Editor Bill Lampkin is hard at work on The Pulpster’s 23rd issue. A freelance writer-editor and publication designer, Bill discovered the pulps through paperback reprints of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Spider. Peter Chomko, a grant writer and research analyst for an educational fund, capably assists him.
A longstanding tradition cherished by attendees of summer pulp cons, this highly collectible and informative program book will be released at PulpFest 2014, beginning on Thursday, August 7th. Like the convention, the new number will focus on the 75th anniversary of the blossoming of science fiction’s Golden Age, when fantastic fiction “grew up.” We’ll also be looking at the shudder pulps of 1934. Every PulpFest member will receive a complimentary copy of The Pulpster.
The issue will open with “Science Fiction and the Pulps,” the unabridged version of Mike Chomko’s “History of Magazine Science Fiction,” recently serialized on our home page. Last year’s Munsey Award winner, Garyn G. Roberts, is on board with an article on Futuria Fantasia, the fanzine that Ray Bradbury debuted at the first World Science Fiction Convention. Don Herron, creator of San Francisco’s Dashiell Hammett Tour, the longest-running literary tour in the USA, looks at Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Fritz Leiber’s classic characters who first appeared in the August 1939 Unknown. Dwayne Olson contributes several letters from Donald Wandrei concerning the death of his friend, Hannes Bok, born July 2, 1914. Christian Lawson also profiles Argentine pulp writer Alfredo Julio Grassi.
Weird-menace fiction came into its own in 1934. The Pulpster will look back to those days with “Pulp Horrors of the Dirty Thirties,” written by Don Hutchison, author of The Great Pulp Heroes and many other works. Archaeologist Jeffrey Shanks will also be on hand to discuss “Zombies from the Pulps,” an overview of the undead writings of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner, and other great pulpsters.
If you can’t attend PulpFest 2014, you can still get a copy of The Pulpster by becoming a supporting member of the convention. Visit our registration page for further details.
Our lead image is The Pulpster #23, adapted by Bill Lampkin from Edd Cartier’s cover art for the December 1939 number of Street & Smith’s Unknown, illustrating L. Sprague de Camp’s alternative history “Lest Darkness Fall.”
