#pulp writers

I don't have a lot to say about Doc Sidhe other than it was an interesting update on the idea of Doc Savage with a fantasy twist.

But I knew the author, Aaron Allston, and respected him.

He put a fucking bear in a scene cuz someone paid him to.

You've probably seen that post floating around on off about the lit fic/creative writing teacher who poo-poo'd a student's love of Terry Pratchett (one of the greatest to ever play in this sphere) because he was a "pulp" writer.

Well, so was Shakespeare. And that's not a bad thing. But get off your high horse about it. The pulp writers shaped and defined the arts. You wouldn't have noir/detective stories like we do without Raymond Chandler, which means very likely, no urban fantasy in one of the most popular ways - like Dresden Files and all of the similar styles of that. Of course the genre is broader than that. Or cyberpunk in many ways, which is a SF evolution of the noir genre in many ways similar critiques done in a high tech world of corruption in govt/business levels, societal issues that the early noir also tackled and brought up, social inequality, all of that.

Christmas was redefined by a pulp writer, Charles Dickens.

In it, I discuss the strange life of Nictzin Dyalhis, a now little-known pulp writer from the Golden Age of Science Fiction who doesn’t appear to have existed before he got married.

Both my spouse and I have male ancestors who just appeared out of nowhere to marry someone, which absolutely no indication of where they came from before they popped up to get hitched, so this sort of thing fascinates me. (None of them were pulp writers, alas.)

Murmure d’Amour ...

So they called this pulp collection “Murmure d’amour” (Love whisper), though romances were the very small part of its features...and there were rarely “straight romances” - the delivering was sometimes close to weird tales (for example the stunning story “Le nain noir”, signed Leslie Brooks) - here you could trust the covers.

The collection consisted in 90 issues between December 1945 and February 1947. There were detective stories sub-series entitled “Dick & Betty aventuriers modernes” and “Une aventure de Bill Disley” - all signed J.A. Flanigham. [see my up-coming posts about it]

Approximativ Format 160 x 210 - 16 pages/2 columns - small typo

cover art:Rog, Jean Philippon, Dany

publisher: Editions du Moulin Vert, 47 rue du Moulin Vert, Paris

Black Out  [Third Part : The unknown signatures]

22 titles in 1952-1953.  Hard-boiled crime novels, some spy fiction. Until today we don’t know with certainty who were Ralph Gregory, Perry Crampton, Bob Arnal, Philippe Choy  & Victor Victus.  

cover art: Jef de Wulf

Publisher: La Flamme d’Or, Paris

MINUIT

continuation

French mystery novels collection. 24 titles between 1941 and 1948. Only french writers - even if a translator is mentioned, it is fake. The lack of american crime novels during the Occupation, conducted Georges Ventillard to chargeLouis Chavance to hire french writers. Mission: produce mystery/crime novels that would take place in the USA and sign them with an american name. No sooner said than done. Chavance recruted Léo Malet (Frank Harding, Léo Latimer),Maurice Nadeau (Joe Christmas), Louis Daquin (Lewis MacDackin) and others. Chavance himself signed Irving Ford. Most of them were begginers in the genre and most of them didn’t go further than Minuit. A couple of years later, the raw conditions were more or less overlooked and the usual pulp writers went in.

Among them, Edward Brooker, who also signed Linton Powell. Brooker was a main author for Georges Ventillard. In the 30′s, Brooker had his own collection at Ventillard and was presented as: “being the new Edgar Wallace”!....And well, it is not totally usurpated, though “Edgar Wallace on acid” would suit him better...Whatever, to read Brooker is always a lot of fun.

cover art: Robert Dansler

Publisher: Les Publications Georges Ventillard

Collection director: Louis Chavance

You got a bowl intended for soup, went over to the hot water nozzle and filled up your bowl. You sidled along to where you got the soup and picked up a couple of glassine bags of crackers (free), supposedly to go with the soup. You now went to one of the tables, sat down and crumbled the crackers into the hot water. Every table had a bottle of ketchup. You emptied about half of the ketchup into the hot water and cracker mixture. Presto-tomato soup!