Today in pulp I visit Yugoslavia - the Federal People's Republic of Fun!
Come this way, it's all-inclusive...
Yugoslavia was very much the sophisticated side of socialism: more G-plan than five year plan.
(although rural Yugoslavia could be, er, pretty rural)
Now it's true that Yugoslav architecture could tend towards the brutalist...
...but really Yugoslavia was just like the rest of Western Europe: consumerist, cosmopolitan and in love with Kate Bush.
The best way to get around Yugoslavia was by hatchback - if you could get the pretty ladies off the bonnet that is!
And being a socialist republic Yugoslavia was firmly behind equal opportunities.
Food in the Federal Republic was pretty unique and hard to find anywhere else...
...but it was always washed down with lashings of Cockta: the people's fizzy pop!
Yugoslav fashion was big on comfy knits...
...whilst it's music was an eclectic mix of pop, punk and big synth sounds.
And if there's one thing Yugoslavs loved above all it was home entertainment: they were gadget mad!
Yugoslavia was certainly at the forefront of the home computer boom...
... and its home-produced micro, the Galaksija, was a 4kb marvel: easy to build and fun to use.
A pint and a party is a worldwide language, and in Yugoslavia they spoke it as well as anyone else. They also bought into that whole Paul King scene in 1985, but so did everyone!
And so we say a fond farewell to Yugoslavia: fun, frolicks and just a hint of collective planning!
More pulp trips another time...
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Today I'm looking at a few books from New York publishing house Grosset & Dunlap...
London After Midnight, by Marie Coolidge-Rask. Grosset & Dunlap, 1928.
This is a movie tie-in version, although the last known copy of the film was destroyed in 1965 at a fire at MGM's vaults. It's one of the most sought-after lost silent films now.
A Thousand Years A Minute, by Carl H Claudy. Grosset and Dunlap, 1939. Cover by A C Valentine.
Part of the Adventures in the Unknown series, this is a time travel novel sending its heroes back to the prehistoric world.
One of the best #Christmas presents you could ever get was a View-Master! It sold over one billion reels across the world, but it's based on Victorian technology. How did one simple gadget get to be so popular?
Let's take a look at the toy that took over the planet...
Stereographs are cards with two nearly identical photographs mounted side by side. Viewed through a binocular device they give an illusion of depth. By 1858 the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company had published over 100,000 of them.
Sawyer's Photo Finishing Service began in 1919 in Portland, Oregon. By 1936 they had teamed up with William Gruber, who had been experimenting with stereoscope photography using the new Kodachrome colour film.
Today in pulp I look back at a few forgotten '80s sci-fi movies and ask: is it time to reappraise them?
Spoilers: not all of these are available on Betamax...
There were a huge number of mid and low budget sci-fi movies released throughout the '80s, many of which went straight to video. Today they lurk in the far corners of your streaming service.
Should you watch them? Well let me take you through a few you might be tempted by.
Battle Beyond The Stars (1980) was Roger Corman's retelling of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in space. James Cameron did an impressive job on the SFX with a small budget and the film certainly has a distinctive look.
"A dream to some. A nightmare to others!" As it's Christmas let's look back at a film that I think helped redefine an old genre, captivated the imagination and launched many successful acting careers.
Let's look at John Boorman's Excalibur!
For a long time the film industry found the King Arthur story amusing. Camelot (1967) was a musical comedy; Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was pure comedy.
But director John Boorman had been thinking seriously about the Arthurian legend since 1969, particularly Sir Thomas Malory's 1469 telling of the story 'Le Morte d’Arthur'. The mythic theme greatly appealed to him.
Today in pulp I'm looking back at some Michael Moorcock books, and having a think about the New Wave of science fiction that started in the 1960s...
In Britain the New Wave is often associated with New Worlds magazine, which Moorcock edited from 1964 to 1970. Financial troubles caused the magazine to close in 1970, but it made sporadic comebacks over the subsequent years.
However he started as editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1957, where he introduced Sojan the Swordsman - perhaps his first stab at creating an 'eternal champion' character