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Currently reading anything pulp-style?
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Werner
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Jan 16, 2011 05:37PM
Last week, I finished Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Bandit of Hell's Bend (1924), which I really liked and gave 4 stars to. Right now, I'm reading Gulliver of Mars (1905), by British SF writer Edwin L. Arnold, whose writings --especially this one-- are thought by some to have influenced Burroughs' Barsoom series. (Unfortunately, though, I'd have to say that Arnold was a writer of vastly less ability than ERB.)
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I just finished reading Sax Rohmer's The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. I had been meaning to read it for a while now, but never got around to it. It was enjoyable, but not the greatest book I ever read, although I will probably check out more of the Fu Manchu series. I just got a Kindle for Christmas, so there is so much free stuff to download - a lot of it pulp fiction - so lots of fun ahead!I actually had gotten Gulliver of Mars as well, and since I noticed that it was listed as this month's read, I started that one next. I'm only a chapter or two in so far, but I am enjoying it. I've never read anything by Edwin L. Arnold before, but so far, I like his style of writing, and the story seems like it will be fun!
Oops! Uh, Bloodman, I should correct a misunderstanding that I inadvertently caused. We're NOT doing a group read of Gulliver of Mars. I just posted it on our "currently reading" shelf since I was reading it (I've finished it now), and I think the group page looks less barren with a book there. :-) Should we keep that slot (as some groups do) strictly for books we're currently reading as a group? If we make that rule, I'll try to remember it!Personally, I wasn't as taken with the Arnold book as you've been so far (I gave it two stars), but I'm glad you're enjoying it!
Werner, you bastard! I'll teach you to make a fool of me!Just kidding of course - no big deal. Like I said, I had gotten the book anyway, so no problem. And I am only into the 2nd chapter at this point. So you may be right that the book isn't that good - we shall see as I move along in the story!
Anyway, don't feel bad or do anything different with the book club on my account - I definitely understand not wanting the main page of the club to look too barren!
Just watched a film that was pretty pulp. "Red" is a very fun, shoot-'em-up, bang-bang flick with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman & John Malkovitch plus a bunch of others. We got it on Dish Video on Demand. It was super.
I think I saw a preview of that one recently! Is that the one where a bunch of recently retired professional intelligence agents/assassins have to come back into action one more time to deal with some sort of unusual circumstance?
Yes, Werner. Ernest Borgnine had a small, but quite noticeable part, too. Apparently he's 94 now.Bruce Campbell worked with Borgnine in the movie of McHale's Navy. He had only good things to say about him. He was so impressed by the way Borgnine (in his 80's then) was always available on set & willing to help others with their lines.
He contrasted that to Tom Arnold who would do just what he had to & then disappear into his trailer. Often leaving other actors who had to act against him to say their lines to stand-ins. Campbell thought that was unprofessional & rude.
Borgnine always comes across on screen as a very decent sort of guy, so it's nice to know he's that way in real life as well. My wife and I both have always liked him as an actor in any of the roles we've seen him in (most notably as one of the co-stars of the 80s action TV series Airwolf). I'm not really familiar with Tom Arnold (and perhaps haven't missed much thereby :-) ).
Tom Arnold normally plays bad comedy roles, I think. He was pretty funny with Arnie in "True Lies", though. He played McHale in the movie remake of the series.
Lets see I read the Black Galaxy by Murray Leinster last week and A Prize for Edie by JF Bone.The Prize for Edie was a funny though the computer terminology was very out of date, but it was cutting edge at the time it was written.
Amy wrote: "Lets see I read the Black Galaxy by Murray Leinster last week and A Prize for Edie by JF Bone.The Prize for Edie was a funny though the computer terminology was very out of date, but it was cutti..."
I remember liking Murray Leinster's stories in the old Asimov (Before the Golden Age and Great SF) anthologies, and Jack Williamson's too. I've totally forgotten them now. Thanks for the reminder - I'll have to dig those out again.
Jim wrote: "Would Harry Harrison be considered a pulp author? He mostly wrote SF."I believe he would, he wrote a good number of Short Stories during 1950-1970. He was very prolific.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?28
Definately. He also parodies Space Opera genre quite a bit.
The Beautiful PeopleJust finished The Beautiful People by Charles Beaumont. Then I found "Number 12 looks just like you" on YouTube, its the Twilight Zone episode based on the book. The episode followed the book rather well. Though the ending was slightly different than the book.
Red and BuriedJim Mullaney, who ghosted or co-wrote 26 books in The Destroyer series, has just launched his own series, The Red Menace. Red and Buried is on Kindle now and the second book in the series is due Feb. 14th.
It's a pulp/action adventure set in the 70s, with a lot of the humor that Jim brought to The Destroyer. I've read it several times and it's very good.
From the back cover:
WHO IS THE RED MENACE?
