early pulps II
David |Pringle
I'd like to nitpick at a couple more statements from "alt.pulp
FAQ" in order to try to establish more facts about pulp
magazines. The statements I'm referring to are these: "The pulps
also typically had rough, untrimmed edges"; and, "Colorful,
outlandish and sometimes risque covers beckoned newsstand
perusers to escape into the magazine(s)."
Firstly, "rough, untrimmed edges" were not unique to the pulps:
they were a common feature of many standard American magazines
in the first half of the century. I have in my possession two
issues of Scribner's Magazine (definitely not a pulp), dated July
1929 and March 1931, and both have ragged, untrimmed edges. In
size, Scribner's was exactly the same as a pulp (about ten by
seven inches), but it was printed on "book-quality" paper (not
pulp, but not slick either) and it had tasteful covers. The
contents of each issue are about half fiction and half non-
fiction. The fiction includes a lengthy episode of Ernest
Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" (in the July 1929 issue) and
Andre Maurois's fantasy novella "The Weigher of Souls" (in the
March 1931 issue). It was from standard magazines such as
Scribner's that the pulps originally diverged (not from "slicks"
-- i.e. bedsheet-sized, shiny-papered magazines, which on the
whole post-date the pulps). From the standard magazines of the
late-19th century the pulps inherited both their characteristic
7x10 size and their tendency to have uncut edges. I think it's
important to remember that neither of those characteristics was
unique to the pulps. (Besides, many pulps, and many standard
magazines, did NOT have rough, untrimmed edges.)
As for the "colorful, outlandish and sometimes risque covers" of
pulp magazines, this is another reason why I think the year 1905
is important as a "true" starting point for pulpdom. I've read
somewhere (correct me if I'm wrong!) that the first pulp to carry
pictorial covers was Munsey's All-Story, from January 1905.
Before that, Munsey's Argosy (which had been a pulp from December
1896) had very boring typographic covers which simply listed
authors' names, story-titles and the like. The pictorial cover
appears to have been an innovation of 1905, when competition
between pulp titles really began... As for the degree to which
the pictorial covers were "outlandish and sometimes risque,"
well, that's a matter of opinion, but for the first ten years or
so (say, 1905-1915) most covers were what we would regard as
sedate -- e.g. the earliest pulp I have in my possession, the
February 1906 Monthly Story Magazine (precursor of The Blue Book)
has a picture of a Gibson Girl-type pretty young woman muffled
up in furs against a background of fir trees and snow. Sexy,
possibly, by the standards of 1906, but by no means the sort of
"action cover" that would emerge as the norm by the 1920s
(although many of the stories included in that very issue are
westerns or other adventurous yarns).
Comments and corrections welcomed.
-- David Pringle, Editor, Interzone (Brighton, England)
John P. Gunnison
I feel that: "Colorful, outlandish and sometimes risque covers beckoned
newsstand perusers to escape into the magazine(s)." is not a good term
for what a pulp is. Afterall, those pulps that fit this term didn't
come along until the 30's, well after the invention of a pulp.
Untrimmed covers can't be held true to all pulps either, since the
untrimmed cover was an economical factor, since it cost money to trim
the books. Yet some pulps are trimmed right from the publisher.
I feel the easiest term for "pulp" is "Fiction magazine printed on
inexpensive "pulp" paper." Let me breakdown the reason for this
sentence, almost word by word.
FICTION: Most if not all pulps printed almost nothing but fiction.
True, some pulps printed non-fiction articles and some pulps listed
themselves as printing true stories like SCOTLAND YARD, yet the magazine
truely is all fiction. This also helps delete those men magazines from
the 40's (the same size as LIFE) where the magazine was filled with
tabloid "news" about the latest trial of the PIG FARMER'S WIFE!
MAGAZINE: Deleting paperbacks which some paper dealers try to pawn off
as pulps. True most paperbacks where printed on what amounts as pulp
paper, but they are not pulps! They don't include ads. For the most
part didn't have recurring characters or themes and quite simply are not
magazines. I jumped all over some paperback dealer who posted a piece
in alt.pulp about his web site that proclaimed that they had the history
of the "PULPS". I logged on and lo-and-behold they stated that pulps
began in the 40's with pocket sized books called, paperbacks. Give me a
break.
