There’s still time to get in on the action. The PulpFest dealers’ room will be open today from 10 AM until 4:45 PM. Located in the Grand Ballroom of the DoubleTree, our dealers’ room will feature exhibitors selling and trading 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. That’s why PulpFest is known as the “pop culture center of the universe!”
Single-day memberships to PulpFest will be available for $20 for Saturday and $10 for Sunday. Children who are fifteen and younger and accompanied by a parent, will be admitted free of charge. The general public is welcome to attend. There is ample free parking surrounding our host hotel, the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry.
Members will be able to register for the convention at any time during regular dealers’ room hours. To help things move smoothly, please bring along a completed registration form. If you have not yet registered, you can download a copy by clicking here. Paper forms will also be available at the door. Please visit our registration page for further details.
Our Saturday afternoon programming will start at 12:30 PM with our New Fictioneers readings. Afterward, author and editor Ron Fortier will be joined by five authors to discuss their writing and today’s “New Pulp Fiction.” It will be followed by an encore presentation of an audio drama, staged by the Narada Radio Company and their PULP-POURRI THEATRE. “The Adventures of Mr. Fye” introduces a new hero inspired by classic pulp fiction and the single character hero pulps. The play will begin at 3:30 PM.
The PulpFest dealers’ room will be closing today at 4:45 PM. This should allow plenty of time for people to prepare for our Saturday Night Dinner. Currently, we’re planning to dine informally at ember & vine, located right in the DoubleTree. However, 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.
Saturday evening’s events will include the PulpFest 2017 business meeting, starting at 7 PM. It will be followed by the 2017 Munsey Award presentation. Laurie Powers, the winner of our 2016 Munsey, will reveal the name of this year’s recipient. Laurie was selected through a vote cast by all the living Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Award winners. The Munsey is a fine art print created by Dan Zimmer of a David Saunders painting. It is presented annually to a person who has worked for the betterment of the pulp community.
Our programming for Saturday evening 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. In a field dominated by men, it was highly unusual for a woman to be painting covers for pulp magazines. But at age seventeen, Gloria Stoll began contributing black and white interior illustrations to pulp magazines. In a few years, the young artist was painting covers. How’s that for a dangerous dame?
Another dangerous dame of the pulps — Pat Savage — gets her night to shine when members of the Narada Radio Company read from Will Murray’s SIX SCARLET SCORPIONS, the first book in the author’s THE ALL-NEW WILD ADVENTURES OF PAT SAVAGE series.
The convention’s celebration of the hardboiled dicks of the pulps continues with a look at The Don Everhard Stories of Gordon Young, featuring Professor Tom Krabacher of California State University. A member of the Pulp Era Amateur Press Association, Tom has often presented at PulpFest. He’ll be joined by Walker Martin, one of the foremost collectors of pulp magazines in the country. Walker is one of the few people who have owned and read complete runs of both BLACK MASK and DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE.
Our evening will conclude with the annual PulpFest Saturday Night Auction. The convention will be offering about 100 lots of material from the collection of Woody Hagadish. We’ll have a variety of both pulps and digests from such diverse genres as air war, science fiction, western, and the detective fields. Also included will be several premiums offered to readers of Street & Smith’s DOC SAVAGE and THE SHADOW MAGAZINE. Finally, there will be a number of Gnome Press, Shasta, and Avalon first edition hardcovers offered. The estate is hoping to find good homes for all of these collectibles, getting them to the people who would best appreciate them, as Woody Hagadish had done during his lifetime.
This year’s auction will also feature a number of pulp magazines from the collection of the late Larry Latham. Larry enjoyed a varied career in animation, film, TV, theater and teaching. PulpFest will be offering a variety of pulps from Larry Latham’s collection, such as copies of THE ARGOSY and THE ALL-STORY, the first three issues of FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, a selection of THE WIDE WORLD, and a number of hero pulps, including the May 1934 issue of DOC SAVAGE, autographed to Latham by cover artist Walter Baumhofer.
One of our members has also mentioned that he may be offering a complete set of the second volume of AMRA — no. 1 to no. 71 — published by George Scithers from 1959 to 1982. AMRA featured high-quality artwork by Roy G. Krenkel, Gray Morrow, and other articles. The magazine’s writers included L. Sprague de Camp, Poul Anderson, Leigh Brackett, Fritz Leiber, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and many others.
