PulpFest 2016 will begin on Thursday, July 21, at 4 PM, as our dealers begin to erect their displays for “Summer’s AMAZING Pulp Con!” All members will be able to register for the convention from 4 to 8 PM, right outside our dealers’ room. There will be early-bird shopping in the dealers’ room from 6 to 9 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 around 9 PM with a look at The Skipper and The Whisperer, two pulp superheroes that debuted eighty years back in 1936. PulpFest will also be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of science fiction author H. G. Wells with a presentation by Garyn G. Roberts, winner of the 2013 Munsey Award. When our programming is over, PulpFest members are welcome to socialize together in the Hyatt Regency’s Big Bar on 2. Talk “Pulps in the Pub!”
If you have not yet booked a room for your stay, call 1-888-421-1442 to reach the Hyatt Regency. Perhaps there has been a cancellation. Please book a room for three nights and register now for PulpFest 2016! If you can’t find a room at the Hyatt Regency Columbus, you’ll find a list of area hotels courtesy of the Greater Columbus Convention Center at www.columbusconventions.com/thearea.php. Alternately, you can search for a room at tripadvisor or a similar website to find a hotel near the convention. Thanks so much to everyone who has reserved a room at our host hotel. By staying at the Hyatt Regency, you’ve helped to ensure the convention’s success.
As mentioned above, early registration for the general membership will take place on Thursday, beginning at 4 PM, right outside the dealers’ room in the Battelle South exhibition hall on the third floor of the Greater Columbus Convention Center. 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. Look for the SHOP banner to find our dealers’ room.
For those of you who have not yet registered for PulpFest 2016, Thursday evening will be an ideal time to do so. Four-day memberships will be available for $40. There will be no single-day memberships available for Thursday only. Children who are fifteen and younger and accompanied by a parent, 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. Single day memberships will be available for $20 for Friday or Saturday and $10 for Sunday.
Please note that advance registrations are no longer available. Our Paypal page was shut down around 10 PM on Monday night.
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. Since our dealers’ room will be located in the Greater Columbus Convention Center, unloading and loading for those selling at the convention will be at the center’s loading dock.
To reach the convention center’s loading dock, go north on High Street until you come to Warren Street. Turn right on Warren and follow it to Summit Street. Summit becomes 3rd Street. Stay on this street and pass the exit to I-670. As soon as you pass the exit, you will see a sign that reads, “Right lane ends.” At this sign there is a ramp that goes off to the right. Take this ramp and it curls around to the docks. The convention plans to have people there to help dealers unload. After unloading, follow the ramp away from the dock and it takes you to the Chestnut Street garage area.
Remember that we’ll also be offering early-bird shopping in the dealers’ room from 6 to 9 PM on Thursday evening, an extra three hours of selling opportunities to people who are ready to buy!
Although the focus of PulpFest is pulp magazines and related materials, digests, vintage paperbacks, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, first-edition hardcovers, series books, dime novels, original art, Big Little Books, B-movies, serials and related paper collectibles, old-time-radio shows, and Golden and Silver Age as well as pulp-related comic books and games are also allowed.
From 9 to 10 AM on Friday, July 22, the dealers’ room will be open only to dealers for set-up. It will open to all at 10 AM and remain open until 4:45 PM. Our afternoon programming will start at 1 PM with the first of our New Fictioneers readings. Our evening programming will begin shortly before 7 PM as PulpFest chairman Jack Cullers offers an official welcome to all attendees. Friday night’s programming will include our FarmerCon XI presentation which will feature a panel of writers who will discuss their collaborations with Grand Master of Science Fiction Philip José Farmer; PulpFest favorite David Saunders starts off our celebration of the 120th anniversary of the first pulp magazine with “The Artists Who Make ARGOSY — 120 Years of Sensational Pulp Art;” our salute to the 90th anniversary of the first science fiction magazine continues when Joseph Coluccio, president of the Pittsburgh Area Fantasy and Science Fiction Club, explores the history of AMAZING STORIES during the pulp era; closing out the evening will be pulp historian Laurie Powers with a look at “LOVE STORY MAGAZINE and the Romance Pulp Phenomenon” and author and pop culture scholar Will Murray examining “WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE and the Evolution of the Pulp Western,” both part of PulpFest‘s remembrance of “A Century of the Specialty Pulp.”
On Saturday, July 23, the PulpFest dealers’ room will be open from 10 AM to 4:45 PM. This should allow plenty of time for people to prepare for people to prepare for our Saturday Night Dinner at Dick’s Last Resort, located at 343 North Front Street, just a few minutes’ walk from the Hyatt Regency Columbus in the Arena District. If you don’t plan to attend PulpFest‘s group meal, there are plenty of other restaurants close to the hotel. You’ll find a guide to the many fine downtown restaurants by clicking here.
Our Saturday afternoon programming will start at 1 PM with our New Fictioneers readings. Afterward, Ron Fortier will moderate a New Pulp Fiction Panel on “Writing Hero Pulp.” It will be followed by a presentation on Anthony Tollin’s Sanctum Books featuring Mr. Tollin and Doc Savage author Will Murray.