"PULP": High bulk paper, or pulp paper! Not newsprint (which is much
thinner) and not a higher quality rag content paper used in paperbacks
and hardbacks.
Overall, after I've written all this let's not try to put a too fine of
a point on it. Some people strike magazines like GAY PAREE and STOLEN
SWEETS from the ranks of the "pulps." Some strike bedsheet magazines
like AMAZING STORIES from the ranks. Then some strike ASTOUNDING
SCIENCE-FICTION when it turns into a digest sized publication from the
ranks of the "pulps." That's why I feel my sentence has the ability to
include most publications the publishers themselves proclaimed as pulps!
John Gunnison
--
For the best in Pulp Fiction reprints, originals and more:
http://www.adventurehouse.com/index.htm
Adventure House
914 Laredo Road
Silver Spring, MD 20901
301-754-1589
Hardyboy01
Would Cap'n Billy's Whiz Bang be considered a pulp?
If not, what?
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Hardy...@aol.com
Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Doc Savage & more!
Your favorite childhood series book & pulp heroes live again at:
http://members.aol.com/Hardyboy01/index.html
100's OF AFFORDABLE SERIES BOOKS FOR SALE
David |Pringle
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A good reply there from John P. Gunnison. I think, however, that in
defining the pulps their size *is* important. The pulps, as I've argued,
inherited their characteristic size from the late 19th-century standard
magazines. Some varied a bit, and were slightly larger or smaller than the
7x10 norm (e.g. no one would want to exclude the early large-size Amazing
Stories), but most pulps were around that mark. When it comes to the
digest-sized magazines, though, I do feel that they were of a different
type and should not be defined as pulps. I had an interesting e-mail
exchange on this subject with Mike Ashley over a month ago, and I'll try
to post an edited version of that exchange when I can figure out how...
With luck, it follows immediately after this.
-- David Pringle.
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David Pringle to Mike Ashley Date: 6/10/97
Dear Mike:
A question for you: Sam Moskowitz says Argosy became the first
pulp in January 1896. Robert Sampson says it was with the
December 1896 issue. You, if a remember correctly, said it was
in October 1896 (in your History of the SF Magazine, Vol. One).
Which is true? Have your further researches clarified the matter?
Here's an additional question, which should be easier for
you to answer. Which was the *last* true pulp magazine? In the
SF Encyclopedia, the entry on Science Fiction Quarterly states
that, in its second incarnation, it ran from "May 1951-Feb 1958
(28 issues)." Unfortunately, they then go and spoil the clarity
of that with a contradiction in the text below: "When SFQ died
in 1956 it was the last of the sf pulp magazines..." Which is
correct: 1956 or 1958? And was it a pulp right up to the end --
i.e. it didn't experiment with digest format (as Weird Tales did
in its last year)? If indeed it remained a true pulp until 1958,
it must have been one of the very last in any category. Or did
some western pulps possibly outlive it?
David
Mail from: Mike Ashley Date: 8/10/97
David,
You do ask just the kind of questions I enjoy answering. You can
guess that I'm going to qualify everything I say here by the
caveat that my answer depends on the definition of a pulp
magazine. Essentially we're talking about nearly all-fiction
magazines of general popular appeal where all of the pages are
of pulp stock. After all there's an aura of "pulp" about
something regardless of a magazine's dimensions. Nevertheless,
I presume you'd prefer to think of pulps as having the usual
roughly 10 x 8 dimensions, or thereabouts. Many of the
digest-size magazines of the early 1960s continued on pulp paper
and are pulp in content if not in traditional appearance.
