Pulp Librarian Profile picture
Curator of the art, history and fiction of old dreams.
EricStoner Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture Lyn Nuttall Profile picture Hubert Motley Jr 😩 Profile picture Jack Bilderback Profile picture 55 subscribed
Mar 7 21 tweets 6 min read
Today in pulp... let's revisit 1981! Image Escape From New York, by Mike McQuay. Bantam Books, 1981. Image
Mar 4 21 tweets 9 min read
"Fear is the mind-killer," but movie production is a close second. As Denis Villeneuve's epic movie adaptations of Dune pull in audiences worldwide, I look back at an earlier struggle to bring that story to the silver screen.

This is the story of David Lynch's Dune... Image Dune is an epic story: conceived by Frank Herbert after studying the Oregon Dunes in 1957 he spent five years researching, writing, and revising it before publication. He would go on to write a further five sequels. Image
Mar 2 31 tweets 12 min read
Today in pulp: teenage detective novels!

Oh those meddling kids...
Image
Image
Detective stories have always been a staple of young adult fiction. I guess every young person wants to be a crime fighter at heart. Image
Mar 1 12 tweets 3 min read
Time for a pulp countdown now, and today it's my Top 10 Hardy Boys covers from the late '80s and early '90s!

Some of these still rock... Image At #10: Carnival of Crime! Sparks will fly... Image
Feb 28 11 tweets 3 min read
Just time for my occasional series "ladies who love accordions!"

Squeezy does it... Image "They said it couldn't be done!"

I'm sorry, I'll read that again...

"They said it shouldn't be done!" Image
Feb 25 11 tweets 4 min read
Time once again for my occasional series "Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses!"

And today all the titles are by Caroline Farr... Image Note: this is a sea-circled island. None of your Oxbow lake nonsense here.

Terror On Duncan Island, by Caroline Farr. Signet Gothic, 1971. Image
Feb 25 24 tweets 6 min read
Today in pulp... it's mostly Look-In covers! Image The Police line-up: all guilty of centre partings.

Look-In, December 1980. Image
Feb 23 17 tweets 5 min read
Today in pulp: True Cases of Women in Crime!

Now this is complicated... Image True Cases of Women in Crime was also known as Women in Crime... Image
Feb 22 19 tweets 7 min read
Hard-boiled and Noir are two distinct - but overlapping - genres of crime fiction. So it's no surprise that both have their roots in the same soil: a pulp magazine that broke the mould. Twice.

Let's look back at the legendary Black Mask... Image "The Black Mask" started as an answer to a business problem: how could journalist H. L. Mencken and theatre critic George Jean Nathan keep their slick, influential but loss-making magazine 'The Smart Set' going?

Publishing a pulp title to subsidise it seemed to make sense. Image
Feb 14 19 tweets 7 min read
“Space is big. Really big,” as Douglas Adams observed. So why haven’t we seen any alien life yet?

Odds are a big universe must have some – or are the odds wrong? This is the Fermi Paradox, and today in pulp I’m looking at some of the novels that have explored it.

Don’t panic… Image In 1950 Physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael Hart were chatting in the Los Alamos canteen when the topic turned to UFOs. Where were they? After a few calculations Fermi felt the probability of alien life was high enough; we just didn’t have any evidence ‘they’ were out there. Image
Feb 8 7 tweets 2 min read
Today in pulp... The Beatniks! Image "Explosive epic of the beat generation"

On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. Pan Giant M39, 1963. Image
Feb 3 14 tweets 5 min read
Many readers have asked me "Why do so many pulp covers feature women in ripped red blouses standing in swamps while a man who looks a bit like David Bowie fights off an unusual animal attack?"

The answer is: pulp artist Wil Hulsey... Image Wilbur "Wil" Hulsey was the undisputed king of the animal attack pulp cover. You name it, he'd paint it attacking you in a pool of stagnant water. Image
Feb 2 20 tweets 8 min read
Many readers have asked me about the raft of lesbian pulp novels published in the '50s and '60s. How did they come about? And did they actually change people's attitudes to same-sex relationships?

Let's look back at the lesbian pulp explosion and try to uncover its legacy... Image Pulp is often seen as lowbrow and cheap, so it could skirt around the censorship laws of the post-war period and cover subjects that 'serious' outlets had to hint at. And one taboo topic dominated pulp for decades: lesbian love! Image
Jan 27 14 tweets 6 min read
Today in pulp I look back at the simple idea that launched a thousand fanzines: Letraset!

Launched in 1959 by Dai Davies and Fred Mackenzie it heralded a graphic design revolution that brought funky fonts to the masses.

Let's take a look... Image Davis and Mackenzie – both experienced designers – created Letraset as a cheaper alternative to phototypesetting, to help speed up the design process. From humble beginnings in an old factory behind Waterloo station Letraset eventually swept across the design world. Image
Jan 23 14 tweets 4 min read
Today in pulp... The Normans! Image The Lady Is Taboo, by Norman Bligh. Quarter Books, 1951. Cover by George Gross. Image
Jan 20 13 tweets 4 min read
Just time tonight in pulp to head back to 1954. A simpler time, seventy years ago... Image "90 lbs of female fury that no man or jail could hold!"

Savage In Skirts! True Cases of Women in Crime, March 1954. Image
Jan 14 20 tweets 7 min read
Today in pulp... I look back at Raleigh bikes: the most exciting bikes on the planet! Image Raleigh was the all steel bike that defined a generation of cyclists: for many it was their first introduction to the joys - and perils - of cycling!
Image
Image
Jan 5 26 tweets 6 min read
Office of the future, 1925. Image Office of the future, 1922. Image
Jan 2 21 tweets 10 min read
46 years ago today, the BBC aired its latest science fiction series. Dark, violent and dystopian it pitted a group of criminals against a neo-fascist Federation in a doomed battle for survival and freedom.

This is the story of Blakes 7... Image Blakes 7 (no apostrophe) 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. Image
Nov 3, 2023 14 tweets 4 min read
Time once again for my occasional series "Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses!"

And today it's all about fleeing in white dresses... Image The Phantom Room by Elizabeth Erin Mande. Popular Library, 1971.

That is a huge choker she's wearing. Are they meant to be that big? Image
Nov 2, 2023 11 tweets 4 min read
Jon Juan: The One And Only Superlover!!

Issue 1, 1950. Cover by Alex Schomburg. Image Not Batgirl. Nope...

Miss Fury. Issue 7, Fall 1945. Cover by Alex Schomburg. Image