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sOne of my favorite Louis L’Amour quotes is: “The idea that poverty is a cause of crime is a lot of nonsense. It is one of those cliches that is accepted because it seems logical. Crimes are committed by people who have some money and want more. More often they are committed by somebody who […]
Before Louis L’Amour became the biggest selling paperback writer of westerns, he divided his time in the pulp mgazines between westerns, adventure, and crime fiction. This may be a surprise to some of you but he had a respectable run in the detective pulps in the 1940s. The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour: Crime […]
The rotating reading of genres is never ending. If I read a western, it is generally about the U.S. Army on the frontier. I will deviate to read about ranchers or gunfighters if by favorites like Gordon D. Shirreffs or T. V. Olsen. On the other hand I will read a western by an unknown […]
I have a near love-hate relationship with Louis L’Amour. I took a sledge hammer to his historical novel The Walking Drum a few years back after a re-read. On the other hand, I like his pulp adventures featuring Turk Madden and Ponga Jim Mayo. I find L’Amour works better in slender paperbacks from the 1960s- […]
Sensor Sweep: E. R. Eddison, Robert W. Chambers, Starship Troopers 20th Anniversary Edition
Monday , 17, December 2018 Sensor Sweep 1 CommentWriting (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): So, while revising to my Eddison piece I came across a striking passage that I’d either overlooked before or, more likely, read when the book in question (Paul Thomas’s edition of ERE’s ZIMIAMVIA) came out (in 1992) and since forgot. In a passage discussing the composition of THE MEZENIAN GATE, Paul describes […]
Sensor Sweep: Fake Movie Wisdom, Dashiell Hammett, Louis L’amour, Dragoncon
Monday , 17, September 2018 Sensor Sweep 2 CommentsPulps (Pulp Flakes): When Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic in 1927 the publishers rushed into print with tales of flying adventures. Jack Kelly, publisher of Fiction House which included such pulps as Lariat, Action Stories and Northwest Stories, launched Air Stories and Wings in such a hurry that he wired me to write a novelet […]