Today in pulp... let me introduce you to Mark Hardin: The Penetrator!
Mark Hardin is a one-man strike force against corruption. Orphaned at the age of four he was brought up mean and hungry. He learned his fighting skills in Vietnam before returning to an America gone bad.
Actually The Penetrator is one of a long list of vigilante pulp heroes thrown up in the 1970s counter-counterculture backlash, along with The Destroyer, The Executioner The Iceman and The Marksman to name but a few.
Lionel Derrick was a Pinnacle house alias used by two pulp writers: Mark Roberts and Chet Cunningham. Overall they produced 52 Penetrator novels, with Roberts writing the odd-numbered books and Cunningham the evens.
Unlike other pulp vigilantes who only battle the Mafia, Mark Hardin fights anyone looking to destroy the American way of life: crooks, terrorists, pornographers, hippies, scientists...
But wherever he goes Mark Hardin knows how to blend in: his skills in covert operations and infiltration led to his uniquely memorable name - The Penetrator!
Are these books any good? Well there's plenty of bloody action and Hardin is always getting injured and having to fight against immense pain. Plus he has a moustache (sometimes). And a side parting. So he has lots to deal with.
If you like your books low on sex but high on blunt trauma, concussion and acid baths then The Penetrator is probably right up your alley. Omnibus editions ("Double Penetrator!") are also available.
But be warned: later Penetrator novels do get kinda weird: French-Canadian dwarf cults, mad Nicaraguan super-ants, mollusc assassins, remote controlled supervolcanoes etc.
The novels are easy to collect: prices are low and many editions are in reasonable condition, as they were only read once.
That's it for my look back at Mark Hardin and his one man war against weird villainy. More pulp heroes 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.