Far away places, far away times, secret societies, hidden underworlds. Make sure you read to the end, as the last lines might change the entire context of a pulp story. This means that pulp fiction taps into that American literary tradition that began with Edgar Alan Poe: short stories of mysteries and the weird. Even the pulp novels, such as in the hero pulps like Doc Savage and the Shadow, are closer in length to today’s novellas than even today’s shorter novels. The spirit of pulp fiction still lives on.ĭespite the abundance of style and genre, certain common features of pulp fiction can be determined. Call it neopulp, dieselpunk, Pulp Revival, or Pulp Revolution, if you wish. Even today, many look back to the golden age of pulp fiction for inspiration in storytelling, style, and milieu. And, indeed, continues to do so, as German science fiction serials, American men’s adventure, African photonovels, and Japanese light novels all contain elements of their pulp fiction forebears. So something essential to these stories continued to survive in this new medium. The paper might have changed, but the stories did not. Gone were the serials, as unless a writer was fortunate enough to write for stable and successful magazines like Argosy, there was no guarantee a magazine would survive to the serial’s conclusion.īut 1940s wartime shortages moved many pulp magazines away from pulp paper and into the digest format. And if a character was popular enough to warrant a return, the following stories were episodic. This volatility forced pulp writers into writing self-contained short stories. The average pulp imprint lasted little over a year. Pulp publishers could be fly-by-night as they chased success. Mencken’s literary journal was saved, and Black Mask went on to found literary genres, writing styles, and even film noir. L Mencken needed money to support his high-brow literary magazine, he turned to the pulps and founded Black Mask. Such elitist still drips from pulp’s critics today. Completely different from, and some atop their ivory towers would say inferior to, the slick quality of the magazines used for proper literature and proper stories. The name comes from the paper these stories were written on. ![]() Because of this stunning variety in genre and style, many critics shrug their shoulders and say that pulp fiction is fiction that was published on pulp paper. ![]() Pulp fiction also featured detective cozies, romance tales, westerns, historical adventures, war stories, horror, and more all served up by the dozen for a dime or a quarter per customer. And those are just the genres created in pulp’s golden age. Science fiction, hard-boiled detective stories, heroic crime fighters that would inspire today’s superheroes, sword and sorcery, and the awful menace of the weird lurking around every corner. That is a loaded question, as pulp fiction encompasses many different genres.
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