Today in pulp I look back at the work of Victorian illustrator Sidney Sime.
Come this way...
Sidney Sime was born in Manchester in 1865. After working as a miner for five years he studied illustration at the Liverpool School of Art. His work was first exhibited in 1889.
Sime rose to fame through fantastical illustratons, working initially for Pick-Me-Up and The Idler magazine. In 1899 he used money from an inheritance to purchase and edit The Idler, before selling it on in 1901.
In 1904 he began work for Lord Dunsany, illustrating his first book The Gods of Pegana. Dunsany then became Sime's patron, and the artist worked for him on his books throughout his life.
There's a sly humour in Sime's work for Lord Dunsany: the gothic terror is always undercut with a dash of satire or a witty visual joke. Sime's experience as a caricaturist is evident in many of these drawings.
Sidney Sime has often been compared to Aubrey Beardsley. Both artist emphasized the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic in their work.
Poe, Heine, De Quincey and Meredith were great influences on Sidney Sime's aesthetic. He would read them late into the night at his Crown Cottage studio in Worplesdon.
In later life Sime became obsessed with the Book of Revelation and went on to paint his own visions of the Apocalypse. He also became a recluse, drawing and painting only when he felt like it.
Sidney Sime passed away on 22nd May 1941. His grave in St Mary's Churchyard, Worplesdon, near his studio. A gallery dedicated to his work has been established nearby: sidneysimegallery.org.uk
Sidney Sime is somewhat overlooked nowadays. That's a huge shame as his imagination and skill mark him out as an excellent and evocative illustrator of the macabre. Do look out for his work, it's very rewarding.
More stories another time...
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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.