THE PULPSTER #31

For PulpFest 2022, AKA PulpFest 50, comes the annual Pulpster. It’s the biggest regular issue so far at 72 pages. The major theme is “Fiction House at 100,” with six articles, plus other subjects as well. Thus we get an Allen Anderson sf pulp cover from Planet Stories in 1952. Michael Chomko has the first of a two-part article on Fiction House. Part 2 will appear in the next issue of The Pulpster. Part 1 takes the story up to about 1932 when they temporarily suspended publication. The article looks at the different magazines and genres served by Fiction House, and the editors and major authors in them. I think together the two articles will serve as a pretty good in-depth history of FH. Here we learn about the development of Action Stories, The Lariat, their romance pulps, air pulps, northwestern pulps, Fight Stories, and Black Aces. The Vizigraph is the focus of Sara Light-Waller‘s article. The Vizigraph was the letter column that ran in Fiction House’s Planet Stories starting with the second issue. Many pulp fans are not aware of the letter columns that ran in various pulp magazines, though many are very important, such as the ones in Adventure and Weird Tales. Unless one gets and reads the original pulps or facsimiles, you’ll miss out on them. This one sounds to also have been pretty interesting as well. From Jess Terrell, we get two articles on the major jungle heroes of Fiction House: Ki-Gor, their long-running Tarzan clone in Jungle Stories, and Sheena, who was much more successful in comics and TV than the pulps (one pulp with three stories), and who outlived Fiction House itself. From illustrator Mort Künstler, we get personal reminiscence about pulp and paperback-cover artist George Gross. Finally, Science Fiction Grand Master Poul Anderson speaks with Darrell Schweitzer on the genre in an interview from 1974. For the rest, we get: The “slabbing” (grading and encapsulation) of pulps from Dave Smith, finally coming this year from CGC — like it or hate it. The emergance of the “weird menace” or “shudder pulps” in Dime Mystery is the focus of Emily Sisler’s article. This was under the editorship of Rogers Terrill, but publisher Harry Steeger thought it up, taking inspiration from the French Grand Guignol theater. This began with the October 1933 issue of Dime Mystery, less than a year after it started as Dime Mystery Book Magazine. There is a whole study on the genre, and many reprints from the “shudder pulps” out there. Tony Davis gives us a look at the creator of the Church of Satan and how his love of pulp magazines influenced him in this. While I have heard of Anton LaVey, this was an interesting look into him. From Craig McDonald are two articles. One is on pulp author William Lindsay Gresham, whose one book, Nightmare Alley, was recently adapted to film; the other is on two anniversaries for Street & Smith’s The Avenger. And on the 150th anniversary of his birth, we get a look at the legacy of the godfather of pulp westerns, Zane Gray. Pulp fan Rusty Hevelin was one of those responsible for starting Pulpcon, the forerunner to PulpFest, so Curt Phillips provides a personal look at him.