Existing comment:
"Pulp Fiction"
Pulp magazines ("the pulps") were inexpensive magazines produced in America from the early 1900s until the 1950s. They succeeded "dime novels" as cheap fiction that sold widely. Pulps were printed on cheap paper with ragged, untrimmed edges. But the covers, printed on better quality slick paper, featured full-color art -- often lurid and sensational. Interior illustrations were black and white, pen drawings.
The magazines were prices at 10 to 25 cents apiece and typically ran 128 pages or a little more. The pulps were usually produced monthly -- sometimes weekly. Paper shortages in World War II added to the costs of pulps and forced some publishers to reduce the format to a smaller, digest size. When the genre declined it was replaced by comic books and paperback novels.
Many respected authors wrote for the pulps, such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Zane Grey, and Jack London. Memorable characters introduced by the pulps included Buck Rogers, Conan the Barbarian, Doc Savage, Tarzan, Zorro, and Hopalong Cassidy. |