Description

Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents, #1: Pride of the Pulps

By Ed Hulse

During the pulp era — roughly the first five decades of the 20th century — more than one thousand all-fiction magazines reached the nation’s newsstands, if only for a single issue. Of that number, just a couple dozen attained any reputation for literary quality, and fewer than half that many regularly published stories considered to be on a par with those accepted by the prestigious “slick” magazines. The top periodicals in the field — Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, Short Stories, The Popular Magazine, and a few others — were edited and packaged with loving care and consistently reflected the best that rough-paper magazines had to offer. And for decades American readers, ravenous for escapist entertainment, devoured them in weekly or monthly intervals.

Pride of the Pulps contains lengthy, in-depth surveys of the most prestigious all-fiction magazines. Considerably revised and expanded from their original appearances in Blood ‘n’ Thunder, these essays reflect scholarly devotion and fannish enthusiasm in equal measure. They chart the evolutions of Adventure, Short Stories, The Popular Magazine, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, and other periodicals of comparable quality, noting the memorable authors, stories, and characters that paraded across their woodpulp pages, entertaining readers through two World Wars and a Great Depression.

Profusely illustrated with covers (including scans of original cover paintings) and interior illustrations, this first volume in the Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents series is an invaluable reference covering the finest that pulp fiction had to offer.