Does anybody actually read "pulp fiction"

Just wondering if there’s anywhere online or where I can buy/read Pulp literature. the kind that inspired the film that Tarantino obviously read lots of.

There’s no pulp mags published anymore (or crappy ones, no real original ones that QT must have read). But you can sure look for them in secondhand book stores like Black Mask (they started a book company later on, so you can find the same authors writing short stories in the mag and publishing novels for the company), Dime Detective, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Amazing Stories.



For comics, you have Doc Savage and Weird Tales, that you can now still found and which are the best. Doc Savage (war stories) comics are still easy to find in old book stores and Weird Tales (horror stories) published collected comics in book (not mags).



Concerning authors, you might know them already cause they mostly become famous when they started to publish novels and not short stories anymore. Such as Philip K. Dick, Elmore Leonard, Conan Doyle, Chandler, Jim Thomson, Robert Bloch, Lovecraft, Cornell Woolrich, HG Wells, Bradbury, William S. Burroughs, David Goodis, upton Sinclair, and so on. So basically now that you have a list, you can look for their short stories and even if you don’t read them in pulp mags, those are the same published in pulp and now collected in books.



I hope it helped you, feel free to ask anything else if you want :wink:

thanks mate. found some cool websites online too. read a bit last night. gonna buy a black mask omnibus on payday. and also modesty blaise. i have some p.k.dick at home. :slight_smile:

All the writers I mention before are all among the best. Different kind of genres but all great. If you want to know more about any of them, just ask :wink:

My name “Kilgore Trout” is Kurt Vonnegut’s pseudo-name. Kilgore Trout wrote pulp fiction in the form of sci-fi stories. According to Vonnegut, the books were sold in the same stores that sold porno magazines.



On another note, I know this guy who is about 50 yrs old who told me that comic books were deemed “one step above porn” and that a lot of parents forbade their children from reading them. They had associations with “communism”, “socialism”, and “being red”…guys like J Edgar Hoover attacked comic books…these are the comics that are really worth $$$. I wonder if Barack Obama read comic books…possibly shared them?

There is a new publisher Hard Case Crimes which is re-issuing a lot of old and new pulp fiction noir novels in paperback with those original lurid covers. I know they’ve published a new one by Stephen King.



As far as the magazines go I know Ellery Queen is still being published. I’ve seen copies of it at Borders. I also noticed on Amazon if you have a Kindle you can download electronic copies of the old magazines pretty cheaply. Not the same as a hard copy but it would be very difficult not to mention expensive to find original copies of many of these old pulps. They were published on such cheap paper so they probably disintegrate if you touch them.

[quote=“Kilgore Trout”]
On another note, I know this guy who is about 50 yrs old who told me that comic books were deemed “one step above porn” and that a lot of parents forbade their children from reading them. They had associations with “communism”, “socialism”, and “being red”…guys like J Edgar Hoover attacked comic books…these are the comics that are really worth $$$. I wonder if Barack Obama read comic books…possibly shared them?
[/quote]

Ahah, I didn’t know they were deemed “one step above porn” as if they were more dangerous for kids than porn mags.

[quote=“nublob”]
They were published on such cheap paper so they probably disintegrate if you touch them.
[/quote]

My dad got some original pulp mags and you can read them without any problems. The paper wasn’t THAT bad. Cheap paper doesn’t mean it disintegrates when you touch it.

i bought the black mask volume 2 or some shit online. really good.

What are the stories inside ? I have a black mask volume somewhere too, I think I left it at my parents place.

There’s tons of websites devoted to Pulp Lit, but they’ve got more commercial stuff, not the low down and dirty stuff. My dad has a box full of dime mags and etc that his dad before he died. Really cool stuff. Sure ebay has some too.

Me? Never! :wink: