PulpFest 50 and FarmerCon XVII will begin on Thursday, August 4, at 11 AM, as our dealers begin to set up their displays for summertime’s pulp con! The dealers’ room will be open for exhibitors to set up until 4:45 PM. It will also be open for set-up on Friday, August 5, from 9 – 10 AM. We recommend all of our dealers take advantage of our generous load-in and set-up time on Thursday afternoon.
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 Grand Ballroom at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry.
If you need additional help getting to the hotel and/or the loading area, please call or text Jack Cullers at 937.671.1574.
PulpFest welcomes dealer banners and other signage. However, such items cannot be attached to the hotel’s walls in any way, shape, or form.
Although the focus of PulpFest is pulp magazines and related materials, digests, vintage paperbacks, contemporary genre fiction and pulp reprints, 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.
Advance registrations to PulpFest 50 are no longer available. Our Paypal page was shut down at 10 PM on Sunday, July 31.
For those who have preregistered, you will be able to pick up your membership material at our registration desk outside the entrance to our dealers’ room at the DoubleTree. To find our registration desk, please look for our “Welcome Banner,” as pictured above.
For those of you who have not yet registered for PulpFest 50, you will be able to do so at the door. All members — including dealers — will be able to register for the convention from 12 to 4:45 PM on Thursday, August 4. Registration will take place at the entrance to our dealers’ room at the DoubleTree.
For the remainder of the convention, you will be able to register at the entrance as you are approaching the dealers’ room. Just stop at the registration desk during our dealers’ room hours. You’ll find our hours by clicking the programming button on our home page. Or click here to link to our 2022 mobile schedule.
You will be able to pay for your registration at the door using cash, check, or credit card.
To help our registration proceed smoothly, please bring along a completed registration form. You can download a copy by clicking here or through the link found on our registration page.
A full weekend membership to PulpFest 50 will cost $40 at the door. Daily memberships for Friday or Saturday will also be available for $20 per day. A Sunday single-day membership will cost $10 to pay for our program book. There will be no single-day memberships available for Thursday. Children who are fifteen and younger and accompanied by a parent will be admitted free of charge. However, they still must be registered for the convention.
As FarmerCon XVII is part of PulpFest, there is no extra cost to attend FarmerCon.
There will also be early-bird shopping in the dealers’ room from 12 to 4:45 PM on Thursday, August 4. It’s free for loyal attendees who help to defray the convention’s costs by staying at the DoubleTree. The cost is $70 for those who stay elsewhere. This includes a full weekend membership to PulpFest 50 and FarmerCon XVII.
Following our early-bird shopping, pizza will be served in the Ember & Vine lounge of the DoubleTree. Thanks to the generosity of our dealers, PulpFest will celebrate the convention’s return with pizza at 5 PM on Thursday, August 4. All PulpFest and FarmerCon attendees are invited to have a slice or two.
Our dealers’ room hours on Friday, August 5, and Saturday, August 6, will be from 10 AM to 4:45 PM.
PulpFest 50 will begin with a celebration of the convention’s Golden Anniversary. We hope you’ll join us for Fifty Years of PulpFest on Thursday evening, August 4. The convention will also be saluting the centennial of the pulp magazine and comic book publisher Fiction House, as well as the ninetieth anniversary of Popular Publications’ “Dime” line of pulp magazines, particularly Dime Western and Dime Mystery. We’ll also be hosting two FarmerCon XVII panels as well as presentations on western artist Nick Eggenhofer, authors Ernest Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett, and a great deal more. Click our programming button on our home page to learn more.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Pulpcon/PulpFest, ERB Books will be offering a 25% discount on the standard first edition of Robert B. Zeuchner’s Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Bibliography. To receive the discount, simply place your order online from August 1 – 7 and use the promo code PF25.
There will be programming during the evening hours on Thursday, August 4, and Friday, August 5, beginning at 7 PM. We’ll also offer daytime programming on Friday, August 5, and Saturday, August 6, beginning at 1:30 PM and running until 4:20 PM. The general public is welcome to attend our programming events.
You can find additional details about all of our programming by clicking the button found at the top of our home page. Or click here to link to our 2022 mobile schedule. Each event on the schedule is linked to a post that provides further information on that event. Just click on the event’s title. Copies of the schedule will also be printed on the back of all PulpFest 50 membership badges. We’ll also have signage at our registration desk and near the entrance to our dealer’s room.
If you learned about PulpFest 50 from one of our postcards or via a print advertisement, please be aware that our scheduled guest of honor, Robert J. Randisi, will not be appearing at the convention.
Saturday evening’s events will also include the PulpFest 2022 business meeting, starting at 7 PM. All PulpFest members are urged to attend. The meeting will be followed by the 2022 Munsey Award presentation.
PulpFest 50 is currently planning to hold one live auction on Saturday evening, August 6. It will begin at 8:15 PM. The auction will consist of more than 200 auction lots of pulps, digests, vintage paperbacks, men’s adventure magazines, and more from the collection of the late Carl Joecks. It will be followed by an auction of lots submitted by the members of PulpFest 50. Catalogs will be available at our registration desk.
