[Pulp] Suggested Reads

[BlackSword]

Previously in the Star Hero area there have been discussions about bibliographies for such genres as military sci fi. Well, here is a chance to suggest books in the style, or reprints of stories from the pulp magazines.

 

If recommending a specific books please include all the information you can as they may be hard to find. Otherwise authors and particular works would be a great place to start. (I looked through archives and didn't really see any pulp era bibliography, let me know if I missed it). There is a discussion in "A Very Pulp Hero Movie" about what constitues pulp, so lets just leave this thread to authors and books (heh, like asking to stay on topic ever works ).

[Lord Liaden]

Well, there's certainly the long series of novels about Doc Savage, one of the archetypal pulp era heroes, by "Kenneth Robeson" (apparently a pseudonym, although I never found out for who). The adventures of the Man of Bronze are set in that time period, with fascinating "pulpy" characters, exotic locales, and the kind of "super-science" imagined in that era. Used book dealers and libraries should have quite a few of them available.

 

As a fun variation on that theme, try the novels featuring "Doc Sidhe" by Aaron Allston, best-selling novelist, game designer and HERO System guru. Pulp meets fantasy; very cool stuff. You can even download a free ebook of the first novel from Aaron's website, http://www.aaronallston.com .

[Darren Watts]

Start with the classics- Doc Savage, the Shadow, Tarzan. Once you've got a few of those under your belt the various modern pastiches (like Aaron's excellent books) will make a lot more sense. dw

[assault]

In the detective genre: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner. All of them wrote novels as well as short stories that appeared in the pulps.

 

Hammett and Chandler are as "hardboiled" as it gets. Gardner, of course, created Perry Mason!

 

Between them, you probably have all the mystery plots you can eat.

 

Alan

[Darren Watts]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

"Kenneth Robeson" (apparently a pseudonym, although I never found out for who).

 

Kenneth Robeson was the pen name for the prolific Lester Dent when writing Doc Savage and the Avenger. Other writers who "officially" continued both series after Dent also used that name, including Paul Ernst and Ron Goulart. dw

[KA.]

Here are some places on the web to read pulp stories.

 

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Sax_Rohmer/

Has a couple of reprints of Fu Manchu novels

 

http://www.spaceports.com/~deshadow/

A fantastic collection of stories from The Shadow Magazine

 

Enjoy.

 

KA.

[Bozimus]

Originally posted by KA.

Here are some places on the web to read pulp stories.

 

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Sax_Rohmer/

Has a couple of reprints of Fu Manchu novels

 

http://www.spaceports.com/~deshadow/

A fantastic collection of stories from The Shadow Magazine

 

Enjoy.

 

KA.

 

Thanks for those links! Gonna download a Shadow story now...

[Ghost who Walks]

Some of these predate Pulp a bit:

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs

http://burroughs.thefreelibrary.com/

 

Arthur Conan Doyle

http://doyle.thefreelibrary.com/

 

Alexandre Dumas

http://dumas.thefreelibrary.com/

 

Jules Verne

http://verne.thefreelibrary.com/

[ArmlessTigerMan]

Black Mask Online http://www.blackmask.com/page.php has a good pulp fiction section.

[ShelleyCM]

Nero Wolfe

 

It's not pulp per se, but Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories were written over a forty year span, and are rich in period detail. That I was devoted to the A&E show (now on DVD!) has nothing to do with my crush on Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin. Well...OK. Maybe a little.

 

-Shelley

[KA.]

Re: Nero Wolfe

 

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

It's not pulp per se, but Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories were written over a forty year span, and are rich in period detail. That I was devoted to the A&E show (now on DVD!) has nothing to do with my crush on Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin. Well...OK. Maybe a little.

 

-Shelley

 

Just wanted to say that I bought the set of DVDs. They are excellent, and I don't have a crush on Timothy Hutton.

 

I also picked up a complete set of the books in paperback on eBay a couple of months ago.

Well worth reading for background detail, although they are not "pulp".

 

KA.