Throughout the 1950s this was the number one question from Moscow to Beijing and in every communist palace and malaria-ridden backwater in between. The mysterious masked figure was a shadow and a whisper. For the Kremlin and its fellow travelers he was a damnable monkey wrench tossed into the gears of the not-so-glorious worldwide revolution. Wherever Reds schemed, the Menace was there to set things right. And then, just like that, 1960 came and the whisper grew silent.
Twelve years later, Patrick "Podge" Becket, computer tycoon and security expert, thinks he's hung up his mask and cape for good. He escaped the spy game while still a young man, and none but a select few know about his long-dead secret identity. But into his restless retirement steps a ghost from his past, a bitter Russian colonel with nothing to lose and the means to wreak worldwide destruction.
Aided by his partner, brilliant inventor and physician Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright, the Red Menace is dragged back into the hero game. But it's a whole new world out there, and if the Menace doesn't watch his step the swinging Seventies might just find him RED AND BURIED!
Last weekend I visited a used bookstore while on a trip out of town and came away w/ several 70s-era Action-Adventure paperbacks like The Destroyer, The Executioner, and The Death Merchant. There was another book in the stack from 1973, that I can't link as it's nowhere to be found on Goodreads. It's called MAFIA: Operation Porno by Don Romano. The story is told from multiple points of view and has swift, yet detailed, writing style. The characters are well drawn, though slightly on the cookie cutter side (the mafia boss, the small town starlet in waiting, ..). I'm not a fast reader but I managed to read its 204 pages over two nights. It surprised me w/ the amount of graphic detail the author was able to use. Nothing like you would find nowadays, but definitely pushing the envelope for the early 70s. Reminds me of what pulp horror writers like Edward Lee and Bryan Smith are doing now.
For 50 cents, I'd say this was a good buy.
It does sound like money well spent. I love looking through second hand books.
Damballa by Charles Saunders is fantastic!! I couldn't put it down:)Damballa"The first ever African American 1930s avenger sets out to stop a Nazi plot to subvert a championship fight. From deepest Africa to the streets of 1930s Harlem, the action is none stop. Written by famed novelist Charles Saunders, with interior illos by Clayton Hinkle and a cover by Charles Fetherolf, this is a history making pulp adventure fans do not want to miss."
About all I have time to read right now (long story!) are short stories, but I'm about to start on a new collection of the latter: Dark Pages, Vol. 1. (It's new enough that I don't believe it's in the Goodreads data base yet.) Dark Pages is the new imprint created by Trestle Press for its "hardboiled" or noir crime fiction; this particular anthology is intended to be the first of others, and brings together stories by authors from several countries (though they're all English-speaking countries or, I believe, written by English-speaking expats). All the writers are contemporary, and from what skimming I've done so far, some of the stories have more (and worse) bad language than the comparable works of the classic noir era typically did; but they are clearly pulp fiction, and might appeal to a number of readers in this group. Right now, it's only available as an e-book (I made a print copy in order to read it).As I've noted before, I'm not really a noir fan; my tastes tend to run to the Romantic, rather than the Realist, school, and I think of this tradition (at least in its classic expressions) as having a much darker, cynical and amoral world view than I do. (But I suppose a lot depends on how you define hardboiled.) However, Trestle Press is also my own publisher (they're going to come up with a new imprint for their supernatural fiction, too), and at least two writers represented in this collection are in my Goodreads friend circle.... So, I'll see how I like it. :-)
Does anybody like audio?There is a great audio fiction pod-cast called 'Protecting Project Pulp' which is part of the district of wonders network which span off from the Starship Sofa. This has narrated stories from all the greats. Check it out.
http://protectingprojectpulp.com/
Reading ever so slowly early pulp tales by Robert Silverberg. Each story is introduce by an autobiographical essay which puts the stories in perspective as a way for a young writer to learn the craft while earning money.
Tyrone wrote: "Does anybody like audio?There is a great audio fiction pod-cast called 'Protecting Project Pulp' which is part of the district of wonders network which span off from the Starship Sofa. This has n..."
Hey, thanks a lot for this recommendation. I just checked it out and I LOVE it! Also saw their scifi podcast, starship sofa. It is exactly what I was looking for.
I'm most of the way through Warriors of the Steppes: The Complete Cossack Adventures, Volume Two by Harold Lamb, enjoying some of the best stories I've read in a long, long time.
I'm getting a bunch of Richard Stark's Parker novels as audio books from the library. I'm going to try to hold off listening to them immediately as 1 & 2 are checked out. How important is it to read/listen to these in order? If I start on book 3, will I lose the impact do you think?
At the moment, I'm reading one of Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm novels, The Shadowers. Since joining this group, I've also read two earlier Helm novels, the series-opening Death of a Citizen and Murderer's Row, as well as another Hamilton book, the Steel Mirror. I can't believe I forgot to ever post anything about those on this thread when I was reading them!
