declined (especially in the 1950s) with rising paper costs, competition from comic books, television, and the paperback novel. Most remaining pulp magazines are science fiction or mystery magazines now in digest form. The format is still in use for some lengthy serials, like the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan (over 2300 issues as of 2005).

Genres

A common misconception is that 'pulp fiction' is limited in scope to 1940s adventure fiction in the vein of Indiana Jones. While such fiction is, in fact, encompassed under the heading of 'pulp fiction', the heading itself is by no means limited to describing only that type of fiction.

Pulp magazines often contained a wide variety of genre fiction, including, but not limited to, detective/mystery, science fiction, adventure, westerns (also see Dime Western), war, sports, railroad, men's adventure ("the sweats"), romance, horror/occult ("weird menace"), and Série Noire (French crime mystery). The American Old West was a mainstay genre of early turn of the century novels as well as later pulp magazines, and lasted longest of all the traditional pulps.

Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialised in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Black Mask.

Famous and infamous characters of pulp fiction

Popular regular pulp fiction characters included:

Kilgore Trout, the perennial character in the work of Kurt Vonnegut, is a fictional pulp fiction writer.

Authors featured in pulp

Many well-known authors began their careers writing for pulps under assumed names. Well-known authors who wrote for the pulps include:

Pulp publishers

Pulp fiction today

After the year 2000, several small independent publishers released magazines which published short fiction, either short stories or novel-length presentations, in the tradition of the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. These included Blood 'N Thunder and High Adventure. There was also a short lived magazine which revived the title Argosy. These were specialist publications printed in limited press runs. These were pointedly not printed on the brittle, high-acid wood pulp paper of the old publications, and were not mass market publications targeted at a wide audience.

References

Lesser, Robert. Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines (Book Sales, 2003) ISBN 0785817077
Parfrey, Adam, et. al. It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (Feral House, 2003) ISBN 0922915814

External links

Pulp Magazine (Philippines)
"Pulp and Adventure Heroes of the Pre-War Years": Jess Nevins' compendium of pulp characters.
CNN: "Girls, Guns, and money" article November 2005
Mammoth Pulp Pulpy tales of suspense - free on-line.
Cliffhanger Case Files Original stories inspired by the Pulps of yesteryear.
The Pulp.Net
Hero Pulps
Dr Hermes Reviews Reviews of hundreds of pulp novels and short stories
http://www.spittel.de/sf/heftromane_net/index.htm // covers of German language pulp since 1945
Tales From the Vault! Canadian Pulp Fiction 1940-1952 Canadian pulp art and fiction collection.
Pulpgen.com Stories scanned from pulp magazines of the early to mid 1900s.

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