So, firstly the start of all of this. THE ARGOSY's conversion to
pulp was progressive. Munsey originally published it on coated
stock and it featured a wide range of material, mostly oriented
towards children but this phased over to more adult adventure
through the mid 1890s. The October 1896 issue was the first to
contain solely adventure fiction, but its pages were still on
higher quality stock, just like its companion MUNSEY'S. Two
issues later, i.e. the December 1896 issue, Munsey degraded the
paper to all pulp. So, both dates are technically correct, in
that ARGOSY took on the content format it was to use from Oct 96
but the pulp paper quality from Dec 1896.
Now, the last ever pulp is a real knacker's yard of a question!!
In the tried-and-true sense SF QUARTERLY was the last true sf
pulp. It started life as a pulp and ended it that way. The last
issue was dated February 1958, though was published in December
1957. The publisher, Lou Silberkleit, was a die-hard pulp
publisher so although he'd converted SCIENCE FICTION STORIES and
FUTURE SF to digests he could not consider a Quarterly as
anything but a pulp, and so he kept it that way and distributed
it via his comics chain (which made a profit) until it could no
longer be sustained. The whole of Silberkleit's Columbia Chain
was the last real pulp publisher. He'd started life with Western
Fiction as his publishing empire and so his real interest
remained in western and crime fiction. FAST ACTION DETECTIVE &
MYSTERY magazine also folded in February 1958, but REAL WESTERN
kept going till April 1959 as a pulp. That last issue was
distributed in March 1959. Those magazines had been pulps all
their lives, so those were the real last pulps.
However, as you know, things are never that simple. Ray Palmer
was also a die-hard pulpster. OTHER WORLDS, which had started
life as a digest, was converted to a pulp in November 1955. He
kept it going in that format until October 1957, and then
converted it to a digest size non-fiction magazine, FLYING
SAUCERS from December 1957. Palmer still yearned for the pulps,
tho', and in March 1961 issued THE HIDDEN WORLD, which was a
Shaver magazine, also given over to a mixture of non-fiction
ufology and hoax-like fiction. It was a pulp for two or three
issues before converting to digest. Unfortunately I'm missing
some of the middle issues so am not sure exactly which one saw
the change in format.
There were two other "annual" type revivals of old pulps. Ned
Pines at Popular Library issued the all-reprint WONDER STORIES
Yearbook in Fall 1963 and kept this going until Spring 1966,
retitled TREASURY OF GREAT SF STORIES after the second issue.
This was in the standard pulp format, though were essentially
reprint anthologies.
Of course we can't overlook the Leo Margulies revival of WEIRD
TALES under Sam Moskowitz from Summer 1973 to Summer 1974. These
were pulp issues and altho it was a revival, the original
magazine was also pulp except for its last few issues in 1953/54.
The pulps took a long time dying. Also, I tend to regard some of
the larger-size cheapo pulp-looking magazines as pulps. The
various TRUE DETECTIVE and TRUE CONFESSIONS magazines were in the
pulp tradition and looked like pulps for all the paper had a
slightly better stock to allow photos. Similarly when Forrie
Ackerman launched FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND in 1958 that had
a pulp aura about it, though the paper was of a better stock.
If our definition of "pulp", though, rests solely on the paper
quality, we'd have to include scores of other magazines,
including many digests, and magazines like WITCHCRAFT & SORCERY
in 1971/74 which was on pulp paper. If the definition includes
the style, approach, content and format of the pulps, then I
think we have to recognise that some residuum of these lingered
on in various half-hearted attempts during the 1960s before the
paperbacks really took over around 1964/65.
Mike
David Pringle to Mike Ashley Date: 9/10/97
Thanks very much for that, Mike. From what you say it looks to
me as though the true death of the pulps was in 1959 when that
last western mag folded (I'm loath to accept Palmer's Shaver-
mystery mag as a pulp).
I think physical size is important, not just for its own sake but
because the early digests, it seems to me, were conceived *in
opposition* to the pulps -- they were meant to be "a cut above."
