Pulp Reading

[Steve Long]

I'm sure plenty of you are interested in the pulp genre/era and have done your own researching and reading on the topic. What books have you run across that you'd recommend? The PH draft bibliography is already about 2,500 words long, but there's always room for more.

[Vanguard00]

I'm sure plenty of you are interested in the pulp genre/era and have done your own researching and reading on the topic. What books have you run across that you'd recommend? The PH draft bibliography is already about 2,500 words long, but there's always room for more.

Any chance of getting the list so we don't cover stuff you've already added? I mean, Doc Savage, The Shadow, Jens Altmann stuff, etc, are probably already listed.

[Starwolf]

Phiilp Jose Farmers Doc Savage the apocalyptic life
Philip Jose Farmers Tarzan the apocalyptic life
The entire Doc Savage series
Anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Phantom
The Shadow

[Steve Long]

Actually, I'd kind of rather not post the biblio yet, Starwolf -- it will be interesting to see what people recommend as a sort of mirror of their own taste. However, you can take it for granted that I have all the really obvious stuff, like actual pulp stories of the Shadow, Doc Savage, etc.

[AliceTheOwl]

There's a whole publisher of modern pulp here.

Not that I've gotten around to reading any of it yet.

[tancred]

Except for Edgar Rice Burroughs, I haven't read much pulp-era fiction (a sad deficiency that I need to correct).

But there is one, quite IN-obvious book that I can highly recommend:
Dydeetown World, by F. Paul Wilson.

Technically speaking, it's not pulp-era; it's set in the future. (And one of the main characters is a clone.) But the feel is very gritty, Sam Spade like. It is written like a classic film noir.
A REALLY fun read.

[Curufea]

Nero Wolfe.

Also, possibly Edgar Allen Poe - first writer of self-narrative detective stories (as well as horror).

[Vanguard00]

Edgar Rice Burroughs ("Tarzan" series, some shorts), Robert E. Howard (various shorts), HP Lovecraft (various)

"Zorro" books (various authors, but a bunch by Johnston McCulley)
"Doc Savage" series (Lester Dent, mostly)
"The Shadow" series (various authors)
"The Spider" series (various authors)
"G-8 and the Battle Aces" series (various authors)
"Operator #5" series
"The Avenger" series (Paul Ernst, I think)

That's pretty much all I've read thus far. I went on a kick a couple of years back and bought up a bunch of collections and compilations.

[Vanguard00]

I suppose you could make "modern pulp" out of Mike Resnick's books (Santiago, Widowmaker, etc). Good 'frontier sci-fi' type stuff.

[Vanguard00]

Oh! Frank Miller's "Sin City" and Ed Brubaker's "Sleeper" comics both have excellent pulp characteristics. Very hard-boiled.

Dashielle Hammet, too ("Thin Man" books, which are also good movies).

[Lamrok]

If you can find them, reprints of Seabury Quinn's "Jules De Grandin" stories are excellent examples of pulpy supernatural mysteries. Nowadays we remember Lovecraft as the most influential horror writer to come from "Weird Tales," but, at the time, Quinn was a lot more popular.

I'll put in a reminder that no list of Pulp Heroic fiction would be complete without my avatar, "The Spider," Master of Men!

If you're going to include "Doc Savage," you might as well go ahead and include "The Avanger." This is especially appropriate since "The Avenger #1" gave us the title for the last Hero Pulp Supplement, "Justice Inc."

[Agemegos]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes corpus, Professor Challenger corpus.

Leslie Charteris: the early (pre-WWII) Saint stories.

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan corpus, John Carter, Warlord of Mars corpus, Venus corpus, Tarzan corpus.

Dashiel Hammett: 'Continental Op' stories, collected in The Big Knockover and other stories

Lee Falk: Phantom comics.

Alexandre Dumas (pere): The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo.

Jules Verne: Around the World in Eighty Days, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

various hack writers: Ellery Queen mysteries.

[Barton]

A favorite pulp "area" for me is Abyssinia (Ethiopia) 1930-1940. You can have facistists (both kinds Italian and German), adventurers, spies, gun runners, and even treasure hunters.

A great book is from Osprey Publishing; Men-at-Arms Series
The Italian Invasion of Abyssinia 1935-36
by David Nicolle and illustrated by Rafaele Ruggeri.
A great book (short 48 pages) with many photos and beautiful illustrations.

[teh bunneh]

I hope you'll be including a list of some of the great pulp magazines of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Black Mask, Detective, and others gave most of the people in the pulp genre their start!

Bill.
(I'll post a better list when I get home and can look at my own collection).

[Lamrok]

I have several sets of encyclopedias from the era, and I think the "Worldbook" is probably the most useful, since it is a bit more focused on explaining things to kids than adults. These types of explanations tend to be a bit easier to digest for the modern reader, and tend to be a bit more colorful for the modern gamer.