On the day the United States honors its workers, the PulpFest promotional staff is taking the day off.
Planning is well underway for PulpFest 2024. We’ll be returning to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. The convention will run from August 1 – 4 and celebrate “Spice, Spies, and Shaw” and a whole lot more. We’ll be saluting the 90th anniversaries of the Spicy pulps, Operator #5, and Secret Agent X, as well as the 150th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Black Mask editor, Joseph T. Shaw. All this, plus ERBFest and FarmerCon XIX at PulpFest 2024.
As always, expect a terrific dealers’ room and superb programming. We’ve already lined up several great presentations, plus appearances by contemporary creators inspired by the pulp fiction and art of the early twentieth century. PulpFest 2024 will be the 52nd convening of the summertime pulp con.
To keep informed about PulpFest 2024, please bookmark our homepage or like us on Facebook. You can also follow us on Twitter or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for the PulpFest e-letter — focusing on the “behind-the-scenes” planning for next summer’s convention — by clicking here. Just give us your name and email address and click the “submit” button. While you’re at it, you may as well subscribe to our YouTube channel and enjoy the great videos that Craig McDonald has been creating for the last year.
Having read this post, please take the rest of the day off. Read a pulp! You deserve it!
It was within the cauldron of the Great Depression and the growth of fascism that Popular Publications’ Secret Service Operator # 5 was born. According to publisher Henry Steeger, “I was very anxious at that time to say something about the depression and the political elements of the world and, by this time, the trend of story-telling had begun to assume a broader canvas. In other words, instead of talking about individuals, we began talking about nations and armies, etc.” The basic concept of the series was that “Operator 5 must save the United States from total destruction in every story, every month.”
Our featured image is excerpted from John Newton Howitt’s cover art for Operator #5 for September 1934, published by Popular Publications and illustrating the story, “Master of Broken Men.” Our lead image is also by Howitt, illustrating the story “Legions of Starvation,” featured in the December 1934 issue of Operator #5.
Emile C. Tepperman, IV has been writing occasionally for our website since 2017. He is purportedly the great-grandson of pulp author Emile Clemens Tepperman, who is best remembered for the thirteen-part Purple Invasion series that he penned for Popular Publications’ Secret Service Operator #5.
