Blog Archives
sThe 1990s were a great decade for vintage crime anthologies. There were some bargain hardbacks of pulp magazine detective fiction – Hard Boiled Detectives and Tough Guys and Dangerous Dames. There was the Oxford Press Hard-Boiled. Trade paperbacks were represented by The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction and American Pulp. I have been reading horror […]
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 […]
You say you want a pulp revolution. Well, you know, we all want to read the stuff. If you really want to have an idea of a pulp aesthetic, you need to get a few actual pulp magazines and read them. One of the best ways to get pulp magazines and meet other people with […]
Leaning into Leigh Brackett
Saturday , 24, June 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Before the Big Three, Pulp Revolution, Short Fiction 20 CommentsLeigh Brackett is something of a staple here at Castalia House and for the Pulp Revolution crowd at large, but I must admit it’s taken me quite a while to get to her stuff. I’ve seen Alex’s reviews, of course, and I’ve noted her constant exclusion by the “women have historically been excluded from SFF!!1” […]
Son of the Pulps Part 3: The Wold Newton
Saturday , 17, June 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Fiction 2 CommentsWe conclude our discussion of the influence of pulp on Philip Jose Farmer with a look at his Wold Newton family. In Tarzan Alive, Farmer links his favorite British lord to dozens of fictional characters, many from the pulps, including Sherlock Holmes, Bulldog Drummond, The Shadow, Sam Spade, Nayland Smith of Dr. Fu-Manchu fame, James Bond, Professor […]
My Favorite Conan Story: Shadows in Zamboula
Saturday , 20, May 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Book Review, Fiction, Short Fiction 9 CommentsI don’t profess to be an expert on the excellent Robert E Howard. In fact, it was over two decades after Conan the Barbarian became a favorite character of mine that I read Howard’s stories about the Cimmerian! My first exposure to the pulp titan was in the form of Saturday morning cartoon Conan the […]
There’s a New Kid in Town! Broadswords & Blasters is a newly launched magazine under editors Matthew X. Gomez and Cameron Mount that promises “pulp with modern sensibilities” – more on that later, but suffice to say that I found the first issue to be not quite what I thought it was offering, but also […]
Robert Ervin Howard was an incredibly prolific writer, and produced a bibliography so full as to make those of us with limited reading time weep.[1] Some modern (and not so modern) critics have apparently dismissed Howard as a kind of idiot savant who was able to succeed despite his lack of education and training mainly […]