The first "pulp" was Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy Magazine of , about , words pages per issue on pulp paper with untrimmed edges and no illustrations, not even on the cover. While the steam-powered printing press had been in widespread use for some time, enabling the boom in dime novels, prior to Munsey, no one had combined cheap printing, cheap paper and cheap authors in a package that provided affordable entertainment to working-class people.
In six years Argosy went from a few thousand copies per month to over half a million. A dime novel and boys' weekly publisher, they saw Argosy's success, and in launched The Popular Magazine, billed as the "biggest magazine in the world" by virtue of being two pages longer than Argosy. Due to differences in page layout, the magazine had substantially less text than Argosy.
The Popular Magazine introduced color covers to pulp publishing. The magazine began to take off when, in , the publishers acquired the rights to serialize Ayesha, by H. Rider Haggard, a sequel to his popular novel She. Howard, Talbot Mundy and Abraham Merritt. In , the cover price rose to 15 cents and 30 pages were added to each issue; along with establishing a stable of authors for each magazine, this change proved successful and circulation began to approach that of Argosy.
Street and Smith's next innovation was the introduction of specialized genre pulps, each magazine focusing on a genre such as detective stories, romance, etc. At their peak of popularity in the s and s, the most successful pulps could sell up to one million copies per issue. Although pulp magazines were primarily a US phenomenon, there were also a number of British pulp magazines published between the Edwardian era and World War Two.
The German fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten had a similar format to American pulp magazines, in that it was printed on rough pulp paper and heavily illustrated. The Second World War paper shortages had a serious impact on pulp production, starting a steady rise in costs and the decline of the pulps. Beginning with Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in , pulp magazines began to switch to digest size; smaller, thicker magazines. In a more affluent post-war America, the price gap compared to slick magazines was far less significant.
In the s, Men's adventure magazines began to replace the pulp. The liquidation of the American News Company, then the primary distributor of pulp magazines, has sometimes been taken as marking the end of the "pulp era"; by that date, many of the famous pulps of the previous generation, including Black Mask, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Weird Tales, were defunct.
Almost all of the few remaining pulp magazines are science fiction or mystery magazines now in formats similar to "digest size", such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The format is still in use for some lengthy serials, like the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan. Over the course of their evolution, there were a huge number of pulp magazine titles; Harry Steeger of Popular Publications claimed that his company alone had published over , and at their peak they were publishing 42 titles per month.
Many titles of course survived only briefly. While the most popular titles were monthly, many were bimonthly and some were quarterly.
The collapse of the pulp industry changed the landscape of publishing because pulps were the single largest sales outlet for short stories. Combined with the decrease in slick magazine fiction markets, writers attempting to support themselves by creating fiction switched to novels and book-length anthologies of shorter pieces.
Pulp covers were printed in color on higher-quality slick paper. They were famous for their half-dressed damsels in distress, usually awaiting a rescuing hero. Cover art played a major part in the marketing of pulp magazines. The early pulp magazines could boast covers by some distinguished American artists; The Popular Magazine had covers by N. Later, many artists specialized in creating covers mainly for the pulps; a number of the most successful cover artists became as popular as the authors featured on the interior pages.
Among the most famous pulp artists were Walter Baumhofer, Earle K. Covers were important enough to sales that sometimes they would be designed first; authors would then be shown the cover art and asked to write a story to match. Later pulps began to feature interior illustrations, depicting elements of the stories. The drawings were printed in black ink on the same cream-colored paper used for the text, and had to use specific techniques to avoid blotting on the coarse texture of the cheap pulp.
Thus, fine lines and heavy detail were usually not an option. Shading was by crosshatching or pointillism, and even that had to be limited and coarse. Usually the art was black lines on the paper's background, but Finlay and a few others did some work that was primarily white lines against large dark areas.
Another way pulps kept costs down was by paying authors less than other markets; thus many eminent authors started out in the pulps before they were successful enough to sell to better-paying markets, and similarly, well-known authors whose careers were slumping or who wanted a few quick dollars could bolster their income with sales to pulps.
Additionally, some of the earlier pulps solicited stories from amateurs who were quite happy to see their words in print and could thus be paid token amounts. There were also career pulp writers, capable of turning out huge amounts of prose on a steady basis, often with the aid of dictation to stenographers, machines or typists.
