@PulpLibrarian's Threads
Libraries may be closed at the moment, but that doesn't mean we're idle. So come with me on a virtual library tour, courtesy of stock photography, to see what we do for a living... 
Libraries are of course information resource centres, but in many ways they are so much more. To get the best out of them you need to really know your way around.
The enquiries desk is usually your first stop in a library, and this is where you will meet The Angry Librarian! Why is she angry? Because you keep asking her stupid questions!
I see they've nationised British Rail now! #MondayMotivation
How to make a British Rail egg sandwich:
- apply Stork margarine to ONE slice of bread (as little as possible)
- cut ONE egg into 12 slices
- apply NINE slices in a 3x3 overlapping grid
- place FIVE strands of cress diagonally (L to R)
- slice sandwich diagonally
- apply Stork margarine to ONE slice of bread (as little as possible)
- cut ONE egg into 12 slices
- apply NINE slices in a 3x3 overlapping grid
- place FIVE strands of cress diagonally (L to R)
- slice sandwich diagonally
Bjorn: "So, erm, shall we all stand in front of the Waterloo station sign? Because, you know, we're ABBA and..."
British Rail photographer: "Nah mate, by the bins is fine."
British Rail photographer: "Nah mate, by the bins is fine."
Today in pulp I look back at the Witchploitation explosion of the late 1960s: black magic, bare bottoms and terrible, terrible curtains!
Come this way... #SundayMorning
Come this way... #SundayMorning
Mainstream occult magazines and books had been around since late Victorian times. These were mostly about spiritualism, with perhaps a bit of magic thrown in.
But it was the writings of Aleister Crowley in English and Maria de Naglowska in French and Russian that first popularised the idea of 'sex magick' in the 20th century - the use of sexual energy and ritual to achieve mystical outcomes.
Today in pulp... things they used to sell in vending machines!
Like books...
Like books...
Things they used to sell in vending machines: coal!
Things they used to sell in vending machines: eggs!
You know what folks, it's time for us to talk tripe on Twitter! #FridayFeeling
Warming, delicious tripe...
Warming, delicious tripe...
"The poor man's oyster", "The food of kings"; tripe was once held in high regard as a staple of a wholesome diet by rich and poor alike. But what is it?
Well tripe is the polite name for the cleaned muscle wall of a cow's stomach. There are three types of tripe (blanket, honeycomb and leaf) depending on which one of the cow's stomachs is used.
“This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish.”
Rejection letter quote for Crash, a novel by J.G. Ballard.
Rejection letter quote for Crash, a novel by J.G. Ballard.
“An endless nightmare. I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book.'”
Rejection letter quote for War Of The Worlds, a novel by H.G. Wells.
Rejection letter quote for War Of The Worlds, a novel by H.G. Wells.
March 1981: Shakin' Stevens is top of the charts, Tom Baker is leaving #DoctorWho and Clive Sinclair is bringing computers to the masses. Britain is moving into a new age, and one object above all will herald its coming!
For #BritishScienceWeek this is the story of the ZX81...
For #BritishScienceWeek this is the story of the ZX81...
Like many electronics companies Sinclair Radionics had been beaten up by the 1970s calculator wars: cut-price LCD products from Japan, plus aggressive price cuts from Hewlett Packard made Sinclair's LED calculators unprofitable. The company was in trouble.
The British government bailed out Sinclair in the 1970s, and wanted it to focus on instrument manufacturing - the only profitable bit of its business. Clive Sinclair resigned in disgust in 1979. He had a better idea.
Manchester street corner, 1977. Photo by John Bulmer. #InternationalWomensDay
Washing line, Halifax 1965. Photo by John Bulmer. #InternationalWomensDay
Liverpool, 1965. Photo by John Bulmer. #InternationalWomensDay
Between the typewriter and the word processor there was a time - 1961 to 1975 or thereabouts - when one machine dominated the world of print: the IBM Selectric.
Let's take a look at it... #SaturdayThoughts
Let's take a look at it... #SaturdayThoughts
The Selectric typewriter, launched in 1961, was a radical departure from the traditional typewriter. Out went the individual type bars striking an ink ribbon...
...and in came the revolutionary golf ball typing head! Initially called a 'mushroom head' the golf ball tilted and rotated to match the right character with the right keystroke.
