"Yes, Mary McCarthy is a much neglected novelist now and that's a shame..."
"Gee it really is hard to argue against Emile Durkheim..."
"'The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.' Wow. Just... wow!"
"I'm telling you Katie you have to read White Noise before you read Underworld. You have to get into the rhythm of his sentences. DeLillo is all about the sentence..."
"Margaret Atwood opened my eyes, but Octavia Butler... she blew my mind!"
"My Aeolic Greek is a little rusty, but if that isn't a motto of Sappho then it surely should be."
"No madam, I'm not that J.D. Salinger."
"Then we throw our manuscripts into the fire and that's the end of the writer's retreat. We're free baby, free of our hangups and ready to really write! Anyway, next year we're in Montreal..."
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.
Today in pulp I look back at New Zealand's home-grow microcomputer, the 1981 Poly-1!
Press any key to continue...
The Poly-1 was developed in 1980 by two electronics engineering teachers at Wellington Polytechnic, Neil Scott and Paul Bryant, who wanted to create a computer for use in New Zealand schools. Education Minister Merv Wellington liked the idea and gave it the green light.
Backed by government finances, and in partnership with Progeni Computers, Polycorp was formed in 1980 to began work on the prototype for the official Kiwi school computer.