[ShelleyCM]

Re: Re: Nero Wolfe

 

Originally posted by KA.

Well worth reading for background detail, although they are not "pulp".

 

The books are great. My husband's best friend found out I was interested in them, and out of the blue shipped me his collection -- I devoured them! They're fast reads, very fun -- may make you want to start wearing a fedora, even.

 

-Shelley

[BlackSword]

Re: Re: Re: Nero Wolfe

 

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

The books are great. My husband's best friend found out I was interested in them, and out of the blue shipped me his collection -- I devoured them! They're fast reads, very fun -- may make you want to start wearing a fedora, even.

 

-Shelley

Then I'll have to pick them up and dust my fedora off. I have this feeling I am going to have to get an old fan and poor lighting in my cublicle at work. Then I can start talking like I am narrating my work life.

 

My mother is a big Nero Wolfe fan, so I can always have a steady supply of books. I do have a copy of one his books. I picked up one at a used book store, so I'll be sure to read through it.

[AtomicGladiator]

The Vintage Library has a wealth of resources, many many old pulp reprints I can't find anywhere else, both in electronic form and paper. They're not free, but they've got hard to find stuff. There's a lot of reprints of my very favorite pulp hero, The Spider.

 

 

http://www.vintagelibrary.com/pulp/index.cfm

 

The Shadow PDF site has quite a few reprints of Shadow stories from the pulps in PDF format, complete with the original illustrations. Nicely done, and free downloads.

 

http://www.shadowpdf.net/

 

Maxwell Grant's Shadow el al. site has a lot of the old pulp covers for download and some articles and links, I think.

 

http://webs.lanset.com/lurch/pulp/shadow.html

[Kevin Scrivner]

Many pulp suspense and horror stories were collected in "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" and "Rivals of Weird Tales" -- two hardback anthologies published in the 1980s.

 

Others worth reading:

 

H. Rider Haggard -- "She" and "King Solomon's Mines." Haggard was challenged to write a novel as good as Rober Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and practically invented the jungle romance.

 

Rudyard Kipling -- Best known today perhaps for "The Jungle Book" and "Just So Stories." But he wrote a lot of exotic tales of suspense and the supernatural, too. "Mark of the Beast" and "The Haunted Rickshaw" are two excellent short stories that come to mind.

 

Arthur Conan Doyle -- Again, he's best known for creating Sherlock Holmes, but Doyle also created Professor Challenger of "The Lost World" and "The Poison Belt." Like Kipling, he snuck in a few science fiction and supernatural stories in there, too.

 

Sax Rohmer -- Creator of the insidious Doctor Fu Manchu. He also wrote a series of mysteries that didn't feature Fu such as "The Golden Scorpion," "The Yellow Claw," "Bat Wing."

 

Zane Grey -- Go West, young man! Grey's books such as "The Border Legion" and "The Thundering Herd" were written in the early part of the 20th century when real cowboys and not-quite-subdued Indians were still around. Action light on graphic violence, genuinely heroic cowpokes, and a big side order of romantic suspense.

 

H.P. Lovecraft -- Creator of the Cthulhu Mythos and a worth successor to Edgar Allan Poe in the scare department.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs -- He's already been mentioned, but don't neglect his John Carter of Mars and Carson Napier of Venus sagas. The Pelucidar novels about a world inside a hollow Earth are good, too.

 

Personally, I think the whole "pulp" schtick encompasses more than just the serialized novels published in cheap magazines. The genre includes the whole '20s, '30s, and '40s pop cultural scene. With that in mind, I'd include movie serials, newspaper strips, and radio dramas -- all of which cross-fertilized each other and the pulps. The Shadow was created on radio and migrated to the pulps. "Terry and the Pirates," rip-roaring pulp adventure in China, was a newspaper daily comic strip. "Tailspin Tommy" and "Smilin' Jack" were heroic aviators that also began as newspaper strips and moved to other media.

