What "Pulp" have you read lately ?

[GCMorris]

Continuing with my Lovecraft collection. The Shadow out of Time.

[Kharis2000]

Working my way through 'The Shadow in Review' by John Olsen. Review and plot summary of every Shadow novel, the serials, the 90's movie, and more. Available POD on Lulu for the insane price of $10.00. [Note: I have no connection to the project and receive no kickbacks... I'm just a nerd for this stuff.]

 

http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/john-olsen/the-shadow-in-review/paperback/product-22786708.html

[st barbara]

 I haven't read it yet, but I received as a christmas present a copy of   "The WPA Guide To New York City", a 1992 reprint of a 1939 volume , over 600 pages of detail about the city. Oh yes, and happy St Barbara's day everybody !

[st barbara]

Working my way through 'The Shadow in Review' by John Olsen. Review and plot summary of every Shadow novel, the serials, the 90's movie, and more. Available POD on Lulu for the insane price of $10.00. [Note: I have no connection to the project and receive no kickbacks... I'm just a nerd for this stuff.]

 

http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/john-olsen/the-shadow-in-review/paperback/product-22786708.html

Do you have "Chronology Of Shadow" by Rick Lai, or his other pulp works such as "Chronology of Bronze", "Daring Adventurers" and "Criminal Masterminds" ?

[Kharis2000]

No, the money has never lined up for me to buy them, but it will eventually. I was lucky enough that my local university library had all of Robert Sampson's 'Yesterday's Faces' series so I've read all of them even if I only own the first two. 

[freakboy6117]

I just listened to ACK ACK Macquace Which is a weird Combo of Cyberpunk Postsingularity Scifi Set on an alternate earth with Giant atomic Zepplins.

 

The Eponymous ACK ACK Macquace is the hero of a video game A One Eyed Cigar Chomping Twin Colt Weilding Fighter Ace Battling Nazi Ninjas And foo Fighters In A Battle Of Britiain That Never Ends.

 

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13547332-ack-ack-macaque

 

It sounds silly but actually is a very deep story

[st barbara]

No, the money has never lined up for me to buy them, but it will eventually. I was lucky enough that my local university library had all of Robert Sampson's 'Yesterday's Faces' series so I've read all of them even if I only own the first two. 

Pity. If you DO get more money to spend on Pulp reference in the future I suggest that "The Great Pulp Heroes" by Don Hutchison and "Master Of The Pulps : The Collected Essays of Nick Carr" edited by Ron Hanna may be worth going after.

[st barbara]

I just listened to ACK ACK Macquace Which is a weird Combo of Cyberpunk Postsingularity Scifi Set on an alternate earth with Giant atomic Zepplins.

 

The Eponymous ACK ACK Macquace is the hero of a video game A One Eyed Cigar Chomping Twin Colt Weilding Fighter Ace Battling Nazi Ninjas And foo Fighters In A Battle Of Britiain That Never Ends.

 

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13547332-ack-ack-macaque

 

It sounds silly but actually is a very deep story

There is at least one sequel to "Ack-ack Macaque" called "Hive Monkey". The author is Gareth Powell.

[Kharis2000]

Finished a couple of gems:

 

The Strange Adventures of the Purple Scar by John S. Endicott - Doctor, plastic surgeon, and renaissance man creates a mask that's an exact replica of his deceased police officer brother's acid-scarred, post immersion in a river face, and wears it to fight crime. Low scale criminals, but a high-concept crimefighter. (The therapy sessions for this guy must be epic given his chosen disguise)

 

Phantoms in Bronze: The Phantom Detective  - a collection of Phantom Detective stories (first one's I've read) written by a prolific Doc Savage ghost writer. Interesting concepts, some good ideas, and a few brilliant ones.

 

The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge - Caucasian adventurers against a criminal mastermind and Tong leader in China. A little slow, but great atmosphere. Plus, the Dalai Lama is a bad ass.

 

The Dr. Zeng Omnibus - Occidental hero masquerades as a Chinese physician in San Francisco. He fights crime. With a one-legged assistant. That hides equipment kits, radios, and occasionally guns and knives in his artificial leg.

