The influence of pulp fiction--not the Tarrantino movie, which oddly has nothing to do with actual pulp fiction--is everywhere, and it's a pretty bizarre phenomenon. When you realize the extent to which Hollywood movies, virtually all serial television, and most mainstream fiction are indebted to the pulps, it sort of changes your perspective on everything.
Here's the gist: from the 1890s to the 1950s, the only cheap fiction to get a hold of was published in the form of flimsy magazines with horribly sensationalist cover art. Most of them followed a detective, cowboy, or other hero through an adventure-of-the-month. They were usually the length of a short story or novella, told in a few pages every issue. Basically they were the Victorian equivalent of Clive Cussler or Dan Brown novels, but these were being written at a time when the genres were still in the process of conception.
Some of these genres were flat-out invented by pulp writers--hard boiled detective stories, super-heroes, sword and sorcery, and weird fiction (my favorite), to name a few. Their influence was even more far-reaching. Without them, film noir wouldn't have existed, and comic books, fantasy, and science fiction would be unrecognizable. Because they were often published in pieces, and authors centered their stories around a single character like Flash Gordon, Tarzan, or Buck Rogers, the pulps basically invented serial and episodic fiction as we know it.
There are three guys among the larger roster of pulp writers that I want to recommend: H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, and Robert E. Howard. Each of these three changed the world in his own way, and interestingly they all struggled with some deeply seated emotional issues.
I'm including links to the text of my favorites. A great perk of reading pulp fiction is that the bulk of the good stuff is available online, since most of the magazine publishers neglected to renew the copyright within 28 years of publication.
H.P. Lovecraft
This guy is a master. He has one of the most unique and influential styles of any horror or science fiction writer. Stephen King bows to this guy as the father of the American horror genre. He's like Poe with a dash of modernity and a heavy helping of insane sauce. I personally think he invented the psychological thriller. Not everything he wrote is gold (especially the stuff published after his death), but he wrote five that will keep you up at night.
The Call of Cthulhu
Definitely his most popular, this is a short novella wherein a researcher walks you through the manuscript of notes he found in his dead uncle's estate. The notes involve several stories of a secret cult and the strange experiences that surround people's interactions with them. The evidence escalates in magnitude and credulity until the final showdown with the cult and the object of its worship.
Read it here.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Another cult story, this 70-page ditty is a long suicide note of a tourist who gets stuck in a fascinating but dangerous village in southern Massachusetts. He discovers its disturbing history and evades a midnight mobbing, only to find afterwards that he'll never truly escape the terror that rules over the villagers.
Read it here.
The Dunwich Horror
In this story, something horrifying is living at the Whately family's farmhouse, and a professor of the occult races the clock to stop their son Wilbur from unleashing it on the village of Dunwich.
Read it here.
The Rats in the Walls
There's nothing quite like this story's mad climax, when a man renovating his ancestral castle discovers something obscene beneath its foundations. This is probably Lovecraft's creepiest story, and the first one I ever read.
Read it here.
At the Mountains of Madness
If you've seen John Carpenter's The Thing, this story will feel familiar. It tracks the efforts of an antarctic explorer who's sent to investigate the disappearance of his science team, and his desperate struggle to survive what they uncovered. There was some talk about a movie adaptation by Guillermo Del Toro, but I think it's stuck in development hell.
Read it here.
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Raymond Chandler
Of these three authors, Raymond Chandler was the only one who saw significant success during his life, and that was in all likelihood because his chosen genre was more established and mainstream. He wrote detective stories, but his were a new breed. He and Dashiell Hammett are credited as fathering the "hard-boiled" subgenre of detective stories, which eventually became the basis for film noir. Humphrey Bogart played Chandler's anti-hero--the L.A. private detective Philip Marlowe--twice on film.
Chandler was nominated for several Oscars for his screenplays, and has some of the snappiest dialogue you'll ever read. His trick was that he didn't rely on plot to carry the story. He worked the plot around what made captivating scenes. Genius. I can't get enough. Here are my three favorites.
The Big Sleep
This is the first Philip Marlowe novel. He's a private eye hired to get his hands on some incriminating photos of a General's daughter. Sounds simple. Things get crazy. It's all set in an L.A. cesspool where no one's up to good. It's a great first novel, and he wrote it because he got laid off by an oil company.
Read it here.
Red Wind
Mr. Marlowe here witnesses a murder by dumb luck while he's sipping a beer in a cocktail lounge. The plot continues to thicken right up to the end. This one's short, which is why I like it. It's efficient and entertaining. Here's the opening paragraph:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Read it here.
The Long Goodbye
This isn't strictly a pulp publication, but it's so good I had to put in on here. Philip Marlowe helps a friend get out of L.A., and refuses to get any details about why the guy's running. The act of friendship lands him in the middle of a murder investigation and a web of intrigue. It has autobiographical elements, which is partly why it's so gripping.
Read it here.
Robert E. Howard
You may laugh, but Conan the Barbarian is just a great character. Whether he's performing a solo heist on an evil cult's lair, bedding beautiful queens, or just killing sorcerers (what he does best)--women want him, and men want to be him.
If you've ever read a fantasy novel published after 1950, chances are it was heavily influenced by either Robert E. Howard or J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien himself reportedly "quite liked" the Conan stories, which is weighty praise. There's an argument to be made that Howard influenced Tolkien himself, despite their drastically different tones.
Of course, Howard also created the popular characters Kull of Atlantis and Solomon Kane.
Here are three Conan stories that will make you do some push-ups.
The People of the Black Circle
This is my favorite Conan story. It served as inspiration for the later sequences of the Schwarzenneger movie. It has an amazing tone, being both adventurous and creepy at the same time. In it, Conan kidnaps a queen to barter for his tribesmen's freedom, only to see her kidnapped again by a far more evil adversary. It paints the quintessential picture of a man with nothing but a sword and a loincloth battling cosmic forces far beyond his conception. And then he kills them all.
Read it here.
Rogues in the House
In this story, we see Conan as the unbridled anti-hero he plays best. He bashes his way through intrigue as he's caught between two powerful men trying to wrest control of a city. Great characters, lots of action.
Read it here.
Red Nails
Conan isn't Conan if he's not trying to make someone "his woman." Red Nails sees him charging into certain death to prove himself to the woman he loves. It's an adrenaline-pumping story with a side of brooding treachery and a couple strong female characters. Check it out.
Read it here.
Well there it is. We've looked at a father of modern horror, a father of film noir, and a father of mainstream fantasy. And they all wrote for the pulps. Hope you get a chance to look at these stories.
