#pulp fiction

[glenhannah]

Retro Magazine Gallery No. 10 (Detective Pulp)

The golden years of pulp fiction brought us quite a few pulp magazines with the word Detective in the title and a lot of women in peril.

[haitchgoose]

(It's All) Pulp Fiction

(This post can also be found here.)

It’s come to my attention that I’m a pulp reader. Perhaps I always was.

When I was younger I consumed primarily sci-fi and fantasy, and while that’s still true, my new love has evolved into a regression, at least temporally: pulp fiction. The term, as many know, comes from the kind of paper on which these stories were printed on—a kind of cheap, acidic paper that deteriorates and yellows over time. It was first used to refer to “pulp magazines” which were popular from the late 1890’s through 1950’s.

Nowadays, the term “pulp fiction” is used as a pejorative for any work (especially those of genre fiction) which are not/could not be considered “literature.” Although, in recent years, academia has come to recognize literary genre fiction as not only valuable popular media, but also academically viable.

When I say that I have come to love pulp fiction, I am simultaneously talking about the small, yellowing, 100-page Louis L’Amour paperbacks I pick up from the Goodwill and secondhand stores, and the comics that come out on a monthly basis. I’m talking about the racist and sexist romance comics from the 50’s and Tarzan and A Princess of Mars and Kiowa Trail. Indeed, some of these authors (like Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance) had an undeniable influence on their successors as a whole. Tarzan, though has since fallen out of the height of its popularity, is a “modern” innovation of the captivity narrative, bildungsroman, and the adventure novel all in one, while still maintaining the racist and orientalist views of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Barsoom Chronicles, are planetary romances of sweeping proportions, with developed worlds and cultures (before such a thing as “world-building”), whose primary character, John Carter (a former Confederate soldier), and his incredible ability to launch himself through the Martian skies is the direct inspiration for Superman’s early abilities (“Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap a tall building in a single bound”).

The more I read, the more I come to realize how much the landscape of American Popular Media is shaped by stories and authors long forgotten. Modern science-fiction and fantasy bear the echoes of stories that defied their own genres: the planetary romance is now few and far between except, perhaps in erotica (which is a whole other can of worms) and the critically acclaimed Avatar movies directed by James Cameron. The Tarzan archetype is now no longer the story of survival of a man of the savage land, but instead is hidden in the survival stories like Lord of the Flies and Hatchet. The hero pulp genre, which originally featured characters like Arsine Lupin, Ka-Zar, and Conan have since become Netflix series and comic titles that stand idle on the shelves as the industry has contracted.

In addition to the shrinkage of pulp fiction production and consumption, genre fiction has become less stigmatized by the popular opinion, though some genres (such as the recent “Romantasy” genre) still remain under scrutiny. Genre fiction has become more accepted and is therefore less likely to be segregated or disparaged. The lurid, racy tales of pulp fiction full of violence, romance, and adventure have become more and more popular within the public opinion. Game of Thrones, for instance, might’ve once fallen under the pulp fiction category. There are few places left where true, scandalous, divergent, and taboo stories stand. Fanfiction is one of the most recent successors of that torrid low-brow medium.

The pulp genre, like the paper has been recycled and, well, turned into new pulp for the next generations. Maybe in the end, it’s all pulp fiction. And I love it all, which means, man, I love pulp fiction.

[blackoutintheredroom]

art as promised here is one of the many mias i found in my school notes

[met4pmh3t4min]

TINY VIC AND VINCENT VEGA COMIC🫂💥

Continuing to be delusional about Vega brothers interactions bc there's no way I'm getting rid of my hyperfixation.....(And I'm going insane because they never met on screen)

IK THEY'RE TWINS BUT I LIKE TO THINK VIC IS A BIT OLDER AND ALWAYS BOASTS IT YKYK ... Vincent is a liittle bit traumatized by his sibling😶‍🌫️

[c-of-d]

Midwood Girls

The Outcasts by March Hastings

Illustration by Rudy Nappi

Midwood, F134, 1961

[movingoutanthony]

Hes cute

[booklyn-xyz]

Free eBook

Armageddon 2419 A.D. – Philip Francis Nowlan

The original Buck Rogers story! A 20th-century man awakens in a war-torn 25th century and joins humanity’s fight to reclaim Earth from its alien oppressors in this classic sci-fi adventure by Philip Francis Nowlan.

Armageddon 2419 A.D. – Philip Francis Nowlan

The original Buck Rogers story! A 20th-century man awakens in a war-torn 25th century and joins humanity’s fight to reclaim Earth from its a

[movingoutanthony]

Butch in Davids outfit from Moonlighting