For pulp fans who like games, gaming fans who like pulps, or just people who like to have fun, PulpFest 2016 will be organizing a gaming track. Many of the themes found in the world of modern games resonate from the pulps and the stories published in those magazines. The PulpFest 2016 gaming track will begin at 10 AM on Saturday and last until 10 PM or thereabouts. All games will be set up in the Clark Room, located on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency. The only requirements to play games at PulpFest 2016 are a PulpFest membership, your imagination, and a desire to have a good time. So if you enjoy pulps and you enjoy games, PulpFest will be the place to be.
Saturday evening’s events will include the PulpFest 2016 Business Meeting. Two lucky PulpFest members who prepay for their membership, book a room for three nights at our host hotel, and choose to attend our business meeting will receive free memberships to PulpFest 2017. The 2016 Munsey Award — presented for service to the pulp community — will also be awarded on Saturday evening.
Other programming on Saturday night will include Our Guest of Honor presentation, featuring science fiction author and pulp fan Ted White. The editor emeritus of AMAZING STORIES, Mr. White will speak about his career, AMAZING STORIES, science fiction fandom, the pulps, and much, much more from 7:30 to 8:15 in the Union Rooms on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency. Pulp collector and scholar Doug Ellis — the co-founder of the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention — will also be on hand with a presentation on 120 Years of THE ARGOSY — The World’s First Pulp Magazine. Our evening will conclude with the annual PulpFest Saturday Night Auction.
Any member of PulpFest 2016 can submit items to the auction. Your PulpFest badge number will be used as your auction bidder and/or seller number. We will begin taking consignments for the auction when our dealers’ room opens at 10 AM. Barry will be accepting material for our auction near the entrance to the PulpFest dealers’ room. The sooner you submit your consignment to our auction coordinator, Barry Traylor, the more likely that it will be included in our auction. All auction lots must be submitted to Barry prior to 2 PM on Saturday, July 23.
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 additional information, please click on the auction link on our programming schedule.
For additional details on all of our afternoon and evening programming events, please click the 2016 Schedule button located just below the banner on our home 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.
On Sunday, July 24, the dealers’ room will be open to all members from 10 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. Admission to the convention for Sunday only will be $10, the cost of our annual program book, THE PULPSTER.
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, please book a room without delay. You can try calling 1-888-421-1442 to reach the Hyatt Regency. Perhaps there has been a cancellation. Alternately, you can search for a room at tripadvisor or a similar website to find a hotel near the convention. You can also try looking for a room at the Experience Columbus lodging page at http://www.experiencecolumbus.com/stay. You’ll also find a list of area hotels at www.columbusconventions.com/thearea.php, courtesy of the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
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 map & 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 for parking. Rates vary based on time, but at this writing, $14 will get you a day’s parking. Additional parking is available at the Convention Center underground garage. Again, rates are time-based and, at this writing, $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.
For those attendees who would like to ship their purchases to their homes, the Hyatt Regency offers a paid shipping service for its guests. Please inquire at the hotel’s front desk to learn more about this service.
The entire PulpFest 2016 organizing committee – Mike Chomko, Jack and Sally Cullers, Bill Lampkin, Barry Traylor, and Chuck Welch – is looking forward to seeing all of you. Have a safe trip to Columbus for “Summer’s AMAZING Pulp Con.”
(Most of our promotional materials for PulpFest 2016 featured Frank R. Paul’s cover art from the August 1927 issue of AMAZING STORIES, illustrating H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”
Pulp magazines are not the only collectible that you’ll find at PulpFest. Although there will be thousands of pulp magazines for sale at the convention, other things will be available as well. Perhaps you’ll even find some of the artwork used to publicize George Pal’s THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, released in 1953. Unfortunately, the creator of the publicity art is not known.
In 1938, Ziff-Davis took over AMAZING STORIES and Ray Palmer became the magazine’s editor. Toward the end of his editorial reign, Palmer started “The Shaver Mystery,” a hoax involving an evil race that causes all of mankind’s problems from their home in underground caverns. The June 1947 issue featuring cover art by Robert Gibson Jones was a special “Shaver Mystery” issue.
By popular demand, one of the PulpFest gaming tables will be running ELDRITCH HORROR, a board game featuring a band of investigators battling entities from the Cthulhu Mythos. From game designers Corey Konieczka and Nikki Valens, it is published by Fantasy Flight Games and features cover art by Anders Finer.
One of the events that PulpFest will be saluting in 2016 will be the 120th anniversary of the first pulp magazine, THE ARGOSY. Originally founded by Frank A. Munsey in 1882 as a children’s weekly, it was converted to an all-fiction pulp magazine with its December 1896 number. During its long history, it was merged with other pulps, sold to Popular Publications, converted to a bedsheet magazine, and later, to a men’s adventure magazine. ARGOSY for January 1943 — with cover art by Peter Stevens — was one of the magazine’s last issues in the large pulp format. With its September 1943 issue, Popular Publications converted ARGOSY to a slick magazine.
It might not be quite as hospitable as beautiful downtown Columbus, Ohio, but according to pioneering science fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul, the city of Gatos on Ganymede — Jupiter’s largest moon — seemed to be a pretty hopping place! “Gatos, crater city of Ganymede is built at the magnetic pole, and uses the magnetism of the planet for power, heat, light. Its people — tiger-like — are masters of its animal world, and ride giant lizards.” Frank Paul imagined life on Ganymede for the back cover to AMAZING STORIES for February 1942. This year, PulpFest will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the debut of AMAZING, the first continuing science fiction magazine.)
