Discover and Read the Best of Twitter Threads by @PulpLibrarian

Between 1960 and 1970 Penguin Books endured a storm of changing cover styles at a time when public tastes were rapidly changing. Today I look back at 10 years that shook the Penguin.

This is the story of the art of the book cover...

Allen Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, aiming to bring high-quality paperbacks to the masses for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. Lane began by snapping up publishing rights for inexpensive mid-market novels and packaging them expertly.

From the start Penguins were consciously designed; Lane wanted to distinguish his paperbacks from pulp novels. Edward Young created the first cover grid, using three horizontal bands and the new-ish Gill Sans typeface for the text.

Today in pulp I look back at one of the best-loved British comic strips, an epic that brought the Roman world into the space age.

This is the story of The Trigan Empire...

The Trigan Empire was the main strip in Ranger, "The National Boys' Magazine." Launched in 1965 by Fleetway the magazine ran for a mere 40 issues.

Mike Butterworth was commission to write The Trigan Empire foe Ranger, and Fleetway paired him with illustrator Don Lawrence. It was a wise decision; the two worked very well together.

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 left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets. But one apparition caught the Victorian public's attention more than most...

In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the devil began to prey on Londoners. Often it would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. The 'devil' then fled with a high-pitched laugh.

The public soon named him Spring-Heeled Jack.

Today is of course the birthday of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, and Peter Cushing's birthday was yesterday. So let's share some fun facts about these three titans of terror...

Peter Cushing played the lead in the BBC's 1954 adaptation of Orwell's 1984. Quatermass author Nigel Kneale wrote the screenplay and the Room 101 scene was apparently so horrific one viewer died of shock.

Christopher Lee was (probably) a member of the SAS during WWll; he always declined to discuss this as the regiment was never meant to talk about its activities. He did fight at Monte Cassino and was a post-war Nazi hunter in Vienna.

Today in pulp I'm celebrating one of the most fascinating storytellers of the 20th Century. An author who fused folk tales, fantasy and horror into a mystical, musical mix.

This is the story of Manly Wade Wellman...

Manly Wade Wellman was born in Kamundongo, Angola, on the 21st of May 1903. His father was a medical officer, and as a child Wellman Jr. became an adopted son of a local chief whose vision his father had restored.

Later Wellman returned to America and studied law at Columbia Law School. He was a distinguished football player, but decided to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Paul who was a published author.

Today in pulp: a few bits of trivia...

For example: writer Mark Twain invented the bra strap in 1871.

Author Franz Kafka often visited nudist camps but refused to remove his trousers. He was thus known as ‘The Swimming Trunks Man’.

Isaac Asimov is the only author to have published books in nine out of the ten Dewey library categories.

"All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension..." So begins one of the most enigmatic and chilling horror series ever broadcast by ITV. This is its story.

...Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.”

Britain's ITV network had a strong reputation for children's paranormal drama in the 1970s: Timeslip, Ace Of Wands and The Tomorrow People all featured people with extraordinary powers tackling mysterious foes.

Against this background writer Peter J. Hammond pitched the idea of a new children's show - initially called The Time Menders - to Thames Television. They declined, but rival ATV were impressed by the strength of the scripts and took it on.

"A dream to some. A nightmare to others!" Movie production can feel like that sometimes. Today I'm looking at one film that defined a genre and captivated the imagination, as well as launching many successful careers.

This is the story of 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.

People who have no voice can have a creative spark, born of suffering or solitude. Mostly it's hidden, but in the 20th century it began to be admired, celebrated, and even perhaps exploited.

This is 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 the margins, screaming 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 the art of those who lived with mental health issues.

43 years ago today Sony launched a home entertainment revolution: Betamax! A simple, convenient, high-quality way to record and watch tv and movies. How did it happen, and how did it lose out to its rival VHS?

This is the story of the home video wars. Roll VT...

Recording analogue video images on magnetic tape began in the 1950s. In 1956 Ampex introduced the Quadruplex videotape format which was widely used by broadcasters. It was expensive, and the reel to reel design wasn't that convenient for home use.

The success of the compact audio cassette, launched by Philips in 1963, prompted manufacturers to think: could they do the same with video tape? A number of companies tried to find out.

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...

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 indicates 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.

Today in pulp I'm looking at La Vie Parisienne, that naughty guide to the social and artistic life of Paris...

La Vie Parisienne had something of a reputation: During WW1 Belgium banned it, and General Pershing warned American troops against reading it's scandalous pages. In truth it wasn't so risqué, but its illustrations were of the highest quality.

La Vie Parisienne began publication in 1863, covering the arts, books, music and the theatre. By the 1870s it began to include illustrations of fashion and the Moulin Rouge.

The 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde were complex affairs, both in themselves and in the motivations behind them. They were covered in depth by the 'tabloid' press of the day. Today I look back at what they tell us about Victorian Britain...

Several gay 'scandals' received wide publicity in late Victorian Britain, not least through the pages of the Illustrated Police News - "the worst newspaper in England." One in particular led to widespread interest...

In 1871 Thomas Boulton and Frederick Park, two well known London 'cross-dressers' - were charged with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence" after attending the Strand Theatre with a number of gentlemen.

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?

This is the View-Master story...

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: a cautionary tale of trying to shoehorn fiction into a standard formula, just because it’s in the same genre.

This is the story of Laser Books…

Roger Elwood started out editing wrestling magazines in the early 1970s, until he became bored and turned his attention to sci-fi. He became a prodigious creator of anthologies, producing over 40 in 1973-74.