 

In addition to obvious radio show selections such as "The Shadow," "The Green Hornet," "Suspense," and "The Lone Ranger," don't neglect nearly forgotten adventure classics such as "I Love A Mystery," "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," "Bold Venture," "Escape," "Chandu the Magician," and "Box 13." Also, many of the famous pulp detectives migrated to radio: The Saint (Vincent Price), Nero Wolfe (Sidney Greenstreet), Sam Spade, Philip Marlow (Gerald Mohr), Richard Diamond, The Falcon, among others.

 

You can catch many of these radio shows online at http://www.radiospirits.com and http://www.radiolovers.com

 

Favorite movie serials include "Daredevils of the Red Circle," "Drums of Fu Manchu," "Mysterious Doctor Satan," "Adventures of Captain Marvel," "The Crimson Ghost," "G-Men vs. The Black Dragon," "S.O.S. Coastguard." All of these are still available on VHS or DVD or can be borrowed through your interlibrary loan program.

 

Good sources for serials include http://www.moviesunlimited.com and vcihomeentertainment.com

[Michael Hopcroft]

Originally posted by assault

In the detective genre: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner. All of them wrote novels as well as short stories that appeared in the pulps.

 

Hammett and Chandler are as "hardboiled" as it gets. Gardner, of course, created Perry Mason!

 

Between them, you probably have all the mystery plots you can eat.

 

IIRDC, the character Erle Stanley Gardner originally created is very muich different from the charfacter Raymond Burr made famous on TV. reading one of the original perry Mason novels from the 40s was a revlatory experience.

 

The original Perry Mason had a lot of rougish charm to him.; Sinking his teeth into a good, scandalous mystery was his favorite part of the pracitce of law, to the point that it frequently got him into trouble. he actually expresses delight when discovering corpses because it means a new challenge to his intellect. Burr's mason, by contrast, is grave to a fault and takes himself and everything around him extremely seriously.l

 

There was pair of perry mason mvoies makde in the 1940's who protrayed the earlier, more rougish mason. I wish I knew where I could find them -- I think they;'ve been shown on TCM a few times.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Re: Nero Wolfe

 

Originally posted by KA.

Just wanted to say that I bought the set of DVDs. They are excellent, and I don't have a crush on Timothy Hutton.

 

I also picked up a complete set of the books in paperback on eBay a couple of months ago.

Well worth reading for background detail, although they are not "pulp".

 

KA.

 

Ellery Queen is also in this period. The 70s TV series would make a great TV box set, Jim Hutton played Queen as a lanky, ccentirc mystery writer who was incredubly sharp., In an interesting stylistic twist, he would turn to the audience near the climax and ask us if we'd figured everything out based on all he'd seen. the puzzels were so good that I never did, but I have an inrodinate amount of fun trying.

 

I lvoe a nvoel or TV shpw that really engages the intellect and forces you to think. Detective stories are really good for that. Plus a good dectective film or TV series gives an actor great opportunities. Joan hickson and David Suchet had wonderful runs as agatha Christe's great detectives miss marple and hercule Poirot, respectively, which are also probm this period.

 

And Peter Davison (the 5th Doctor Who) had a short but very impressive run as Albert Campion, a "gentleman adveturer" who name was an alias and who solved mysteries as a way of writing wrongs and putting his talents to good use. The scene where Campion was introducing hbimself to the mirror in the episode "Look to the Lady" was pur magic. I wonder what peter is doing these days? I quite enjoyed interviewing and meeting him on one visit he made to portland for a Who-related publicity appearance. The rougish gleam in the eye is all him, and he made a career in the 70's and '80s of playing charming rouges like Tristan Farnon (All Creatures Great and Small) and the Doctor.

[ArmlessTigerMan]

I was serving my court-ordered community service this week, and while working at the local Goodwill store I found an awesome weird tales anthology:

Weird Tales, The Magazine That Never Dies.

As opposed to the Hero Pulps like Doc Savage and The Shadow, this book is packed with short stories and novellas, mainly of the horror and 'shudder-pulp' variety. I highly recommend it, especially if you can find it for $1.29 like I did.

