PulpFest 2014 will begin on Thursday, August 7th, at 4 PM, as our dealers begin to erect their displays for “Summer’s Great Pulp Con!” All members will be able to register for the convention from 5 to 9 PM, right outside our dealers’ room. There will be early-bird shopping in the dealers’ room from 6 to 10 PM for loyal attendees who help to defray the convention’s costs by staying three nights at our host hotel. The cost is $30 for those who stay elsewhere. Our full programming slate for the evening will begin at 8 PM with a tribute to the late Frank Robinson, winner of the Lamont Award in the year 2000. There will also be presentations on Frank Munsey’s Famous Fantastic Mysteries, pulp artist Harold Winfield Scott, The Avenger’s Diamond Jubilee, and our annual FamerCon panel, The Farmerian Vision. Closing out the night will be the first four chapters of the 1939 science-fiction movie serial, Buck Rogers.
As a prelude to the start of Thursday’s convention, Ohio State University’s Thompson Library will be hosting a lecture by author and pulp fan Laurie Powers. She will be speaking about her grandfather, the noted pulp writer Paul Powers. All PulpFest 2014 attendees are welcome to attend Laurie’s lecture on Thursday, beginning at 4:30 PM. It will be held in Room 150 A/B. The library is located at 1858 Neil Avenue, about two and one-half miles from the Hyatt Regency Columbus.
Early registration for the general membership will take place on Thursday, beginning at 5 PM right outside of the dealers’ room located in the Regency Ballroom on the hotel’s third floor. All members, dealers included, can pick up their registration packets at this time. To help things move smoothly, please bring along a completed registration form. You can download a copy by clicking here. Although we’d love to have you fill out the survey portion of our registration form, it is optional.
For those of you who have not yet registered forPulpFest, Thursday evening will be an ideal time to do so. Three-day memberships will be available for $35. Single day memberships costing $15 per day will also be available. Children, accompanied by a parent, who are fifteen and younger will be admitted free of charge. Please visit our Registration page for further details. Members will also be able to register for the convention on Friday morning, beginning at 9 PM, and at any time during regular dealers’ room hours.
Please note that advance registrations are no longer available. Our Paypal page was shut down around 10 PM on Monday night.
From 9 to 10 AM on Friday, August 8th, the dealers’ room will be open only to dealers for set-up. It will open to all at 10 AM and remain open until 5 PM. Our afternoon programming will start at 1:30 PM with the first of three New Fictioneers readings. Our evening programming will begin at 7:30 PM as PulpFest chairman Jack Cullers offers an official welcome to all attendees. Friday night’s programming will feature a brief look at 1939: Science Fiction’s Boom Year, Startling Stories: An Overview, A Feast of Farmer: PJF’s Early Science Fiction, Pulp Promos, Part Two, Eighty Years of Terror, Science Fiction’s “Golden Age” , and chapters 5 – 8 of Buck Rogers.
On Saturday, August 9th, the PulpFest dealers’ room will be open from 9 AM to 4:45 PM. It will be closing fifteen minutes early to allow time for people to prepare for our Saturday Night Dinner at Buca di Beppo, a get-together arranged by registration and volunteer coordinator Sally Cullers. Please note that this event has sold out.
Our Saturday afternoon programming will start at 1 PM when Ron Fortier will moderate a New Pulp Fiction Panel on “The Fun of Writing Pulp Fiction.” It will be followed by two more New Fictioneers readings. Saturday evening’s events will include the PulpFest 2014 Business Meeting beginning at 7:30 PM. It will be followed by the 2014 Munsey Award Presentation at 7:50 PM. Our presentations for the evening will include Unknown: The Best in Fantasy Fiction, The Mystery and Mastery of John Newton Howitt, and the last four chapters of Buck Rogers following our Saturday Night at the Auction. Our auction will include over 150 pulps as well as digests and dime novels as well as a selection of books, fanzines, manuscripts, and ephemera from the collection of Everil Worrell, author of nineteen stories for Weird Tales. Four lots of material from the collection of pulp author Paul S. Powers will also be sold.
