Happy Thanksgiving from the PulpFest organizing committee. Wherever you are in the week ahead, we sincerely hope that you’ll be able to enjoy the company of friends and family and join in a good meal. Sadly, such wasn’t the case in Wayne Rogers’ “The City That Dared Not Eat.”
Born Archibald Bittner in 1897, Wayne Rogers joined the pulp industry during the 1920s as an editor for a number of magazines including Adventure, Argosy, and Short Stories. He began writing for the pulps in 1932, primarily for Standard Magazines’ Thrilling Adventures and Thrilling Detective.
Starting in late 1933, Rogers became a leading writer for Popular Publications’ “weird menace” magazines, as well as Standards’ Thrilling Mystery. Later in the decade, he began writing the adventures of Popular’s pulp heroes, The Spider and Operator #5. He penned 11 lead novels for The Spider and ten for Operator #5.
Wayne Rogers continued writing weird menace fiction into the early 1940s. His last pulp fiction was a pair of short stories that appeared in Standard’s G-Men Detective in 1948 – 49. It is believed that he later managed a chain of movie theaters.
PulpFest 2023 will begin on Thursday, August 3, and run through Sunday, August 6. Please join us at the beautiful DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry for our celebration of the 90th anniversary of The Spider and the other great pulp heroes of 1932 – 33.
Featured in our post is a nightmarish cover by the incomparable John Newton Howitt. It was painted for the October 1937 issue of The Spider, a Popular Publications hero pulp.
Leslie Silberberg is a writer and popular culture enthusiast who began posting on our website in 2022. She enjoys the science fiction pulps, particularly the work of such leading female writers as Leigh Brackett, Claire Winger Harris, Zenna Henderson, Judith Merril, C. L. Moore, Margaret St. Clair, Wilmar H. Shiras, Francis Stevens, and Leslie F. Stone. Many thanks to Ms. Silberberg for her contributions to pulpfest.com.
