Thursday, November 01, 2007

Pulp Thursday!

First off there has been a bit of discussion in several forums I hang out in as to what is pulp or when does pulp start or stop. For me I see pulp as a constantly evolving genre. Pulp is El Borak and Mack Bolan- Commander Cody, and Turk Madden. I consider the Green Hornet in all his incarnations as pulp. Pulps are short adventure stories, some times stand alone stories, other times serialized. Well hell, “Three the hard way” was a stand alone story with pulpish elements. Xena: Warrior Princess is every bit pulp as Radar men from the Moon. Pulp is about excitement, adventure, fun and escape.
More than anything else the Pulps were about Location. The pulp magazines were in their heyday during the great depression. Folks needed to escape from the drudge of daily life. The pulps offered this escape to exotic far away places where a man could make a difference.
The keyword here is: Exotic.
Whether the locales were natural; Tropical jungles, Arctic wastelands, volcanic islands – or man made; underground labyrinths, lost temples, ancient libraries, hidden tombs, and ruined cities.
With the right use of description and the proper tone just about any locale can be made mysterious and exotic. Director John Carpenter did a masterful job of this in his film “Big Trouble in little China” where a modern day truck driver finds himself battling Tong warriors, ancient wizards, and magical beasts in an underground Fortress in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Like I said earlier, I think pulp rather than beginning or ending at a set point, constantly evolve –much like comic books. Comic aficionados have accepted the premise that there are different “ages” that define the comics- “The Golden Age” 1940’s and 50’s, “The Silver Age” of the 60’s, “The Bronze age of the 70’s (My personal favorite) etc. I feel the same about Pulp.

You may not agree, but this is my blog. So there!



Do you sit in boring meetings all day trying to stay awake? If you do why don’t you click on over to Pulpgen.com and down load some original “Golden age” pulp stories to take with you to your next endless meeting. PDF Formatted Stories from Magazines like “Spicy Detective”, “Crime Busters”, “The Frontier”, “Clue”, “Adventure” and many others. The web site is very no-nonsense and functional. No splashy pictures or fancy fonts- but it does its job and does it well.




A couple of great resources for Pulp gaming can be found here at Pulp Adventure! by Kevin McHale and Michael Blum.



Interested in visiting and exotic port of call? Try: Tales of Old Shanghai
A great site for Far Eastern Flavor.


And that is your Pulp Thursday report!

3 comments:

  1. I think one of the key elements to pulps, from Robert E. Howard stories to the entire line of Gold Eagle men's adventure novels is the indominatability of a man's (or woman's as in the case of Xena, etc) will. The heroes are larger than life. Only those kinds of people could survive in those kinds of situations. This might sound like a totally shameless plug, but it ain't. I just wanted to inform one of my favorite fellow bloggers about something pulp-related that I'm working on. I hope you check it out at: www.myspace.com/serialsquad

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous1:01 AM

    Hi all. I've just discovered this site from a comic forum i'm a member of dedicated to all things pulp.

    Found some great links and interesting stuff here already (liking the wednesday's posts).

    Funny thing is I've been into pulp related stuff for years but never thought about what makes something pulp. This article I think hit the nail on the head for me in that regard.

    I also noticed something you said in a post within your tv category about liking the team aspect in your fiction. If so feel free to check out the site for my book fallen heroes which was heavily inspired by the pulp type stuff I read when I growing up, the indy, james bond movies and tales of the gold monkey( i hope someone besides me remembers that). Anyway the webite is www.unseenshadows.co.uk

    Ps Paul I'm heading over to your myspace to check out serialsquad

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:03 AM

    Hi all. I've just discovered this site from a comic forum i'm a member of dedicated to all things pulp.

    Found some great links and interesting stuff here already (liking the wednesday's posts).

    Funny thing is I've been into pulp related stuff for years but never thought about what makes something pulp. This article I think hit the nail on the head for me in that regard.

    I also noticed something you said in a post within your tv category about liking the team aspect in your fiction. If so feel free to check out the site for my book fallen heroes which was heavily inspired by the pulp type stuff I read when I growing up, the indy, james bond movies and tales of the gold monkey( i hope someone besides me remembers that). Anyway the webite is www.unseenshadows.co.uk

    ReplyDelete