[Thag13]

Originally posted by ArmlessTigerMan

I was serving my court-ordered community service this week, and while working at the local Goodwill store I found an awesome weird tales anthology:

Weird Tales, The Magazine That Never Dies.

As opposed to the Hero Pulps like Doc Savage and The Shadow, this book is packed with short stories and novellas, mainly of the horror and 'shudder-pulp' variety. I highly recommend it, especially if you can find it for $1.29 like I did.

 

I love finding books at a cheap price. It brings out the Scroge McDuck in me.

 

Speakingof which, Goodwills and Salvation Army stores are great places to find such older books as we are talking about.

 

And at usually cheap prices also.

 

I am also thinking of the Spider crimefighter whos adventures were reprinted a few years ago and can be cheap finds at book stores.

 

I would add more, but everyone else has covered this subject very well.

 

Thanks to everyone for adding such great links. I enjoyed them very much....What a great board this is...

[Lamrok]

As several folks have mentioned, the Doc Savage stories are probably the best source for the essential pulp ethos. They aren't very well written, I swear I can tell when Dent takes a swig of bourbon, but they cover the themes, places, and plots that emcompass most of what we think of as "pulp." These are an excellent resource, partly by virtue of there beeing so many of them. They aren't that difficult to come by on ebay, either.

 

My farorites: Seabury Quinn (the "Jules Degrandin" stories have been reprinted in paperback, but they are long out of print and very difficult to find, at least they were last time I looked), HP Lovecraft (definitely a pulp author), Dashielle Hammett (great, almost tactile depiction of the era). I also like "Weird Menace" story lines (man in mask pretends to be monster), though I don't know of any easily-available sorce of stories written by a particular author.

 

Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder" is a great read for anyone thinking of running a mystery-oriented episode.

 

Lamrok

[Koshka]

Re: Re: Re: Nero Wolfe

 

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft

Ellery Queen is also in this period. The 70s TV series would make a great TV box set, Jim Hutton played Queen as a lanky, ccentirc mystery writer who was incredubly sharp., In an interesting stylistic twist, he would turn to the audience near the climax and ask us if we'd figured everything out based on all he'd seen. the puzzels were so good that I never did, but I have an inrodinate amount of fun trying.

 

The "Challenge to the Reader" was a standard feature of the Golden Age Ellery Queen novels, and I liked having it included in the TV version. Never got the answer, but it was a nice touch having it.

 

I've seen the radio Green Hornet mentioned in this thread, but the movie serials are also good. (The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Again .)

[FenrisUlf]

Well, I was gonna mention Jules De Grandin, but seeing as someone else already mentioned him...

 

There is, however, the early works of Manly Wade Wellman. Great supernatural stories, done in a unique style. Many of his tales have been republished recently, but the books are going for about $35 a pop.

 

You might also look around for A. Merritt. Hard to find, but the man wrote some /amazing/ lost world tales (Dwellers in the Mirage, The Ship of Ishtar), horror (Burn Witch Burn, Creep Shadow Creep), and even a weird mystery tale (Seven Footprints To Satan). He is one of the great forgotten writers and anyone who wants a good read or some great inspiration would be well repaid by searching his works out.

[Thag13]

I would recomend Dennis Wheatly. A great British Horror novelest. While someof the stories were a little late to be considered pulp, He really stands up as the master of Satanic Horror

 

HIs books The Devil Rides out, To the Devil, a Daughter have both been made into excellent movies. Both of which are now out on DVD at Anchor Bay.

 

His books are a little hard to find, but worth the trouble.

[Old Man]

I would recommend Dydeetown World. I don't remember who wrote it and I'm not even sure of the spelling, but it had a pulp feel even though it was set in the future.

[BlackSword]

Re: [Pulp] Suggested Reads

 

Sliight switch. As many Pulp adventures are set in the time the original pulp stories were written, any suggestions for history and/or art books that deal with the pulp era?

 

I saw a coffee table type book titled Pulp Culture which reprinted Pulp covers and art from the time period. I didn't pick it up at the time and according to Amazon its out of print.