In 1974 Elwood began discussions with Canadian publisher Harlequin, about a new line of science fiction books. Harlequin had dipped its toe into sci-fi in the 1950s but was best known for publishing formulaic romance fiction

"It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white."

This is how we are introduced to Michael Moorcock' s anti-hero Elric of Melniboné...

Elric, also known as The Albino Emperor, Elric Kinslayer and the Pale Prince of Ruins is the 428th emperor of Melniboné, and the last. A sickly sorcerer sustained by enchanted herbs, he is a brooder and an outsider to his people.

Elric is the sole heir to the Ruby Throne of Melniboné, after his mother died in childbirth. Like Hamlet he was a prince who studied the world and questioned his role. He was also a moral person, which made his people think of him as weak.

Today I'm looking at Space:1999's Moonbase Alpha, and trying to answer a few questions:
- is it related to the SHADO moonbase from UFO?
- how did it travel so far in space?
- is Elon Musk really planning to build it?

Let's find out...

In Space:1999 Moonbase Alpha is a 4km wide settlement in the Plato moon crater. It's both a research centre and a monitoring station for the vast amounts of nuclear waste Earth has dumped on the Moon. Sounds fun...

And that's the problem with setting sci-fi on the Moon: nothing tends to happen. Sure there's filing to do, computers to monitor, occasional meteors etc, but where's the action? There's literally no atmosphere...

Today in pulp I look back at one of the most popular paperback genres of all time, now all but forgotten about.

This is the story of gothic romance...

What is gothic romance? Essentially it's concerns a relationship between a young woman and an old house. She may have inherited it, married into it or sought refuge in it. But slowly a sinister echo of the past is magnified by its walls, and in horror she must try and flee it...

Why flee a house? Why not a man, or a cruel stepmother, or a ghost? Well they can all play a part in gothic romance, but the locus of evil is usually the house itself. It's a genre based on a fear of engulfment - of being taken over, driven mad, suffocated by someone else's past.

On 16 November 1938 chemist Albert Hofmann developed his 25th lysergic acid derivative. He was hoping for a drug to help blood circulation, but derivative 25 seemed to be both harmless and useless.

Five years later it blew his mind.

This is the story of LSD...

Ergotism, also known as St. Anthony's Dance, is a poisoning caused by the ergot fungus which grows on rye. Its convulsive and gangrenous symptoms in its victims may have led to the Salem Witch Trial accusations. But in small doses it could be an effective medicine.

In the 1930s chemist Albert Hofmann began to synthesize the compound in ergot that caused these constrictions, and experimented with derivatives of its active compound lysergic acid. He was looking for medicines to treat blood circulation problems.

Today in pulp: the curious history of the Radium craze, and its deadly consequences...

Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, and isolated in its metallic state in 1911. Radium amazed people: it seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy. 'Radioactivty' soon became a buzzword...

The WWl Trench Watch used self-luminous Radium paint to make the watch dial and hands visible in the dark, but not so visible that enemy snipers could identify the wearer. It soon became standard kit for Officers.

40 years ago today, the BBC aired its latest science fiction show. Dark, violent and dystopian it pitted a group of criminals against a neo-fascist Federation in a doomed battle for survival and freedom.

On #ScienceFictionDay, this is the story of #Blakes7...

#Blakes7 was unique. Created by Terry Nation, it was more George Orwell than George Lucas. Story arcs were long, morals were hazy, lead characters were gruesomely tortured or killed off. Cynicism, ruthlessness and paranoia were always present.

#Blakes7 tells the story of political dissident Roj Blake. Brainwashed and used as bait to trap other dissidents he is then tried on false charges and deported to die on a penal colony.

As it's #Christmas there really is only one story I can tell tonight:

Dum dum dum dum
DUM DUM DUM DUM...

The number of epic stories associated with the 1980 Flash Gordon movie is legion. Today I'll share a few with you, but there are many, many more...

Initially George Lucas asked Dino De Laurentiis for the rights to make a film based on the 1930s Flash Gordon. De Laurentiis declined, so Lucas wrote his own story - Star Wars

"Tired of reality? Escape into the world of role-playing games!" In particular one whose corporate history is a wild mix of battle, quests and the fickleness of fortune.

This is the story of Dungeons & Dragons...

The history of Dungeons & Dragons and its parent company TSR is complex, like the game. It's full of feuds, schisms, colourful characters, chance happenings and fabulous riches. Again, like the game. So where to begin?

Pulp fiction - especially Robert E Howard, Michael Moorcock and Fritz Lieber - was a huge influence on Dungeons & Dragons: monsters, spells, magic armour and complex class systems all feature in it, derived from the ultimate ur-text - Lord of the Rings.

"The gun is good! The Penis is evil!" bellows a huge stone head floating over the Irish countryside. It's quite a strange start to any movie, but it's going to get even stranger.

This is the story of John Boorman's 1974 classic film Zardoz...

In 1970 director John Boorman began work on a Lord Of The Rings film for United Artists. It would be an unusual adaption; The Beatles would be the Hobbits and Kabuki theatre would open the movie . Alas the studio said 'No', but the idea of a fantasy film stuck with Boorman...

Following the commercial success of Deliverance, John Boorman started work on the Zardoz script in 1972. Initially Burt Reynolds would play the lead role of Zed, but pulled out citing other filming commitments.