This is clearly the case with the most influential early fiction
digest, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (from 1941), which had
a heavy reprint policy in its early years and boasted in its
publicity about how many Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winners it had
published. Many of its reprint stories were taken from slick
magazines. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (from 1949)
was an exact copy, and I believe Zane Grey's Western Magazine
(mid-to-late 1940s?) was another which attempted much the same
thing for the western field. John W. Campbell's entire editorial
career was dedicated to the progressive "de-pulpization" of
Astounding S-F, a process which began with the title change (from
Astounding Stories) in 1938 and proceeded with his favouring of
more sober-looking covers (and sober-sounding story-titles) and,
of course, the move to digest format in November 1943. The fact
that Street & Smith axed *all* their pulps in 1949, but not
Astounding, speaks for itself -- they clearly didn't think of it
as a pulp any more. After the further title-change to Analog in
1960, and the sale of Street & Smith to Conde Nast, Campbell
tried to pull the same trick again in 1964-65, when he
endeavoured to make Analog a big-format glossy (actually an
accurate prediction of the way magazines in general would go,
but a failure at the time).
Of course, some of the digests of the 1950s and 60s *felt* like
pulps in all but size. Ron Goulart calls Manhunt a "mini-pulp,"
which is a nice phrase and one which could apply equally to, say,
Fantastic Universe. [Actually, on checking back I see I was wrong
about this -- Goulart, writing in The Dime Detectives, calls
Manhunt a "pint-sized pulp" -- DP.] However, one has to draw the
line, and I stick to my contention that the pace of the digests
was set by the likes of Ellery Queen's and F&SF -- i.e. they were
not only a change in format but they were an attempt to be more
"literary" than the pulps. Hence they -- and, for convenience
sake, all other digests -- are not to be counted as pulps.
David
Mail from: Mike Ashley Date: 9/10/97
Dave,
I do agree with you that the size of the pulps is significant,
but only for a period. The digests were an attempt to project
greater quality than the pulps, and F&SF is the best example of
this (along with Ellery Queen's). The peak of the quality digests
was in the 1950-53/54 period, with GALAXY and IF and especially
Howard Browne with FANTASTIC and the revamped AMAZING and their
companions. However even then there were other so-called digests
that never lost the pulp image -- MARVEL SF being a typical
example, and by the late 50s most digests were indistinguishable
from pulps in all but size. Ron Goulart's phrase "mini-pulps" is
exactly right. I think this was one of the main factors that made
Campbell try and shift ANALOG into the slick league, but it
didn't work because it couldn't capture the advertising. By then
the pulps had shifted to the television, and the former pulp
format, especially the westerns and hero characters, had become
weekly tv series. Same characters, same plots, same writers!
Cheers, Mike
SRoweCanoe
In article <19971125212...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, hardy...@aol.com
(Hardyboy01) writes:
>Would Cap'n Billy's Whiz Bang be considered a pulp?
If not, what?
Copies I've seen are not printed on pulp paper...
Men's humor digest?
Steven Rowe
JQAIII
I'm looking for a copy of George Bruce Aces - March 1931 issue with "Deacon
From Hell" and The Flying Dutchman" stories.
Can anyone help with reliable source for war pulps?
Thanks,
John Q.
Check out my page - www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/1862/index.html
Pagoo me at http://www.pagoo.com/cgi-bin/me.cgi?6069181
FROZENCAT
In article <65fped$9dh$1...@chlorine.compulink.co.uk>, David |Pringle
<postm...@interzone.compulink.co.uk> writes:
>When it comes to the
digest-sized magazines, though, I do feel that they
>were of a different
type and should not be defined as pulps.
So all my Doc Savage digest sized aren't pulps? Then why did I pay pulp prices
for them? Arrrgh!