I just read "The Shadowers" as well. Good quick reads. I am currently reading "Honey in His Mouth" by Lester Dent (the creator of Doc Savage). It is a previously unpublished novel in the "Hard Case" crime paperback series. I'm about half way through and while it is not a 5 star quality it is an enjoyable read.
I'm currently reading "Created the Destroyer," the first of the Destroyer series. They are pretty "pulpy," and like most people who ever ran across the series, I remember reading this in high school.So far so good. It isn't great, but it IS a good, solid read. It is fast moving and has my attention. From what I'm told, the series picks up steam around the hird book, so I'll stay on the ride!
The third book was the first I read. We had to take a trip & my stepfather didn't want me babbling, so he bought me 3 books. Chinese Puzzle, The Valley of Creation, & one of the Executioner books. All pulp & the first two were certainly wonderful. Hamilton is a fun pulp SF/adventure read. I never got into Mac Bolan, though. I think I have almost 100 of the Destroyer books. I think they read better when they were new because Sapir, a political columnist, was often lampooning the current news & politics. He quit writing for the series around book 70 or so & it was never as good.
Our own Henrik Harksen is the owner of the small press H. Harksen Productions, which recently published a collection of H. P. Lovecraft-inspired fiction (and a few poems) by Franklyn Searight, son of Richard F. Searight. HPL and the elder Searight were pen pals, and fellow Weird Tales authors. Henrik was kind enough to send me a review copy, since he knows that I'm a Lovecraft fan, and I'm reading it now.
If it is anything like Henrik's previous 2 books, it will be fantastic, Werner. He always gets the best artwork, too. It might raise the price of the books a bit, but it's really worth it.
This one doesn't have any artwork except for the cover (which is well-done); but I'm definitely enjoying the stories!
Les Savage, Jr. is regarded by some as one of the better pulp-era Western writers, more realistic than most, and ahead of his time in his treatment of women and minority groups. I'm reading a collection of some of his stories,
.Savage was also the creator of a series character, the outlaw heroine Senorita Scorpion. She's not featured in any of the stories here; but Pro Se Press, through it's Altus Press imprint, has brought the entire Senorita Scorpion corpus back into print in two volumes:
and
. (I haven't read either volume, but they're on my to-read shelf!) Pro Se is also the publisher of a recent collection of three short stories by modern authors featuring the same character,
. I read that one earlier this year, and gave it four stars.
Goodreads author Billy Wong is a modern writer whose fiction (based on the little of it I've read, as well as book descriptions and Goodreads posts) is solidly in the pulp tradition. His short e-story Last Minute Replacement (which I read earlier this year but forgot to mention here until now) would, I think, have a lot in common with the boxing stories in the old pulps, except for its female title character. Another e-story, Gothic Gladiator, which I read last night, also has a fighting female character and is also set in a context of organized sport fighting, but the stories differ in kind; the former is realistic pulp, while the latter is in the tradition of more-than-plausibly capable protagonists whose exploits are in the realm of make-believe, with speculative elements. But both stories can be thoroughly enjoyed on their own terms; my review of the latter won't be up until this evening, but they both earned five stars from me.These are the only two of Wong's works that I've read; but "Gothic Gladiator" heroine Freya Blackstar appears in two other stories: Gothic Warrior and the Dark Man and Seeds of Despair. And from what I've read about the author's Iron Flower series, it would probably have a lot in common with the swords-and-sorcery yarns of the classic pulp era.
I know this thread has touched on the varied kind of pulp fiction but I also started a new thread specifically on the range of pulp fiction. Hopefully that isn't stepping on any toes.
I'm new to the group - and to Goodreads - and haven't read this entire thread as yet. But I'm currently working through the complete novels of Raymond Chandler - I'm now working on Farewell, My Lovely. Pulp, in a sense. And not pulp, in a sense... but fantastic prose, and incredible atmosphere...
Two of my books are available for free this weekend via Amazon Kindle. They are two books of a five part alternative history, e-pulp series.***** WILD MARJORAM: THE VOTE
Wild Marjoram follows a timeline where WWI never ended, in fact, it expanded. Here Germany occupies the East Coast of the USA, and if that wasn't bad enough, mob factions fight over the remaining free-zones!
Our heroine is a blonde haired blue-eyed mechanic with a locket that holds the key to her past. This perfect Aryan specimen lives in hiding from the Nazi occupation. If they discovered her, she’d be condemned to the fate of a broodmare. But she's not the type of girl to give up without a fight.
The Resistance has devised a plan to free the Nazi stranglehold of New York. It includes Wild Marjoram and Jerry of Chicagoland. So the two traveling companions set out on a long and winding road through the free-zones of North America to coordinate with other freedom fighters. It's the same route once traveled by her mother before her death. While on the mission Marj seeks clues from a shrouded past in hopes to connect with a mother she never knew. However, the best laid plans of mice and women…
Wild Marjoram: The Vote is the first stop of a five part road trip to the Broken Apple.