Today in pulp: the #toiletpapercrisis! It's complicated stuff this loo roll...
Strange Facts About Toilet Paper (1934). "Through the eye of a needle" indeed!
Fun fact*: Izal shiny hard toilet paper can also be used to replenish thermal fax machines!
(*not verified by experiment, as it probably voids the warranty)
(*not verified by experiment, as it probably voids the warranty)
My #SundayThoughts today: did we all evolve from giant viruses?
Probably not. Possibly. The root of the tree of life is very hard to get to, but an amoeba found in Bradford in 1992 has made us think again about the common ancestor all life descended from. Let's take a look...
Probably not. Possibly. The root of the tree of life is very hard to get to, but an amoeba found in Bradford in 1992 has made us think again about the common ancestor all life descended from. Let's take a look...
Viruses are ancient parasites that have been around as long as life has. They infect living cells and hijack them to reproduce themselves. They're the most numerous type of biological entity on Earth. They are also not considered to be alive.
Now there's no universal definition of life: even Erwin Schrödinger was uncertain what it was. But an ability to resist entropy, to reproduce, to mutate, to have a metabolism and to self-organise feature in most definitions. Thanks so much better already
Time for a pulp countdown now, so here's my top 10 future inventions we were promised by Popular Mechanics magazine that we're still waiting for!
At #10: motorised unicycle! This was a very popular Edwardian idea, inspired by the penny farthing bicycle. Although a few prototypes were made we never really fell in love with driving one big wheel.
At #9: personal radar. Now this is actually a pretty neat idea and a number of cars now use radar or lidar as an anti- aid. We're still waiting for it to be built into a hat however.
Time for my occasional series "Why is Twitter so awful and what are we going to do about it?"
And today I'm trying to find out what Twitter is actually good for. Let's take a look... #fridaythoughts
And today I'm trying to find out what Twitter is actually good for. Let's take a look... #fridaythoughts
Twitter started as a microblogging site, and as blogs are familiar things we can hopefully work out how good Twitter is at this.
So what is a blog and what does it do? Well there are many flavours of blog out there...
So what is a blog and what does it do? Well there are many flavours of blog out there...
First there are the expert blogs: subject matter specialists sharing their insights about stuff they really know about. These blogs sea a kind of free punditry: people acting as if they had a newspaper column.
Today in pulp I'm heading back to 1978, when disco was NOT DEAD and Dr Strange dreamed of being Lemmy from Mötorhead...
Some call it copywrite infringement, others call it inspired genius...
Stravolta: Crime Fighter, February 1978.
Stravolta: Crime Fighter, February 1978.
The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film (1978). Starring:
- the Bee Gees
- Frankie Howerd
- Aerosmith
- Donald Pleasence
- Earth, Wind & Fire
- Steve Martin
Surely this deserves a BluRay special edition...
- the Bee Gees
- Frankie Howerd
- Aerosmith
- Donald Pleasence
- Earth, Wind & Fire
- Steve Martin
Surely this deserves a BluRay special edition...
Happy birthday to André Breton, born today in 1896! And to celebrate I'll be tweeting some of the more surreal book covers I've discovered over the years...
I'm reminded of Conrad Booth and his Dancing Teeth...
Not Before Time, by John Brunner. NEL, 1968
Not Before Time, by John Brunner. NEL, 1968
The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber. Ace G627, 1967. Cover art by Hoot von Zitzewitz.
In the shadowy corners of the shortwave spectrum lurk the Numbers Stations: strange radio broadcasts of mysterious blocks of numbers in creepy monotone voices!
It's actually an old form of spycraft which is still in use today. And as it's #WorldRadioDay let's take a listen...
It's actually an old form of spycraft which is still in use today. And as it's #WorldRadioDay let's take a listen...
A Numbers Station is a type of one-way voice link for sending information to spies in foreign countries.
Operating on Short Wave radio bands they transmit a secret code of spoken numbers. Use of Numbers Stations peaked during the Cold War, but some are still operating today.
Operating on Short Wave radio bands they transmit a secret code of spoken numbers. Use of Numbers Stations peaked during the Cold War, but some are still operating today.
Numbers Stations are operated by various national intelligence agencies. At set times on a pre-arranged frequency a musical tone is played, followed by a speech synthesised voice reading out blocks of numbers. To most listeners it sounds both creepy and meaningless.
