Pulp?

[Tinker Gnome]

I have seen multiple things on this forum referred to as being Pulp? It seems to be a writing style, but i am not sure. It also seems to be looked down upon a lot. I have read that RPG novels are considered Pulp. If that is the case, then all i read is pulp.

 

[Mark]

http://www.stationlink.com/pulpdom/pulphist.html

 

[Krieg]

Hmm, I've looked & looked but can't find a point.

Care to help out a bit?

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Hmm, I've looked & looked but can't find a point.

Care to help out a bit?

About my post, or about the link? I could not really get what the site in the link was saying wither.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Pulp was the cheap paper but it was the sytle and stories told on that paper too. It was action, adventure, fantasy, swords, ray guns and sex! At that time writing was a high art, book sold were purchased by the weathy, Pulpzines were published for the massess and were looked down on. From those pages devoloped comics, radio shows and even screen plays. It was not until after WW2 that novels really started to come on the market, It was also at that time people started to stop call it pulp, science fiction was born, fantasy and horror were moved into their areas. Today things are coming back together, we are seeing lines fade and the things mix again, add the action, sex and you get pulp.

 

[Greatwyrm]

In general, pulp is used to describe mildly over the top action stories. Most, but not all, of these stories happen in a time period of roughly the end of the American Wild West era (1880 -1890 ish) up until the end of World War 2. The term pulp itself comes from the grade of paper used to publish the stories; pulp being the lowest grade of paper available at the time.

There are many different types of pulp adventure stories. If you want to go really early, you could include the "dime novel" westerns. Stories with semi-realistic super heroes (the Shadow, the Phantom, the early Batman stories) fit in the pulp era. Hard-boiled detectives like Sam Spade. Explorers like Alan Quartermain (sp?) and Indiana Jones. Recent movies like The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are all pulp as well.

In addition to these kinda real world stories, some science fiction and fantasy get blended in too. Flash Gordon for science fiction. Conan the Barbarian and most of the early swords and sorcery fantasy would fall into this as well.

Hope this helps.

 

[Mog Elffoe]

Swords & Sorcery has its origins in the old pulps, as does a good chunk of today's heroic fiction. H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and quite a few others wrote for the pulps. Take another look at that article that was posted earlier. Most of what folks call 'pulp' on these boards will either be the titles mentioned there, or are heavily inspired by them. Pulp's not really a genre, but it does have a recongnizable 'feel' to it. The article also has a lot of interesting info on where the terminology comes from. Definitely worth reading.

 

[Hand of Evil]

A link - hard to read page because of font and background....

http://www.adventurehouse.com/history.htm

 

[Mark]

About my post, or about the link? I could not really get what the site in the link was saying wither.

It's an explanation of the rise and fall of pulp, primarilly as it relates to Sci-Fi, but that's just part of it.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Thanks everybody. What Greatwyrm said really clears things up.