[GCMorris]

Journey to the Center of the Earth now.

[Spence]

 I haven't read it yet, but I received as a christmas present a copy of   "The WPA Guide To New York City", a 1992 reprint of a 1939 volume , over 600 pages of detail about the city. Oh yes, and happy St Barbara's day everybody !

 

Great books.  Over the years I I have managed to get New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.   NY and LA are newer reprints but my SF copy is an original complete with penciled in notes from some one visiting the city in the way back.  Fairly hard to read due to being old pencil and cursive. 

[Kharis2000]

Working my way through 'When the Death Bat Flies' by Norvell Page. Best known for authoring the Spider pulp stories, Page turned out a lot of mystery stories as well. This is a collection of Page's detective stories from DETECTIVE TALES, THE SPIDER, DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY and STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES.

[st barbara]

Working my way through 'When the Death Bat Flies' by Norvell Page. Best known for authoring the Spider pulp stories, Page turned out a lot of mystery stories as well. This is a collection of Page's detective stories from DETECTIVE TALES, THE SPIDER, DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY and STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES.

Page, like a lot of his contemporaries, (e g Howard, Brackett) worked in a lot of genres, including fantasy in Page's case.

[Lucius]

I haven't been reading pulp, but I have been looking at pulp covers....

 

https://pulpcovers.com/tag/humansacrifice/page/6/

 

 

And just had to share this gem of description:

"Yes, the evil cult leader is spray painting the chained girl gold. No, I don't know why."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary might hazard a guess

[ArmlessTigerMan]

Not 'reading' per say, but I've been working my way through Clark Ashton Smith's oeuvre in audio form on youtube.  Some of the narrators are better than others, but you can't beat the price.  Some examples:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdGscVDaxZk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obbgTkWgGbM

 

To get the most out of his stuff, you'd probably want to google the contents of his different story collections (Zothique, Hyperborea, ...) and organize your listening that way.

 

Also lots of REH on youtube as well, but haven't gotten around to those just yet.

[st barbara]

I haven't been reading pulp, but I have been looking at pulp covers....

 

https://pulpcovers.com/tag/humansacrifice/page/6/

 

 

And just had to share this gem of description:

"Yes, the evil cult leader is spray painting the chained girl gold. No, I don't know why."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary might hazard a guess

Maybe he is an ancestor of Auric Goldfinger ?

[st barbara]

I just got (but, of course haven't read yet)  "Pulp Heroes : Khan Dynasty" by Wayne Reinagel. Looks like a "Doc Savage" pastiche. It also looks like it is book 2 of a series. Damn, i'll have to order book one mow !

[st barbara]

Apropos of Doc Savage Pastiches I have recently (as in last week) read the collected "Thunder Jim Wade" stories by Henry Kuttner. Kuttner was a good writer and, although it isn't his best work , the stories were still a lot of fun. I particularly loved the "Thunderbug" , the hero"s tank/aircraft/submarine.

[zslane]

I recently started reading Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane stories.

[Kharis2000]

Finished the second volume of Super Detective Jim Anthony; The Complete Series. The first two stories weren't bad at all, but the third fell a bit flat. A little spicier than the run of the mill story of this type, but hardly a danger to the morals of anyone over the age of, oh, six. One of the stories had, what I thought was going to be a pretty cool artificially-generated undersea methane bubble generator to sink ships, but instead went with the (at the time) more fantastical and 'in' atomic power.  In the last one, it took too long for Jim to figure out how the killer was killing people off, but I'll grant the the idea of an ice knife was a lot newer an idea then. Still not bad stories, although, the last one was, as I said, the weakest.

 

Starting on the Halcyon Classics' collection of Craig Kennedy: Scientific Detective. Three stories in, it... well, honestly, it's painful. Episode one almost killed the collection for me with the solution being the difference between a Caucasian suspect's 'ape-like qualities of the blood' and a non-white suspect's 'gorilla-like qualities of the blood.' I've accepted that the genre does not share the modern sensibilities regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, or any number of other social issues, but this one ws bad enough that I had to walk away for a week before I was willing to try again. The next two were less awful in the toxic racism sense, but they were, well, sort of average. The Thinking Machine was a better read, as was Max Carrados (witht he exception of the one supernatural-themed episode).