Click on the “PulpFest Auction” link along the right side of our home page for highlights featured in this year’s auction.
Rounding out the auction will be material consigned by our membership. 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. To learn more about selling material through our Saturday night auction, please click here.
You can find additional details about these and all of our events by clicking 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.
PulpFest members are also welcome to socialize together in our hospitality suite at the DoubleTree. You’ll be able to enjoy drinks and snacks with your comrades in pulpdom and talk about the things that you love and collect. If you’re new to the hobby, please join us in our con suite and learn more about pulps and pulp fiction and art.
Saturday’s sponsor of the PulpFest hospitality suite is Meteor House, a publisher of science fiction and fantasy. Their main specialty is authorized limited edition novels and novellas, set in the worlds of Grand Master of Science Fiction Philip José Farmer. PulpFest is extremely pleased to have Meteor House as our Saturday evening hospitality suite sponsor.
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. Perhaps there is an opening. Please be sure to mention PulpFest in order to receive any special convention deals that may still be available.
PulpFest 2017 will continue tomorrow. Our dealers’ room will be open to all members from 9 AM to 2 PM as our exhibitors 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, July 30, will be $10, the cost of our annual program book, THE PULPSTER.
Please join us at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry — just north of Pennsylvania’s “Steel City” — for “Summer’s AMAZING Pulp Con!” You’ll have a FANTASTIC time!
(Like Robert Bloch, John D. MacDonald — who was born 0n July 24, 1916 — got his start in the pulp magazines. From about 1946 through 1951, he placed dozens of stories each year with various pulp magazines. His output included adventure, detective, fantasy, science fiction, sports fiction, and western stories. When his story “Dead to the World” garnered the cover spot for the February 1947 issue of Popular’s DIME DETECTIVE — featuring cover art by Robert Stanley — MacDonald had become a reliable producer for the pulp market. Not long after, MacDonald began selling increasingly to the original paperback market. His first Travis McGee novel — THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY –was published by Fawcett in 1964.
Granted, the PulpFest auctions are a bit more tame than this depiction by Milton Luros for the DIME DETECTIVE from February 1939. Nevertheless our auctions are quite exciting. Plan to attend PulpFest 2017 and find out for yourself why it’s called “Summer’s AMAZING Pulp Con!”
Pulp Fiction’s “hardboiled dicks” will come to the fore during PulpFest’s final night of programming, scheduled to begin at 7 PM this evening. We hope to see you in at the DoubleTree Grand Ballroom for “Summer’s AMAZING Pulp Con! You’ll find today’s schedule immediately below.)
Saturday, July 29
Dealers’ Room
10:00 AM – 4:45 PM — Dealers’ Room Open to All
3:00 – 4:30 PM — Auction Viewing at the DoubleTree
Programming
12:30 – 2:00 PM — New Fictioneers Readings — (author readings by Win Scott Eckert and Frank Schildiner)
2:15 – 3:15 PM — Six Writers of New Pulp (moderator Ron Fortier and authors Fred Adams, Jr., John Bruening, Wayne Carey, Michael Maynard, and Charles Millhouse)
3:30 – 4:00 PM — Pulp-Pourri Theatre Presents “The Return of Mr. Fye”
5:00 – 6:50 PM — PulpFest 2017 Group Meal at Ember & Vine in the DoubleTree (Volunteer Coordinator Sally Cullers)
7:00 – 7:20 PM — PulpFest 2017 Business Meeting (meet the convention organizers)
7:20 – 7:30 PM — 2017 Munsey Award Presentation (presented by Laurie Powers)
7:30 – 8:10 PM — Guest of Honor Gloria Stoll Karn with David Saunders
8:10 – 8:20 PM — The Wild Adventures of Pat Savage by Will Murray — A Reading by Pulp-Pourri Theatre
8:20 – 8:50 PM — Hard-Boiled at 100: The Don Everhard Stories of Gordon Young (Tom Krabacher & Walker Martin)
8:50 – 9:10 PM — Intermission (Auction Viewing)
9:15 – 12:15 AM — Saturday Night at the Auction (John Gunnison and Joseph Saines, Auctioneers)
