The other day, I came across the anthology The Pulps. Edited by Tony Goodstone and published in 1970, it is a nostalgic look back at the heyday of pulp magazines in the 1910s through the 1950s. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss each of the stories it contains, one at a time.
The Pulps is an oversized hardback designed to have dimensions roughly similar to a pulp magazine. In addition to a collection of stories (chosen to be representative rather than for quality, Goodstone tells us), it contains a smattering of vintage ads and excerpts from letters to the editor and other back matter. The presentation of the stories preverves illustrations and mimics original layouts, though the font has obviously been standardized and modernized. The book also contains a collection of full-color magazine covers.
The Pulps features a decent explanatory apparatus. An introductory essay traces the history of pulp fiction, arguing that it has its origins in the moralizing chapbooks of the 1840s. The book is then divided into sections dedicated to adventure, sports, war, westerns, detectives, and so forth. The book offers one great disappointment: Toward its end is an essay about The Shadow and Doc Savage, but it contains stories of neither.
I’ll take these stories one at a time, in the order presented.
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