Any member of PulpFest 50 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 both Friday and Saturday. Our auction coordinator, Mike Chomko, will be accepting material for the auction at his dealer’s tables. Watch for the auction banner. All auction lots must be submitted by 1:30 PM on Saturday, August 6.
All lots submitted must have a minimum value of $10. All lots that do not receive a bid of $10 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. Our auction rules are included with your registration packet.
If you plan to offer an auction lot with a reserve price, there will be a $5 fee if your item does not meet the reserve. You will be assessed the five dollars to have your unsold item returned to you.
We will have auction preview hours on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:30 PM. The preview will be held in our auction set-up rooms, just to the side of the hotel’s Ember and Vine restaurant and lounge area. We will have a banner outside of the auction rooms. Silent bids will be accepted during these times.
On Sunday, August 6, 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 on Sunday. Admission to the convention for Sunday only will be $10, the cost of our annual program book, The Pulpster.
For those attendees who would like to ship purchases made at PulpFest 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 9 AM to 6 PM on Saturdays and from 12 PM to 6 PM on Sundays.
If you would like to lend a hand with the convention, please contact our chairman, Jack Cullers. You can reach him via email by writing to jack@pulpfest.com or by mail at 1272 Cheatham Way, Bellbrook, OH 45305. You can submit your programming ideas to our programming director, Mike Chomko, at mike@pulpfest.com or via regular mail at 2217 W. Fairview Street, Allentown, PA 18104.
We are hoping that this year’s con will be one of our best. We have nearly seventy registered dealers and have been receiving member registrations every day, many from people who have never previously attended PulpFest. 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 a vacancy. By staying at the DoubleTree, you help to ensure the convention’s continued success.
If anyone is looking for a room, we may be able to put you in touch with someone in need of a roommate. Click our “contact” button at the top of the site and send us a message.
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.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has lifted all COVID mitigation orders. Businesses and individuals are encouraged to follow the latest CDC safety guidance.
Currently, the DoubleTree does not have any COVID policies for guests. As this can change depending on conditions, it is recommended that you visit the Allegheny County Health Department at https://www.alleghenycounty.us/health-department/resources/covid-19/covid-19.aspx for their latest guidelines.
To keep up to date with Pennsylvania’s coronavirus numbers, click here.
Although we can’t force anyone, we hope that everyone who plans to attend PulpFest 50 will be vaccinated against COVID-19. We have many older members who attend PulpFest. Please keep them in mind. Remember, we’re all in this together.
If you are exhibiting any symptoms associated with COVID-19, please stay at home. You should not attend PulpFest. Isolate and avoid contact with others, rest, and drink fluids. Call your health care provider if your symptoms worsen.
Please also be aware that our attendees come to PulpFest to celebrate and learn about popular culture, socialize, and enjoy themselves. Therefore, all attendees of PulpFest are asked to keep opinions of a political, religious, or societal nature to themselves.
If any convention attendee seeks to importune a PulpFest member — including the convention’s dealers — with his or her opinions, he or she will be asked to leave PulpFest.
Although you have a right to your opinions, our members — including dealers — are not at the convention to be lectured about politics, religion, and so on.
If you have other questions, please refer to our FAQ page. Hopefully, we’ll have it covered for you there. If not, there is contact information on the page listing who to ask.
The entire PulpFest 50 organizing committee – Mike Chomko, Jack and Sally Cullers, Bill Lampkin, Sara Light-Waller, William Patrick Maynard, and Barry Traylor – is looking forward to seeing all of you. Have a safe trip to Mars for summertime’s pulp con.
The PulpFest 50 welcome banner was adapted by William Lampkin from Allen Anderson’s original cover art for Action Stories for Spring 1948. Published by Fiction House, we’ll be saluting the company’s centennial throughout the weekend.
Some people will go to tremendous lengths to convince their friends to come to PulpFest. Please don’t be like the hooded gentlemen in Walter M. Baumhofer’s cover painting for the October 1933 issue of Dime Mystery Magazine. People don’t have to be tormented or threatened with death to attend PulpFest.
We hope you’ll join us on Friday, August 5, at 7 PM for “George Gross — From Pulps to Paperbacks,” a presentation by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle concerning the artist who painted the cover art for the February 1942 issue of Jungle Stories.
PulpFest is known for its enjoyable auctions. After all, we have two entertaining auctioneers in John Gunnison and Joe Saine. Both may very well be as talented as Norman Rockwell’s barker, originally created for the April 29, 1922 number of The Country Gentleman.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has lifted all COVID mitigation orders. Businesses and individuals are encouraged to follow the latest CDC safety guidance. Therefore, people may choose to mask at any time. People with symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should wear a mask.
If you do wear a mask, please be aware that there are far better options than a red bandana such as the one worn by Gerard C. Delano’s outlaw on the cover for the November 1930 number of Action Stories.
