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sI have been slowly working my through the James Bond books by Ian Fleming. I picked up a stack of Signet/New American Library editions from the sixties at a library book sale a few years back. Spy fiction is not one of my preferred genres though I do read a few. James Bond was one […]
Having read all the Fleming Bond stories with the exception of the posthumously completed The Man with the Golden Gun, I figured it would be interesting to look at them through the lens of pulp. While usually characterized as spy fiction, it’s clear they were heavily influenced by pulp stories, as well as American (rather than […]
One quality I love about pulps and classic science fiction works is how much physical confrontation is in them. Whether it involves mech suits, killer drones, shooting, swords, fisticuffs, or wrestling, there was heaps of full-blooded action. And it’s seemingly simple, right? Just write about one man punching another! How hard that can be? And […]
Heroines, Then and Now
Saturday , 9, September 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Before the Big Three, Fiction 20 CommentsA frequent criticism of older stories, pulp or otherwise, is that they feature a “damsel in distress”. That the woman in question is nothing more than a prize to be won. This is considered bad, and earnest leftist writers of today seek to correct this horrible injustice by creating “strong female protagonists”. Right away, one […]