[bigdamnhero]

"The Greatest Adventure" from Dynamite Comics, written by Bill "Fables" Willingham, with art by Cesar Razek. Essentially an attempt to mash together all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' heroes together into one story. Only 2 issues in, but a lot of fun so far and definitely captures the "feel."

[Kharis2000]

Still stalled trying to finish Craig Kennedy. I'll get there, but man, it is tough going.

 

In the meantime, I have finished the following:

 

The Adventures of the Green Lama, Vol. 1 - He's a Buddhist pulp hero that doesn't use weapons except for a prayer scarf and some Tibetian martial arts, backed by a potion of 'radioactive salts' he imbibes before setting out to do good deeds. Also serialized and consecutive. These read more 'modern' than many pulps.

 

Doc Savage: The Infernal Buddha - Part of the 'Wild Adventures of Doc Savage' series that Will Murray is writing. This one feels more like an early Doc than some.

 

The Moon Man Archives, Vol. 2 - Continuing my way through these. Interesting in that the series is actually serial in nature, with events in earlier stories carrying over into later ones.

 

E. Hoffman Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective - Interesting collection of stories that are linked first by d'Artois, and then by his sidekick. The latter stories are more 'spicy pulp' than 'occult detective' but they're all by Price.

 

The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes - Jess Nevin's listing of every pulp hero he can document. It's $10.00 in the Kindle edition, so go buy one. The print is broken into four volumes at about $25.00 apiece, so the e-book version is the best buy.

 

Ravenwood the Complete Series - Interesting in that the detective has actual supernatural powers, albeit somewhat unreliable ones, but his investigations never really encounter the supernatural.

 

Triplanetary - E.E. Doc Smith's start to the Lensman cycle. Pulpy, epic sci-fi at it's classic best.

[Kharis2000]

Still struggling through Craig Kennedy. Nothing as egregious as the 'ape/gorilla blood' thing, but I cringe every time I start a short story in anticipation.

 

 

The Cobra 'King of Detectives' (Richard Sale) - Kind of an odd mix. The first few stories are all starring the Cobra, whose sthick is a cigarette holder blowgun that he shoots folks with concentrated cobra venom darts with. Some interesting story ideas, but I started laughing when he engaged in a fistfight with the blowgun in his mouth and didn't break/lose. swallow the thing (or the dart). The rest of the stories all do not involve the Cobra but do hinge on snakes in some form or another - apparently the writer was an amateur herpetologist.

 

Genius Jones (Lester Dent) - Much more light-hearted than expected. A shipwreck survivor grows to well-muscled adulthood in the arctic, memorizing an encyclopedia to learn about the world. ONce rescued, he winds up trying to give away a huge some of money to people that need it so that he can inherit the responsibility of managing a larger charity estate. Gangsters, femme fatales, millionaire's daughters, and more run amok. In many ways, this reads like an attempt to write a story that Hollywood would buy to make into a film.

 

Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars i San Francisco's Chinatown (Richard Dillon) - On the dry side, but a lot of pretty detailed information on how the infamous Tong wars started, were carried out, and ended. Recommended for history buffs and those setting campaigns in San Francisco in/around 1905-1920.

[st barbara]

Interesting "Kharis 2000" I don't have anything on the San Francisco Tong wars but I DO have a book titled "Tong Wars :The Untold Story Of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown" By Scott D Seligman (Viking, 2016). Apparently set in 1925.

[Kharis2000]

Interesting "Kharis 2000" I don't have anything on the San Francisco Tong wars but I DO have a book titled "Tong Wars :The Untold Story Of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown" By Scott D Seligman (Viking, 2016). Apparently set in 1925.

 

I bought my copy of Hatchet Men on Kindle, which kept the cost under $5.00 and it was worth every peny. I'm off to see if you NY-centric book is available.