PulpFest 2017 will begin on Thursday, July 27, 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 shortly after 9 PM with a reading by author Chet Williamson. Closing out the evening programming will be an audio drama, staged by the Narada Radio Company and their PULP-POURRI THEATRE.
PulpFest 2017 will be celebrating the “hardboiled dicks, dangerous dames, and a few psychos” of the pulps.
If you are not from the Pittsburgh area and have yet to book your room for this year’s PulpFest, you can try calling 1-800-222-8733 to reach our host hotel, the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry. Perhaps there is an opening. Please be sure to mention PulpFest in order to receive any special convention deals that may still be available. Thanks so much to everyone who has reserved a room at our host hotel. By staying at the DoubleTree, you’ve helped to ensure the convention’s success.
Early registration for the general membership will take place on Thursday, beginning at 4 PM, at the entrance to our dealers’ room in the Grand Ballroom of the DoubleTree. 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 or the link found on our registration page. Look for the SHOP banner to find our dealers’ room. You’ll also see our large welcome banner, sponsored by AbeBooks.com. With its strong focus on rare and collectible books as well as ephemera such as maps, posters, prints and photographs, AbeBooks is a company with a passion for books, art and collectibles.
For those of you who have not yet registered for PulpFest 2017, Thursday evening will be an ideal time to do so. Full weekend memberships will cost $35 for those staying at the DoubleTree and $40 for those staying elsewhere. 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. Access to the dealers’ room for unloading will be through the ballroom back entrance and the nearby banquet dock. Click here for a map showing the loading area of the hotel and here for a map of the DoubleTree’s Grand Ballroom.
If you need additional help getting to the hotel and/or the loading area, please call or text Jack Cullers at 937.671.1574. If Jack is not available, please text Chuck Welch at 608.406.4774. You can also call Chuck, but text will probably be faster.
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 28, 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 XII presentations, plus several discussions of Robert Bloch, psychos, and hardboiled dicks. Once again, the Narada Radio Company and their PULP-POURRI THEATRE will close out our programming. They’ll be performing “Return to the Sabbath,” a WEIRD Audio Play based on a story by Robert Bloch.
On Saturday, July 29, the PulpFest dealers’ room will be open from 10 AM to 4:45 PM. Afterward, all convention attendees are welcome to join an informal Saturday Night Dinner. Details will be announced at the convention. 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 restaurants in the vicinity of the DoubleTree by clicking here.
Our Saturday afternoon programming will start at 12:30 PM with our New Fictioneers readings and a panel on “New Pulp Fiction.” It will be followed by an encore presentation by the Narada Radio Company
Saturday evening’s events will include the PulpFest 2017 business meeting, starting at 7 PM. All members of the convention are urged to attend. The 2017 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 one of the few living pulp magazine artists, Gloria Stoll Karn. A Pittsburgh resident, Gloria will be joined by fine artist and pulp art historian David Saunders — winner of our 2016 Lamont Award — to discuss her freelance career in the pulps and much more. We’ll also have another presentation on the hardboiled dicks of the pulps.
Our evening will conclude with the annual PulpFest Saturday Night Auction. The convention will be offering about 150 lots of material from the collections of Woody Hagadish and Larry Latham. Included will be several premiums offered to readers of Street & Smith’s DOC SAVAGE and THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, as well as the May 1934 issue of DOC SAVAGE, autographed by cover artist Walter Baumhofer.
Any member of PulpFest 2017 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 on Friday and Saturday. The sooner you submit your consignment to our auction coordinator, Barry Traylor, the more likely that it will be included in our auction. We will be accepting material for our auction near the entrance to the PulpFest dealers’ room. Watch for the auction banner. All auction lots must be submitted to Barry prior to 2 PM on Saturday, July 29.
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 details on all of our afternoon and evening programming events, please click the Programming for 2017 button found at the top of our home page. Each event on the schedule is linked to a post that provides further information on that event. Just click on the event’s title. Watch for the “panels” banner to find our programming area.
On Sunday, July 30, 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. 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. We’ve already registered a record number of dealers. We’ve also 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 1-800-222-8733 to reach our host hotel. Perhaps there is an opening. Be sure to mention PulpFest in order to receive any special convention deals that may still be available.
The DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry is located at 910 Sheraton Drive in Mars, Pennsylvania, just outside the city of Pittsburgh. It is easy to find at the intersection of three major roadways: Interstate 79, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and State Route 19. Please click here for a map of the hotel’s location or click the map along the right side of our home page. There is ample free parking surrounding the hotel.
For those attendees who would like to ship their purchases to their homes, there is a FedEx Office Print & Ship Center about a half-mile away from the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry. Located at 19095 Perry Highway in Mars, Pennsylvania, it is open from 8 AM to 6 PM on Saturdays and from 11 AM to 6 PM on Sundays.
If you have other questions, please refer to our FAQ page. Hopefully, we’ll have it covered for you there.
The entire PulpFest 2017 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 Pittsburgh for “Summer’s AMAZING Pulp Con.”
(Designed by PulpFest’s artistic director, William Lampkin, our PulpFest 2017 welcome banner — sponsored by AbeBooks.com — features the work of artist John Newton Howitt. His painting was originally used as the cover for the April 15, 1934 number of Popular Publications’ DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE.
Robert Bloch’s “Return to the Sabbath” originally ran in the July 1938 issue of WEIRD TALES, featuring front cover art by the great pulp and fantasy artist, Virgil Finlay. The artist got his start during the Great Depression when he sent unsolicited illustrations to his favorite pulp magazine, WEIRD TALES. In addition to “The Unique Magazine,” he also contributed interior illustrations and covers to many other pulps and digests. Even today, Finlay remains one of the most highly regarded and collected artists in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.
DETECTIVE TALES was the number three title in Popular Publications’ detective pulp group. It was preceded by DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE and BLACK MASK, the pulp where the hardboiled detective genre originally took form. Between 1943 and 1945, Gloria Stoll Karn contributed six covers to DETECTIVE TALES, including the July 1945 number.
The cover art for the 2017 PULPSTER was painted by Norman Saunders for the July 1949 number of BLACK MASK. The painting appears courtesy of his son, pulp art historian David Saunders. A limited edition poster of the painting is available in the “gift shop” at the Norman Saunders website, normansaunders.com.)
