If you’ve been following our recent posts, you’ll know we released our draft schedule for PulpFest 2016 on January 4th, just a few days into the new year. If you happened to study that schedule, you’ve learned that we are planning to announce our convention’s 2016 guest of honor on Monday, January 11th. The news will be released here and on our social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. If you’ve been tracking our progress, you’ll also know that we’re planning to offer a wide array of programming at PulpFest 2016, including a salute to the 100th anniversary of the genre pulp magazine.
Although the Munsey group published the first specialized pulp magazines — beginning with THE RAILROAD MAN’S MAGAZINE in 1906, followed by THE OCEAN in 1907 — both pulps were a mixture of fact and fiction. It would be up to Street & Smith to originate the specialized pulp-fiction magazine in the fall of 1915, when it introduced DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE to the reading public.
Originally published twice a month, DETECTIVE STORY became a weekly before the end of its second year of publication. Despite its great success, the new pulp did not immediately inspire many imitators. It would be up to Street & Smith itself to develop the trend: WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE arrived in 1919, followed by LOVE STORY in 1921, SEA STORIES in 1922, and SPORT STORY MAGAZINE in 1923. It was not until 1924 that the single-genre fiction pulp would start to take off as other publishers began to release their own specialty pulps.
Here’s a clue to the identity of our PulpFest 2016 guest of honor: at one time in our 2016 guest of honor’s career, he or she worked for the specialty or genre-fiction magazines. Drop by our site over the next few days for more hints. You can leave your guess to our special guest’s identity on our Facebook page. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to “like” us. We’ll provide a free membership to PulpFest 2016 to the first person who guesses the identity of this year’s honored guest. And remember to visit pulpcon.org on Monday, January 11th when we will reveal the identity of the PulpFest 2016 Guest of Honor.
(Walter M. Baumhofer — often referred to as the “king of the pulp artists” — contributed the front cover art for the September 3, 1932 issue of WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE, one of the string of specialized pulp-fiction magazines first introduced by the Street & Smith publishing group in the fall of 1915. PulpFest 2016 will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the genre magazine at its convention at the Hyatt Regency Columbus and the Greater Columbus Convention Center in beautiful downtown of Columbus, Ohio from July 21 – 24, 2016. Bring your friends! They’ll have a very SPECIAL time!)
