Mentor Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word The easiest way may be to say: "You wanna know what's pulp? The Phantom' date=' Mandrake, Lovecraft and Indy -- if it feels like them, it's pulp."[/quote'] True dat. Repped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliceTheOwl Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I never quite know how to define pulp, either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I think of stuff like the old radio thrillers ... Green Hornet' date=' The Shadow ... but I guess approximately no one has encountered those any more.[/quote'] I sometimes wonder if my brothers and I were the only people on the eastern hemisphere to see the Shadow movie. That was seriously pulp! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I don't reach for the paranormal immediately when I think of pulp, which is my only reservation about L. Marcus's list there ... Lovecraft and Mandrake use that as a fundamental underlying structure. Indiana Jones has the glorious pulp feel, but even that goes for wierd faster than I think is truly necessary for the pulps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I sometimes wonder if my brothers and I were the only people on the eastern hemisphere to see the Shadow movie. That was seriously pulp! Heh. I never saw the movie. In my youth, AFN Radio was still playing the radio series occasionally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliceTheOwl Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I sometimes wonder if my brothers and I were the only people on the eastern hemisphere to see the Shadow movie. That was seriously pulp! I can't speak for your part of the world, but I liked it! ^ v ^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliceTheOwl Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word Heh. I never saw the movie. In my youth' date=' AFN Radio was still playing the [u']radio series[/u] occasionally. My dad gave me some recordings of the show on audio tape once. I wonder what happened to them . . .? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mentor Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I must admit that our Pulp Games have gone weird fast. My original PC was a two fisted detective with a young millionaire and his Filipino houseboy/boxer as partners. Seemed mundane enough. Once we added in the beautiful Chinese mystic and discovered that our chief enemies were the ageless Yellow Claw and Bavarian Illuminati, everything else was out the window. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word . . . Sounds gloriously weird! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word You might see if they've seen Maltese Falcon. That's on the non-wierd edge of pulp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 12, 2006 Report Share Posted July 12, 2006 Re: The Last Word I'm a bit ambivalent on where the border runs between pulp and film noir . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word Heh. I never saw the movie. In my youth' date=' AFN Radio was still playing the [u']radio series[/u] occasionally. I heard a revival of the radio show in the late '70s or thereabouts, and saw the ('80s?) movie - which I thought was okay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word I'm a bit ambivalent on where the border runs between pulp and film noir . . . I think of all "original era" film noir (somewhere around '30s to '50s) as pulp, and later on it may or may not be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word I must admit that our Pulp Games have gone weird fast. My original PC was a two fisted detective with a young millionaire and his Filipino houseboy/boxer as partners. Seemed mundane enough. Once we added in the beautiful Chinese mystic and discovered that our chief enemies were the ageless Yellow Claw and Bavarian Illuminati' date=' everything else was out the window.[/quote'] Hey, Mentor, good to see you around. I think mystical is well-suited to pretty much any pulp. Even the Maltese Falcon implies a mystical quality to the statuette. Though I'm not suggesting it's necessary, either, but it tends to lurk even in such subtle manifestations as the amazingly-recurrent-and-quickly-dead girlfriend, the bizarrely frequent lucky turn of events, and other such constant presences of basically unnatural coincidence and providence. That sort of serendipity is extreme even in gritty pulps, and is such an accepted convention, requiring a specific sort of suspension of disbelief, that to me the unnatural if not the supernatural is close enough to being a pulp convention. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word Yup. There's a heated debate over wether the Phantom is a superhero or not going on between some friends of mine. Your take? Superhero. I don't consider pulp a genre, it is a medium. To me pulp is the wood-pulp magazines of the 1920s to the 1950s. Each magazine focused on certain genres, but collectively pulp is genreless. They type of stories common in this era could be termed pulp but that disregards a lot of other pulp stories. You say: The easiest way may be to say: "You wanna know what's pulp? The Phantom' date=' Mandrake, Lovecraft and Indy -- if it feels like them, it's pulp."