Grab Instantly The Pulps: Fifty Years Of American Pop Culture Authored By Tony Goodstone Presented As Ebook
pretty good survey of the pulp era that isn't really a survey, It's more like a very incomplete historical anthology with some good explanatory sections that are utterly invaluable, The fiction and poetry selections are great for what they are, and there are priceless ads duplicated in the pages they're a hoot.
There's also a color section with an amazing representative sample of covers,
Released in, this book has that interesting perspective on the pulps that is nowyears out of date, making my reaction that of piling nostalgia upon nostalgia nostalgia for the 's's attitude toward the 's's pulp, sort of like seeing a remake of Grease.
It's also very poorly proofread and horribly typeset, making the explanatory sections introductions, histories et al hard to read, But for fans of the pulp era, it is WELL worth tracking down, I first encountered this book inwhen it was first published, I had only discoveredand begun readingpulp magazine reprints around that time, Mostly I read the hero pulps from Belmont, Bantam, and Berkley, but this volume, with its full color cover gallery piqued my interest, and after seeing stacks of copies in my local university book store for weeks on end I finally scraped together theadmission.
There were several large format hardcover comic strip collections competing at the same price: Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy, and Little Orphan Annie.
I purused The Pulps many times, but never sat down and read it cover to cover, Years later Id lost track of it, Maybe it was sold or traded, but it was no longer in my library,
Years passed and one day my daughter brought home a used copy from Powells City of Books on Burnside, She paid.for it in good condition, with a beatup dust jacket, She thought it would be something Id like, Spot on, and this time I finally read it,
Maybe I was just out of the loop, but when it was published I dont think reprints of short stories from pulps were commonplace.
This gave editor Tony Goodstone free rein to select any story he wanted, and he did a great job choosing, Every story is a pleasure to read,
Past Goodstones introduction and a generous selection of covers, the volume is divided into ten sections, each providing a choice sample of pulp genres: Adventure, Sports, Aviation and War, Western and Frontier, Detective and Mystery, Innocence Romance, Straight Out Sex Spicy, Supernatural, Science Fiction, and excerpts from The Hero Pulps.
Sorry, it took me fifty years to read this thing cover to cover, but I gotta say, it was well worth the wait.
A nice survey of the pulps via scifi, westerns, teen boy adventures, Tarzan, etcand you don't have to get an unwieldy collection of bookit's all here in this impressive coffee table book.
It's an anthology with a fair bevy of genres in it, An Excellent introduction book to the Pulp books and characters, if you were interested in learning about this distinctly American form of literature then this is a good book to kick off your journey.
Well researched and written it is a wonderful overview of the Pulps, Very recommended A very entertaining
selection of a wide variety of pulp fiction, Including the king of pulp, Robert Leslie Bellem, This is my favorite pulp anthology, This is an excellent survey of the pulp magazines, complete with illustrations and advertisements from the originals, It's divided into ten categories, and includes many wonderful stories from the original magazines, as well as a terrific selection of color cover reproductions.
It's a fantastic volume that was obviously put together with much care and love, This compilation covers the early days of pulp magazine fiction, teens, twenties and thirties, Of thes, of course I have to keep reminding myself to stop just casually referring to thes as thes, as I have all my life, since we are soon to enter thes.
It is an unwieldy book, coffee table sized, with lovely glossy cover prints, from thes, So it is difficult to read, but largely worth it okay, I did skip the sports and war stories, The introduction telling about the birth and development of pulps, about American history and the growth of cities, is so interesting I wish it were a book itself.
This book is exactly what it it looks like: a collection of lurid, improbable stories and a few poems from the pages of various pulp magazines published between aboutand.
All are creative, some unpredictable, a few laughable with their political incorrectness by modern standards, Each, is worth reading in its own way, With so much material to pick from, this is a wellchosen set to represent the pulp “genre” though many, many others would do as well.
Special mention to Edgar Wallaces “The Greek Poropulos”, Luke Shorts “Tough Enough”, T, T. Flynns “The Deadly Orchid”, Russ Wests “Hot Rompers”, Mary Elizabeth Counselmans “The Green Window”, and by way of poetry, H, P. Lovecrafts “The Garden of Yin”, .