PulpFest 2026 will celebrate the centennials of Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories, plus a great deal more at this year’s convention. Hugo Gernsback’s groundbreaking science-fiction pulp and Bernarr Macfadden’s purportedly “true” magazine concerning the spirit world both debuted one hundred years ago.
Although a newsstand hit, Amazing Stories struggled through its early years. Paying both his brother Sydney and himself exorbitant salaries and throwing money at his radio station and television broadcasts, Hugo Gernsback and his Experimenter Publishing Company were having a hard time paying their bills.
In a letter to Forrest J Ackerman, Amazing Stories regular A. Hyatt Verrill wrote: “I never collected a single payment on time, and when it got so that they ran several months behind, and I had a tip they were on the verge of bankruptcy and changing hands, I quit.”
Despite Gernsback’s poor reputation among writers and his inability to pay his printing and paper bills, Amazing Stories was able to publish some classics before it was forced into bankruptcy. These included H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour out of Space” (1927), David H. Keller’s “The Revolt of the Pedestrians” (1928), and Edward Elmer Smith’s & Lee Hawkins Garby’s “The Skylark of Space” (1928). To top things off, in the same issue of Amazing that introduced Doc Smith’s “Skylark” series, Philip Francis Nowlan debuted Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a pulp hero for the ages.
Buck Rogers Conquers Merchandising
Nowlan introduced Buck Rogers through a pair of novellas, both published by Hugo Gernsback in Amazing Stories. In the first story, “Armageddon – 2419 A.D.,” Rogers is exploring an abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania. After being exposed to a radioactive gas, he falls into suspended animation. He wakes up nearly 500 years later, no worse for wear.
Catching the eye of National Newspaper Service boss John F. Dille, Nowlan was teamed with artist Dick Calkins to create a comic strip set 500 years in the future. On January 7, 1929, “Buck Rogers, 2429 A.D.” debuted in newspapers across America. A Sunday strip was added about a year later. Later came similar comic strips, including Alex Raymond’s “Flash Gordon,” Big Little Books, radio programs, toys, movie serials and films, television shows, paperbacks, video games, and more.
We hope you’ll join PulpFest on Thursday, July 30, at 10:20 pm as we welcome Ohio-based writer, editor, and publisher Jim Beard to our programming stage for “Cosmic Collectibles: Buck Rogers Conquers Merchandising,” a look at how Phil Nowlan’s popular character has been marketed for nearly a century.
Jim Beard became a published author when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time he’s written official Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic book stories and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history. His prose work includes the novellas Green Hornet: How Sweet the Sting and Kolchak: The Last Temptation; co-editing and contributing to Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone; a story for X-Files: Secret Agendas; three books of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series and another on Star Trek comics; the Sgt. Janus occult detective series of novels; Monster Earth, a shared-world giant monster anthology series; Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure; and more. Jim also provided regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website, for over seventeen years. He is now the publisher at Becky Books and the co-publisher at Flinch Books with John C. Bruening. In recent years, Jim has presented at PulpFest on such topics as Fiction House Comics, The Shadow, and “Tarzan: Lord of the Merchandising Jungle.”
PulpFest 2026 begins on July 30 and runs through August 2 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. In addition to honoring the centennials of Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories, we’ll also be celebrating the sesquicentennial of writer Jack London’s birth, the centennial of the birth of artist Robert Kennedy Abbett, 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 at the DoubleTree. They’re going fast!
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 wall and foyer tables have been reserved. A few island tables are remaining for $110 per table. Please click the “register” link on our website to learn how to join the convention as a dealer.
Our featured image was excerpted from Frank R. Paul’s front cover for the August 1928 number of Amazing Stories, illustrating the first segment of Edward Elmer Smith’s & Lee Hawkins Garby’s three-part serial, “The Skylark of Space.” Philip Francis Nowlan’s first Buck Rogers story, “Armageddon – 2419 A.D.,” also appeared in the issue.
Our lead image was adapted by William Lampkin from Charles Sultan’s cover for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century #101, a comic book published by Toby Press and dated March 1951.
The first segment of Nowlan’s and Richard Calkin’s groundbreaking comic strip, “Buck Rogers, 2429 A.D.,” appeared in 47 newspapers distributed across the United States on January 7, 1929. It was syndicated by the National Newspaper Service.
Our final image is a poster for the 12-part cliffhanger, Buck Rogers, starring Larry “Buster” Crabbe, Constance Moore, and Jackie Moran, with Anthony Warde as Killer Kane, the lead villain. Directed by Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind, the cliffhanger was produced by Universal Pictures and released in 1939.
Here’s the trailer for the re-release of Buck Rogers.
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