Free Oct 11th-Oct 13th at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Marjoram-U...
***** WILD MARJORAM: THE DETOUR
A few days ago, Marj and Jerry rolled into a cloistered farming community with the best of intensions. Their mission was to coordinate with friendly members of the underground resistance. Unfortunately the alleged allies were not what they appeared to be. As lies and betrayals add up it became clear the reportedly safe-heaven was actually as a nest of vipers. The throughly deceived traveling companions were separated, imprisoned, and on a short walk to the gallows.
Thanks to quick-thinking and a deception of her own, Marj escapes, frees Jerry and the couple hightail it out of corn country with one fortunate prize.
Spurred by mysterious clues uncovered in a secret diary, the road trip takes our heroes head to meet up with some old friend in New New Paris, in New Canada. Unfortunately the scars of their captivity remain and put a strain on the traveling companions relationship…as Marj finds communication with the past and a strange supernatural presence lurking...
Wild Marjoram: The Detour is the second stop of a five part road trip to the Broken Apple.
Free Oct 11-15th at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Marjoram-D...
***** THE PILL
A short Wild Marjoram story available for free via the E-pulp sampler. In Chicagoland, Marj finds out her safe live as a mechanic isn't all it seems and neither are the Slates who are grey-eyed machine-like women who used to be human. These women are now gang leaders, trying to make women equal in their eyes, the hard way and the only way the mean streets of the city will let them…
Free Sampler: http://www.amazon.com/ePulp-Sampler-V...
Upcoming works include the short story, The Birth, soon to be in a Dieselpunk Sampler and Part Three of the WM road trip, called The Spitfire, where Marj fixes planes and starts her fight in the Broken Apple.
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Downloaded it. I'm running short on reading time these days but hopefully can get some time soon.
I just joined the group. After decades as a fan or hardboiled paperback originals, I'm getting into the pulps. I'm listening to some Shadow radio shows. And also reading a novel that's a tribute to the pup era, with Walter Gibson and Lester Dent as characters. 
And I'm looking forward to an ABEbooks delivery. It's a Spider novel, Empire of Doom.
Welcome Greg. I like the Shadow and Spider pulps, though prefer the spider. Norvell Page wrote many of them and he really knows high intensity action.
One book that I'm currently reading is Billy Wong's
, the first novel in his Legend of the Iron Flower series. I'd say this could be classified as pulp-style; it's Conanesque swords-and-sorcery fiction --featuring a brawny heroine rather than a brawny hero-- with a lot of violence, little bad language, and no explicit sex (okay, I'm not done with the book yet, but I'd be surprised if it had any). Obviously, REH did it better; but to me this still has a classic pulp feel.
While I've only just started reading it, I'd say that Goodreads author Clive Lee's debut novel
would qualify as New Pulp. It's set in the pulp era (World War II), features the stuff of pulp adventure --spy action and derring-do in the jungles and back alleys of the Pacific theater-- and is graced with some classically pulp-style cover art.
I'm reading the "Book of Hyperborea" by Clark Ashton Smith. I'm also reading "The Klarkash-Ton Cycle, Clark Ashton's stories of the Ctulhu Mythos". I don't know why but I jump between them as they are all short stories. I've read several of them before but it has been a long time. CAS was a disciple of HPL but he had much more humor in most of his stories. Particularly the Hyperborea and Zothique type stories. His Cthulhu stuff not as much. He also had an amazing vocabulary. Jack Vance sometimes reminds me of CAS particularly in his Dying Earth novels.
Having won a copy of
by Wayne Reinagle in a recent Goodreads giveaway, I started my read of that one this past weekend. (It's part of a trilogy; as I understand it, it's the second book of the three to be written, but is set the earliest of them, and all three can be read independently of the others.) A homage to the pulp heroes of the past, it's definitely the kind of fiction that our group focuses on!
I'm trying to power through Larry Correia's Larry Correia Grimnoir books this week. I've read the first two before, but I'm planning to write a blog post review of them. My general opinion is that they're good. Not five-star good, but definitely worth the money.
I'm trying to power through the Grimnoire books by Larry Correia this week. I've read the first two before, but I'm planning to write a blog post review of them. My general opinion is that they're good. Not five-star good, but definitely worth the money.
Our group's official description lists H. P. Lovecraft and his pen pal Robert E. Howard among pulp literature's "immortals." In the book I'm currently reading,
(published in 2000), authors David Barbour and Richard Raleigh cast these two literary greats as their protagonists, in a tale premised on the idea that at least some of HPL's dreams that inspired his Cthulhu Mythos were based on reality.
Most interesting! Thanks, Werner. I must add this book to my "To Read" list.
Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans
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