pulp

During the heyday of pulp magazines, authors churned out stories as quickly as they could for eager audiences. IO9 wonders if pulp sci-fi could be updated for modern audiences by removing some of the racist and outdated notions that plagued those early stories.

Of course it can. The question to ask is if there is a modern audience for those kind of stories that were long on adventure and short on plausibility. I'd say yes and I think the rise of the ebook reader could be the sort of thing that might spur people to create more stories like that.

Portable devices are the perfect medium for short hits of escapist fiction that could be consumed by commuters or people stuck somewhere looking for a diversion to kill time.

Apple's iPad is the latest portable device that is perfect for book reading, although it is perhaps a bit too unwieldy to use beyond the home. Some publishers are hoping that it will be the salvation of the book-publishing industry.

Back to the idea of pulp fiction for a moment. The man who helped popularize the form for science fiction fans was none other than Hugo Gernsback. I wonder if we'll look back at this time and be able to single out an individual who will this century's equivalent figure in the history of the genre.

2010 is almost here and it doesn't look anything like the 2010 that Arthur C. Clarke envisioned in his sequel to 2001, Never mind that, what's more important is that The Website at the End of the Universe is once again offering its annual science fiction calendar as a free PDF download. Instead of the usual helpless female space explorers threatened by leering aliens, this year we're featuring images of babes staring down the bad guys.

Each month of the 2010 calendar features a different pulp magazine cover with a different space babe in charge. We've also brought back our list of important science fiction birthdays.

Download your copy for free from http://www.theendoftheuniverse.ca/calendar2010/calendar2010.pdf. If you print it out, be sure to scale it your paper size. It's designed for letter-size paper, but if you use A4 or some other size, you will have to adjust your settings accordingly.

This is our seventh year that we've been offering a calendar. If you want to check out previous editions , click on the following links to get the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 installments.

If you're new to TEOTU, don't just leech the calendar and run. Take a second to add our newsfeed to your reader or follow us on Twitter so you can get a regular injection of irregular science fiction links throughout the year.

I hope your 2010 is a happy and prosperous one and that all of your science fiction dreams come true.

Whenever you read histories of science fiction, a lot of it focuses on the Golden Age of the genre which was in the 1930s and 40s, but little is written about the time before that. This IO9 link that I've been sitting on for some time offers quite an interesting look about the years leading up to that time.

The Golden Age was during the period of the pulp magazines and one of the big names of that time was L. Ron Hubbard who is more famous now as founder of the Church of Scientology. There is an effort underway to reprint all of his pulp fiction in a series called Tales from the Golden Age. They've even got their own video channel on YouTube.

What I like most about the magazines from that era is the cover art, as anyone who has ever downloaded a TWATEOTU calendar would concur. If you like that sort of thing too, then there are plenty of pulp cover art blogs to keep you entertained throughout the year.

Another writer from near the end of the Golden Age that has acquired something of a cult following is Cordwainer Smith. If you've never read any of his stuff, you should and if you want to know more about him, this Cordwainer Smith blog is worth checking out.

Who can have more of a cult following from the Golden Age than Philip K. Dick? His wife was recently interviewed for this blog.

Doc Savage is hard to classify. He's an action hero of the 30s and 40s that was hugely popular in his day and was undoubtedly a template upon which comic book artists drew inspiration for a future generation of superheroes.

Savage books still have an avid following despite the cornball writing and hackneyed stories, but maybe that's why some people like them. One fan has taken to reviewing each of the books in his blog as he reads them.

Not satisfied with the dozens of wonderful James Bama covers already in existence for the Ballentine printings of the books, another fan has created several fantasy covers of Doc Savage pitting him against other creatures from pop culture such as Godzilla and Frankenstein's monster.

For more cool, pulp art, check out this fantastic collection of Ron Turner cover art as well as this eye-popping array of 50s Spanish science fiction book covers.

If you enjoy the words as much as the pictures, PulpGen offers a fine collection of page scans of stories from the original pulp magazines. All that's missing is that mildewed smell of old paper.