[/quote']From wikipedia: A common misconception is that 'pulp fiction' is limited in scope to 1940s adventure fiction in the vein of Indiana Jones. While such fiction is, in fact, encompassed under the heading of 'pulp fiction', the heading itself is by no means limited to describing only that type of fiction. . Again I stress the usage of pulp being a medium not a genre. Wikipedia continues: Pulp magazines often contained a wide variety of genre fiction, including, but not limited to, detective/mystery, science fiction, adventure, westerns (also see Dime Western), war, sports, railroad, men's adventure ("the sweats"), romance, horror/occult ("weird menace"), and Série Noire (French crime mystery). The American Old West was a mainstay genre of early turn of the century novels as well as later pulp magazines, and lasted longest of all the traditional pulps. Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialised in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Black Mask. Comic books are likewise a medium, superhero being the genre. remember that there were lots of different genre fads published in the comic book medium: monster stories, war stories, westerns etc. When one fad burnt out another replaced it until the 1960s in which superheroes sustained their fad indefiently through the Silver Age, Bronze Age, and to the present. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word Hey, I said it was the easiest way to describe pulp. Not the most accurate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word I think Lovecraft is the most well known of the pulp authors that have managed to be translated. Fritz Leiber and Moorcock were published in some cheap paperbacks in the early nineties' date=' and other than that, there's just some obscure, early scientifiction people in sci-fi collections that I know of.[/quote']I disagree. I'd argue that REH is. Most have heard of the character Conan the Barbarian even if they have no idea of the person who created him. In esense, the authored work is known but the author is anonymous. Ok, so I'm wrong. Biggles, Tarzan and Zorro are probably the more well known pulp characters, not Conan. Wikipedia has this to say about characters: Popular regular pulp fiction characters included: The Avenger, Biggles, Hopalong Cassidy, Conan the Barbarian, Philo Gubb, Doc Savage, G-8, John Carter of Mars, Operator No. 5, Sexton Blake, The Black Bat, The Eel, The Phantom Detective, The Shadow, The Spider, Tarzan, Zorro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word I'm a bit ambivalent on where the border runs between pulp and film noir . . .Wouldn't it be one and the same, genre-wise that is? I think of all "original era" film noir (somewhere around '30s to '50s) as pulp' date=' and later on it may or may not be.[/quote']Like what Cancer says about The Maltese Falcon? Eg: You might see if they've seen Maltese Falcon. That's on the non-wierd edge of pulp. To anyone: Also would you consider the Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) movie to be "pulp"/noir/hardboiled? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word I've gotten the impression that there are very few kids around here that have read any Howard tales. If they think Conan, they think the Governator. Sad but, I believe, true. Now, Biggles, on the other hand, was huge with my dad's generation -- at least among those guys who weren't all that much into sports and things that goes vrooom! Ask anyone under the age of thirty, and I doubt that less than one in fifty wouldn't go 'Dur?' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word To anyone: Also would you consider the Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) movie to be "pulp"/noir/hardboiled? Easy: Campy pulp! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word Hey' date=' I said it was the [i']easiest[/i] way to describe pulp. Not the most accurate. Do you watch 24 -- The real-time counter-terroist/Jack Bauer show? The actress who played Michelle Dessler (Reiko Aylesworth) for seasons 2-5 had this to say: "It's really good, smart, brilliantly done pulp. " (reference). Upon reflection, I agree with her, that is to say, I can see why she considers it pulp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word Easy: Campy pulp! Agreed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word Now' date=' Biggles, on the other hand, was huge with my dad's generation -- at least among those guys who weren't all that much into sports and things that goes vrooom! Ask anyone under the age of thirty, and I doubt that less than one in fifty wouldn't go 'Dur?'[/quote']Yeah, you are probably right. It will be a fun experiment, to ask friends if they have heard of Biggles. I'm sure all will have heard of Zorro and Tarzan. That alone shows that there is more to pulp than Cthulhu and Indiana Jones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word This is why I like these kind of threads. These "subthreads" or discussions within discussions are wonderful. It's more like a flowing/organic conversation betwen people than posting an opinion and waiting a couple of hours of a reply. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 13, 2006 Report Share Posted July 13, 2006 Re: The Last Word . . . Which has nothing at all to do with getting in the Last Word. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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