On Sunday, August 10th, the dealers’ room will be open to all members from 9 AM to 2 PM as our dealers pack up. If you are coming just for the day, please be aware that buying and selling opportunities may be limited.
For additional details on all of our afternoon and evening programming events, please visit our Programming page for further details. Each entry is linked to a post that provides further information on that event. Just click on the event’s title.
Early indications are that we will surpass last year’s show both in our number of registrations and rooms booked at the hotel. We are hoping that this year’s con will be our biggest and best yet. For some time, we’ve been receiving registrations every day, many from people who have never attended PulpFest before. If you’ve been thinking about attending, but have yet to pull the trigger, you probably should call the hotel and make your reservation immediately. You can do so by calling 1-888-421-1442 or 1-614-463-1234. Please be sure to mention PulpFest when placing your reservation.
The Hyatt Regency is located at 350 North High Street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The hotel is south of I-670, just 15-20 minutes from Columbus International Airport. In the heart of the active Arena District, the Hyatt Regency is just a few minutes’ walk from the trendy Short North Arts District. There are shops and restaurants galore right outside the hotel’s entrance. Click here for directions.
For those who will be staying at the Hyatt Regency during the convention, parking is free at the Chestnut Street Garage, one block south of the hotel. The garage is connected to the hotel via an enclosed and covered walkway. For those visiting PulpFest for the day, you can also use the Chestnut Street Garage. Rates vary based on time, but $16 will get you a day’s parking with in and out privileges. Additional parking is available at the Convention Center underground garage or the Center’s east lot. Again, rates are time-based and $14 will get you parking for 12 hours with no in and out privileges. Click here for a more detailed look at parking near the Hyatt Regency. Alternately, if you don’t mind walking a few blocks, there are many inexpensive options. Click here for an interactive parking map of Columbus and search near 350 North High Street.
From 4 PM to 11 PM on Thursday, the dealers’ room will be open for exhibitors to set up their displays. At this point, we urge all of our dealers to take full advantage of our generous load-in and set-up period. While unloading and transporting your goods should be very easy–there’s a back entrance to the hotel for loading and we have been granted exclusive use of a freight elevator–there is bound to be a certain amount of disorientation as folks negotiate their way around the Hyatt. Remember that we’ll also be offering early-bird shopping in the dealers’ room from 6 to 10 PM on Thursday evening, an extra four hours of selling opportunities to people who are ready to buy!
All PulpFest attendees will be able to submit material for inclusion in the Saturday Night Auction. For additional information, please visit our Auctions page under “Programming” or contact Barry Traylor via email at barry@pulpfest.com. In addition to 104 auction lots submitted by Joseph Saine and the Worrell and Powers estates, we will be accepting about eighty additional lots from registered members of PulpFest 2014. However, due to the substantial amount of material already submitted, there may be limits on the number of lots that can be offered by each consignee. The sooner you submit your consignment to Mike Chomko, the more likely that it will be included in our auction. Mike’s tables will be along the wall, across from the registration desk just inside the entrance to the PulpFest dealers’ room. All lots submitted must have a minimum value of $20. All lots that do not receive a bid of $20 or more will be passed. If you plan to offer an auction lot with a reserve price, your reserve must be $50 or more. No lots with a reserve price of less than $50 will be accepted. PulpFest reserves the right to reject any auction material that is unlikely to meet our minimum bid or reserve price standards as well as our content standards. The convention charges sellers 10% of the selling price for anything sold in the auction.
For those attendees who would like to ship their purchases to their homes, PulpFest 2014 has arranged for a local UPS provider to be available at the hotel on Sunday, August 10th. He will be arriving between 11 AM and noon and will stay as long as his services are needed. Further information is available on our FAQ page.
The entire PulpFest 2014 organizing committee–Mike Chomko, Jack and Sally Cullers, Ed Hulse, Barry Traylor, and Chuck Welch–is looking forward to seeing you all in just a few days. Have a safe trip to Columbus.