Brr >^.o.^< FROZ...@aol.com
=>Doc Savage Fan Resource Site
http://members.aol.com/FROZENCAT1/index.html
=>THE SPIDER-Master Of Men! Reprint info
http://members.aol.com/pulppress/index.html
David |Pringle
Look -- one obviously has to be sensible about this. Nothing is ever 100%
"pure" in this life. "Pulp magazine" is a useful concept -- a platonic
ideal, if you like -- and in order for it to retain its use we have to
have some sort of range of definition in mind. My rule of thumb (and, I
suspect, most people's) is that digests are not pulps. However, there are
cases where one must make exceptions, and Doc Savage Magazine during its
digest phase of the mid-1940s is obviously one of them. One major reason
we can happily regard those as pulps is because the magazine reverted to
pulp size before Street & Smith closed it down... Astounding was a
different kettle of fish -- it *stayed* digest, and it survived the 1949
massacre of S&S's pulps, for good reasons: in content it was no longer
essentially a pulp (whereas Doc Savage, of course, was).
-- David Pringle.
James Michael Rogers
In article <19971129205...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
dowen...@aol.com says...
>
>What about "The Magazine of Horror?"
>
>My memories of this magazine are rather hazy, but I think it qualifies as a
>pulp.
>
Definitely, at least in the sense that Analog and EQMM are
pulps...Mostly reprint and unpublished leftovers by REH and others. Not a
very good magazine on the whole, largely due to budgetary problems. A later
and more impressive try was Sam Moskowitz's four issue revival of Weird
Tales in the early 1970s. these are a little hard to find, because the
distribution was unbelievably bad.
James
DOwens6683
What about "The Magazine of Horror?"
My memories of this magazine are rather hazy, but I think it qualifies as a
pulp.
It was published by an outfit called something like Health Publications, and if
I remember correctly it first appeared some time in the early to mid '60's --
about 1964, I think, or at least that's the earliest I remember buying a copy.
It was digest size but saddle stitched instead of perfect bound. The paper was
newsprint or pulp, not slick or glossy. The content was a mix of new fiction
and reprints from the old pulps. I distinctly recall at least one Clark Ashton
Smith story, though I don't remember the title. I recall that they reprinted
some of Seabury Quinn's stories about psychic detective Jules de Grandin, and
also published Stephen King's first short story to see print professionally.
The magazine appeared on a quarterly basis, together with at last one or two
sister magazines of a similar nature with titles like "Startling Mystery
Stories." The magazines may have appeared on the newstands as late as the
early '70's, and Robert Lowndes was editor for at least some issues. I
distinctly recall an editorial he wrote discussing Lovecraft's "The Outsider,"
in which he desribed as a story of "confirmation, not revelation."
I think this title, together with its sister magazines, deserve to be called
the last of the pulp magazines. Does anybody have more detailed and accurate
information on these titles? I tried to purchase some of these recently from a
collector during the UPS strike, but got a refund instead of the magazines.
Apparently they'd already been sold.
DOwens6683
DOwens6683
Joe Jamele
A recent issue of the New Yorker profiles Benarr MacFadden who published
a number of health magazines and branched out into Detective and other,
mass media publications during the time period you cite. MacFadden was
noted for starting the health craze, both diet and exercise, and
celebrated his birthdays after the age of 70 by parachuting out of
airplanes--he believed that robust health could led to immortality..but
neither he--or the pulps survived, the former because of natural causes
and the latter, perhaps, because the end of the depression reduced the
demand for escapist literature or any number of excellent reasons cited
already by contributors to this newsgroup.
Dave Kurzman
>A recent issue of the New Yorker profiles Benarr MacFadden who published
>a number of health magazines and branched out into Detective and other,
>mass media publications during the time period you cite. MacFadden was
>noted for starting the health craze, both diet and exercise, and
>celebrated his birthdays after the age of 70 by parachuting out of
>airplanes--he believed that robust health could led to immortality..but
>neither he--or the pulps survived, the former because of natural causes
>and the latter, perhaps, because the end of the depression reduced the
>demand for escapist literature or any number of excellent reasons cited
>already by contributors to this newsgroup.
This is almost off topic.
The other day I was channel surfing and hit something like the
best of The Charles Grodin Show. This was a repeat of an old interview
with Jack Parr. They were talking about a funny story that Parr had
just told concerning Bernarr MacFadden (!?). Did anyone catch this?
I'd be interested in what they were talking about. Kind of weird to
run into Macfadden's name on a cable talkshow. Best, Dave in Va.