Before he became a novelist, Upton Sinclair was turning out at least 8, words per day seven days a week for the pulps, keeping two stenographers fully employed. Pulps would often have their authors use multiple pen names so that they could use multiple stories by the same person in one issue, or use a given author's stories in three or more successive issues, while still appearing to have varied content.
One advantage pulps provided to authors was that they paid upon acceptance for material instead of on publication; since a story might be accepted months or even years before publication, to a working writer this was a crucial difference in cash flow.
Some pulp editors became known for cultivating good fiction and interesting features in their magazines. Many issues of this collection come from a variety of anonymous contributors, as well as sites such as The Pulp Magazines Project and ThePulp.
More exploitation-oriented magazines are in the Trash Pulp collection. Total Views 11,, Older Stats. Total Items 13, Older Stats. Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.
It explains how to create secret societies of Investigators devoted to fighting the Mythos, and details three such groups, ready-made for dropping into any ongoing Call of Cthulhu campaign that has reached the fateful year of Finally, it provides three adventures involving pulp action in s settings, including Shanghai.
Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survivala survival of a hugely remote period whenconsciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanityforms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds.
At last the stars are almost right. Soon Nyarlathotep's plans will come to fruition. Then the world will be changed irrevocably - but not quite yet. Pesky human investigators have learned much. Now they must survive long enough to make sense of what they know, and take resolute action.
This roleplaying classic is a series of linked adventures forming one long and unforgettable campaign. Horrifying deeds and dangerous sorcery dog those who dare attempt to unravel the fate of the Carlyle Expedition. The non-linear narrative keeps players baffled and on their toes.
Action is the byword as the player-characters evade or combat cultists, magic, mad men, and the dread powers of the Outer Gods. This is a guide to horror role-playing in H. Lovecraft's novels, where ordinary people are confronted by the terrifying beings and forces of the Cthulhu Mythos. Everything needed for play is included, except for dice.
The book also contains extensive background material about Lovecraft. It covers three eras of play - s, s and s, with over Mythos creatures and spells, ready-to-play investigators, expanded weapons data from all three eras, four complete scenarios, and essays on the Necrocomicon, Forensick Pathology and The Dreamlands.
Abrams Executive Producer of Westworld , Misha Green Creator of Underground and Jordan Peele Director of Get Out The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy. Chicago, On their journey to the manor of Mr. At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus.
A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today. Mansions of Madness Vol.
It includes two fully updated and revised classics, along with three brand new adventures, and all can be played as standalone adventures, used as sidetracks for ongoing campaigns, or strung together to form a mini-campaign spanning the s.
We go from heavy blocks to single lines. We are learning things as Butch learns them. As the tension builds our sentence spacing expands.
Suddenly we stop with the blocks and move into a much more controlled atmosphere. Vincent is on the john reading about modesty. The end of the scene allows us a moment to catch our breath. As he takes a breath, so do we. Then we all exit together. You have to remember that no one had ever show hitmen embracing everyday life. These are best buddies chatting while they go about their day. It beckoned us to come into the Pulp Fiction screenplay. Look at all the white space.
This is truly a conversation and nothing else. It also allows the actors to improv and riff with their own body language in the scene. Again, these guys are driving the conversation.
Look at the answers Brett gives. One word. Two words. We sense the fear. Jules is much more loquacious. Almost playing good cop. Vincent balances him out. Jules and Vincent set the tone, but the script expands on the ideals set up right here.
If this is all casual, what about when we enter a more high-pressure situation? It controls the tone of the story and walks a very fine line. Each chapter presented takes us into a different through-line. The characters intermingle, but the story changes. Each chapter in the Pulp Fiction screenplay feels like it brings its own energy. We can pick out the clues by paying attention to what each person is wearing and how they act when they see each other.
After the Pulp Fiction screenplay came out, there were many imitators. Lots of writers tried to copy the dialogue, characters, and plot structure. Tarantino and Avary flourished because they found a way to put their vision onto the page.
When you read the script, you can see the movie in your mind. The best way to do that is to read a lot of scripts. Pulp Fiction brought director Quentin Tarantino to mainstream attention with this stylish and inventive episodic thriller.
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