For more than fifty years, PulpFest has celebrated mystery, adventure, science fiction, and much more. In the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century — which gave PulpFest its name — the hardboiled detective, science fiction, and sword and sorcery genres developed and flourished. They gave us Buck Rogers, Conan the Barbarian, Cthulhu, Doc Savage, Hopalong Cassidy, John Carter of Mars, Sam Spade, The Shadow, Solomon Kane, Tarzan, Zorro, and many other pop culture icons.
But PulpFest isn’t just about pulps. It’s also home to three other conventions, including FarmerCon, a convention celebrating the life and times of Philip José Farmer, the longtime pulp fan and Grand Master of Science Fiction, born over 100 years ago on January 26, 1918.
PulpFest has been hosting the annual FarmerCon since 2011. By holding the convention alongside PulpFest, Farmer fans get a variety of programming and a room full of pulp and book dealers to enjoy.
Of course, the premier publisher of Farmer and related works, Meteor House, will have a prominent spot in our dealers’ room. As usual, they’ll have some new Farmer books out just in time for FarmercCon XXI.
One of the highlights of FarmerCon XXI will be the convention’s panel saluting the Grand Master’s pulp and digest stories.
As a kid growing up in North Terre Haute, Indiana, Farmer spent much of his childhood reading everything he could find in the local library and drug store. From the classics by Baum, Carroll, Cervantes, Chesterton, Cooper, Defoe, Dickens, Dumas, Homer, London, Shaw, Stevenson, Swift, Thackeray, Twain, Verne, Wells, and others, to popular fiction by Burroughs, Doyle, and Haggard, and on through such pulps as Air Wonder Stories, Argosy, Blue Book, Doc Savage, Science Wonder Stories, The Shadow, Weird Tales, and more, Farmer read it all.
His wide reading prepared Philip José Farmer for his career as a writer. The budding writer sold his first story to Adventure. “O’Brien and Obrenov” appeared in the March 1946 issue of the Popular Publications pulp magazine.
Six years later, Farmer’s first science fiction story, “The Lovers,” was published in the August 1952 issue of Startling Stories. Famous for breaking the taboo on sex in science fiction, the story launched his science fiction career and won Farmer the 1952 Hugo Award as the “Most Promising New Talent.”
Please join FarmerCon XXI at 2:30 pm on Friday, July 31, as we welcome Michael Croteau and Win Scott Eckert to the PulpFest 2026 programming stage for “The Early Philip José Farmer: Pulps and Digests,” a look at the award-winning author’s evolution as a writer.
Michael Croteau first met Philip José Farmer at RiverCon in Kentucky in 1995 and started a website about him the following year. After working with Farmer on it for several years, it became The Official Philip José Farmer Web Page in 2001. Michael eventually gained access to Farmer’s “Magic Filing Cabinet,” and published much of what he found there in the fanzine, Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer. In 2006, he helped organize the first FarmerCon, and in 2010, was one of the founders of Meteor House, a publisher dedicated to reprinting many of Farmer’s novels in their first hardcover editions as well as creating new collections of his works.
Win Scott Eckert is the authorized legacy author of Philip José Farmer’s Patricia Wildman series (The Evil in Pemberley House, The Scarlet Jaguar), as well as the coauthor with Farmer of the Doc Caliban/Secrets of the Nine novel, The Monster on Hold. A lifelong Edgar Rice Burroughs reader, Eckert wrote the authorized Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe novels, Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar and Korak at the Earth’s Core. Pellucidar: Land of Awful Shadow and Tarzan Unleashed are forthcoming. His other professional credits include authorized tales of Avenger, the Green Hornet, Honey West, the Lone Ranger, the Phantom, and Zorro, as well as short stories featuring the Domino Lady, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Sherlock Holmes. His latest short story, “She-Devil of Paris,” saw print in Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2025. He lives in Woodland Park, Colorado, with his wife and a bevy of four-legged family members.
PulpFest 2026 and FarmerCon XXI begin on July 30 and run through August 2 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. In addition to saluting the work of Philip José Farmer and honoring the centennials of Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories, we’ll also be celebrating the sesquicentennial of writer Jack London’s birth, and more at this year’s convention.
The general public is welcome to attend our programming free of charge. To learn more about our presentations, please click the 2026 Schedule link found on our website.
For those who also want to enjoy our dealers’ room, you can join PulpFest by clicking the register link found on our website. And don’t forget to book a room if you are not from the area. Although the DoubleTree has sold out, the Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, and Home2 Suites are just a few miles away from our host hotel. Click here to learn more.
Remember, in addition to your membership in PulpFest 2026, you’ll also be a member of Doc Con 2026, FarmerCon XXI, and The Shadow Con 2026. That’s four conventions for one price! You can’t beat that deal.
If you’re interested in selling at PulpFest, all of our tables have been reserved. Please write to convention chairman Jack Cullers at jack@pulpfest.com to be added to our waitlist.
Our featured image is excerpted from Ed Emshwiller’s cover for the June 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, illustrating Philip José Farmer’s “The Alley Man,” a story about the last surviving Neanderthal.
Our lead image was adapted by William Lampkin from Alex Schomburg’s original cover art for the March 1953 issue of Science-Fiction Plus, published by Hugo Gernsback. The issue featured Philip José Farmer’s novella, “The Biological Revolt.”
Our second image is the March 1946 number of Adventure, with cover art by magazine, paperback, and sports artist Griffith Foxley. Featured in this issue of the Popular Publications pulp magazine is Philip José Farmer’s first professional sale, “O’Brien and Obrenov,” concerning the occupation of a German town at the end of World War II.
Our final image is from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for July 1955, with cover art by Nicholas Solovioff, illustrating Philip José Farmer’s “Father.” It is the second of five stories in the author’s Father John Carmody stories. Solovioff was a prolific illustrator, contributing covers to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and other titles. He was the artist in residence for the Port of New York Authority.
