Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1651529" data-attributes="member: 151">Well, yes, there were a lot of hacks...but there were also some true innovators in the crowd. Many authors found the pulps as a way to step-up to a career as a novelist, such as Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and Erle Stanley Gardner (creators of Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Mike Hammer and Perry Mason, respectively). Howard, Lovecraft and others have also been mentioned. Bradbury, Bloch ("Psycho"), Asimov, deCamp, Heinlein and 'Doc' Smith ("Lensman") all started in the pulps. Louis L'amour, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Borroughs, Agatha Christie, Elmore Leonard, Sinclair Lewis, Nowlan ("Buck Rogers") and even Tennessee Williams got their start or appeared in the pulps.   The pulps were the popular serialized fiction of their time. Television has largely displaced them, and the format lost popularity over time....but their influence was huge, not unlike Jazz's influence on music, for example. The pulps placed the emphasis on action, short stories with a quick punch and a crowd-pleasing ride. Since each pulp would have several stories, one of them was sure to be worth reading, regardless of the dubious quality or speedy releases. One week, you might get the Shadow beating a criminal mastermind, Buck Rogers adventuring the future, cowboys running down a runaway herd, Tarzan finding a lost city, dunwich explorers finding a very different lost city, Perry Mason solving a mysterious case, the Lensman fighting the Boskone and John Carter conquering Mars.   The pulps were often aimed at delivering a ripping yarn, and rarely were concerned with challenging their readers or forcing them into introspection. They were telling an exciting tale, sometimes in very different, experimental or exciting ways...but telling a tale, nonetheless. Many pulp authors would go on to become very popular novelists...after they'd honed their craft in the pulps. Stories like "Psycho", "The Maltese Falcon", "The Dunwich Horror", "Riders of the Purple Sage", "Elmer Gantry", and even "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" all owe their existence to the pulps.  The closest modern analog I can think of is Japanese Manga magazines, although not just the mainstream stuff that makes it here, but more esoteric stuff like Master Keaton, for example.</blockquote>

Verification