Happy #NationalWritingDay everybody! Today I'm looking back at that essential item all writers need, love and occasionally bash their heads against: the typewriter!
What? You're still writing in longhand? Tsk...
All pulp authors love a typewriter! Here's Michael Avallone - "The fastest typewriter in the East" - on how to write well quickly...
If you think you don't have time to write, remember this: Ray Bradbury began writing Farenheit 451 on a pay-by-the-hour rental typewriter in the UCLA library.
At his peak pulpwriter Orrie Hitt could write a book every two weeks, bashing them out on a Remington Royal typewriter with a carton of smokes and a bottle of Bourbon for sustinance.
Gruselroman legend Helmut Rellergerd (aka John Sinclair) is still writing stories on his old Olympia typewriter to this day - sometimes one a week!
Typewriter Repair Man! He's the hero we've been looking for...
Olivetti service advert, 1953.
The first novel written on a word processor was Bomber, published by Len Deighton in 1970. Deighton had an 91kg leased IBM MT72 carefully winched into his London home through an upstairs window.
It'll never catch on you know...
If you're not sure how to use a typewriter heres's a guide to the 1954 Olivetti Lettra 22.
Other typewriters are available...
And if you get bored writing... well you can always type a picture of Kojak'a head. Who loves ya baby!
Today in pulp: the searing, evocative power of a well crafted opening sentence!
For this thread I will draw my examples from the greatest writer* in the English language: the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe.
(*based on synonym use)
On death:
"Bellenger was dead when they found him. That Bellenger was dead was probably the understatement of the year. Bellenger was horribly, violently dead!"
On crowds:
"The crowd had to be seen to be believed. There are crowds and crowds but this was the crowd to end all crowds. Never, perhaps ever before in the whole of human history had there been such a massive congregation. Such a teeming of humanity."
Today in pulp I look at time travel. It's full of paradoxes but there's one we rarely explore: does it break the Law of Conservation of Energy?
Let’s investigate…
Time travel is a staple of pulp science fiction and it often involves a paradox: changing history, killing your grandfather, creating a time loop etc. Solving the paradox, or realising too late that one is happening, is half the fun of these stories.
Thinking about the nature of time is also fun. Does it exist or is it emergent? It is a local or global event? How many dimensions does it come in? Why is there an ‘arrow of time’? There are many possible answers.
"I wanted a mission. And for my sins they gave me one."
"Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River by Navy patrol boat, pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, infiltrate his team by whatever means available... and terminate the Colonel's command."
People who feel they have no voice can have a powerful creative spark, sometimes born of suffering or solitude. Mostly it's hidden, but in the 20th century it began to be admired, celebrated, and even perhaps exploited.
Let's look at the story of 'Outsider Art'...
Outsider Art, Art Brut, Visionary Art, Naïve Art: nobody has really settled on a name for artworks made by untrained artists which express a raw, energetic experience of the world. It's art from a different perspective, demanding to be heard.
Outsider Art began to be recognised in 1911 by Der Blaue Reiter group of artists in Munich. The group was short-lived but influential: fundamental to Expressionism and admiring of artworks created by people struggling with their mental health.