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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

28 Dec

DATELINE: MARCH 1981. Shakin' Stevens is top of the charts, Tom Baker is leaving Doctor Who and Clive Sinclair is bringing computers to the masses. Britain is finally moving into a new age, and one object above all heralds its arrival.

This is the story of the ZX81...

Like many electronics companies Sinclair Radionics had been beaten up by the 1970s calculator wars: cut-price LCD products from Japan, plus aggressive price cuts from Hewlett Packard made Sinclair's LED calculators unprofitable. The company was in trouble.

The British government bailed out Sinclair in the 1970s, and wanted it to focus on instrument manufacturing - the only profitable part of its business. In 1979 Clive Sinclair resigned in disgust from the company he had founded.

He had a better idea...

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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

25 Dec

Time for a Christmas pulp countdown now, and today it's my top 10 festive tipples!

Stand by for a world of sophistication...

At #10: port! It's basically turbo-wine for getting through to Boxing Day.

Best mixed with Pepsi apparently...

At #9: Guinness! Liquid power for grandparents that tastes... well let's just say there's a reason they don't sell it warm any more.

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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

24 Dec

I'm very sorry to say that pulp legend Guy N Smith has sadly passed away...

To say Guy N Smith was prolific is an understatement: he has over a thousand short stories and magazine articles published, as well as dozens of novels. He wrote for countryside magazines and promoted pipe smoking.

Guy N Smith's mother was historical novelist E.M. Weale. He published his first story aged 12 and write 55 more before he turned 17. At his father's insistence he went into banking as a career, before moving into the shotgun trade.

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Pulp Librarian

@PulpLibrarian

23 Dec

It was the biggest manhunt in Britain: police, the press, aeroplanes, psychics all tried to solve the disappearance. In the end nobody really knew what happened. It was a Christmas mystery without a solution.

This is the story of Agatha Christie's 11 lost days...

By 1926 Agatha Christie's reputation as a writer was setting to grow. Her sixth novel - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - had been well-received and she and her husband Archie had recently concluded a world tour. But all was not well with the marriage.

In April 1926 Agatha Christie’s mother died. Christie was very close to her: she had been home-schooled and believed her mother was clairvoyant. The shock of her sudden death hit the author hard.

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