Happy #WorldRadioDay everybody! And to celebrate I'm counting down my top 10 radio-powered inventions!
Let me just warm the valves up first..
Let me just warm the valves up first..
At no 10: the radio police helmet! It contains a hundred feet of wire - I'm assuming it's all copper...
At no 9: radio darts! How did this not catch on...
Today in pulp, as it's #DarwinDay, l ask the question: should we fear The Singularity - a super-intelligent artificial intelligence that will evolve to rule over us forever more?
I'm gonna say no for this one...
I'm gonna say no for this one...
The technological singularity is a hypothetical point in the future when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.
In short an upgradable intelligent agent would enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles: an intelligence explosion would occur resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence.
It's #SaferInternetDay , a time for old codgers like me go on about how good the Web used to be back in the day. But was the internet ever safe? What went wrong? And what does the future hold?
Let me start up Netscape Navigator and give you a few thoughts *dialing tone*...
Let me start up Netscape Navigator and give you a few thoughts *dialing tone*...
The internet began as a revolutionary thought: what if we had a place with no rules and no authority, where communication could be global, instantaneous and free?
We know what happened next. Money arrived. Wearing a polo shirt and preaching freedom. Yeah baby!
We know what happened next. Money arrived. Wearing a polo shirt and preaching freedom. Yeah baby!
The internet is huge, and ever since its creation people have been trying to control it. Initially we worried about online security: the web is not very secure, a lot of its infrastructure is old and we're all pretty careless on security: fertile ground for mischief, or worse.
Today in pulp... I look inside some Usborne books! #TuesdayMotivation
How Crooks Work. The Usborne Detective Guide: Clues and Suspects (1979)
Welcome to the 21st century! The World Of Future Cities. Usborne Books, 1979.
Today in pulp... I visit the Wimpy Bar! Oh it was the future once... #MondayMotivation
The Wimpy chain originally began in 1934 in Chicago. The name was inspired by the character of J. Wellington Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons created by E. C. Segar.
And in 1954 the company sold a license to J. Lyons & Co - owners of the Lyons Corner House - to use the Wimpy name in the United Kingdom.
If stock photography has taught us one thing it's how to recognise a hacker! But how much do we really know about these shady characters, with their balaclava and their Windows 7 laptops?
For #DataProtectionDay here's my essential stock photography guide to #cybersecurity...
For #DataProtectionDay here's my essential stock photography guide to #cybersecurity...
First things first, hacking has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years. Backing up your sensitive data on C60 cassette and labelling it 'Kajagoogoo Live' is no longer enough to keep your information safe!
Hackers are hard to spot because they dress head-to-toe in black (or very very very dark grey). This is because they live on the Dark Web and want to blend into the background.
What font should be on your book cover? Well if you've had it with Helvetica and you're tired of Times New Roman why not revive a classic pulp typeface or two?
Here's a list of some pulpy fonts that are fruitier than Frutiger and louder than DIN 1931...
Here's a list of some pulpy fonts that are fruitier than Frutiger and louder than DIN 1931...
Any pulp sci-fi writer must give serious consideration to using Amelia as their book cover typeface. Designed by Stan Davis in 1964 it's the font used on the Moon Boot and reminds people we haven't actually been to the Moon since 1972, so we really should try again!
If your story is about computers then use Computer Monotone! David Moore created this in 1968 as an alphabetical extension of the E-13B font used on the bottom of cheques. It smells of Fortran an tastes of 4 bit processing, just like a real computer should...
Is there a future in old tech? Of course there is - especially when it's still powering some of our most amazing inventions! That's why you should ALWAYS keep all that old computer stuff you learnt in college.
Speaking of which... how's your FORTRAN?
Speaking of which... how's your FORTRAN?
FORTRAN (in shouty caps) was released in 1957 as the world's first high-level programming language. It’s probably the longest lasting, with Fortran 2018 (no shouty caps) being its latest release. And it all started with a simple question: how do you simplify programming?
Programming early computers meant entering sequences of numerical codes, each representing a basic operation. It was time-consuming, prone to error and hard to spot mistakes. The codes needed also varied between computers.
Basically it was a slog...
Basically it was a slog...
