Archive for July, 2010

Following dealer set-up on Thursday evening, PulpFest 2010 officially got underway at 8 AM this morning. As always, the show began with the typical feeding frenzy as book and pulp collectors scoured the room searching for this or that long elusive volume. The convention’s programming schedule began at 2 PM when Mike Nevins discussed his forthcoming book, Cornucopia of Crime. Dave Walker follwed with a reading from his new Captain Midnight story, The Dawn of Midnight. There will be a lot more programming during the evening hours including Bill Nolan’s guest of honor presentation and Don Hutchison’s panel on the pulp Western. Rounding out this evening’s programming will be publisher Steven Haffner’s multi-media look at science fiction author Leigh Brackett and Anthony Tollin’s discussion of the 80th anniversary of the Shadow’s radio debut.

There’s still plenty of time to join in on the fun. The dealers’ room will be open until 5 PM on Friday and from 9 AM to 5 PM on Saturday. Sunday will be a bit shorter, from 10 am to 3 PM. The evening programming schedules for Friday and Saturday nights will run from 7 PM until 12 AM. Tomorrow’s programming will include afternoon presentations by Doc Savage author Will Murray and another by popular culture expert Martin Grams. The evening programming will include an auction, a panel on the classic detective pulp, Black Mask Magazine, and presentation of the 2010 Munsey Award.

Admission to the show is $15 per day or $35 for all three days, allowing entry to all convention activities. The general public is very much welcome to attend.

PulpFest 2010 will begin tomorrow. Dealer set-up will take place from 6 PM to 12 AM. Early registration will begin at 7 PM at a location to be determined. Information will be available in the hotel lobby.

To all of you who will be attending PulpFest, we look forward to seeing you. Please have a safe journey to Columbus.

Barry Traylor, Ed Hulse, Jack Cullers, and Mike Chomko

The deadline for advance registrations to PulpFest 2010 is Tuesday, July 27, at 10 PM. Advance registrations will not be accepted after Tuesday. Payments made through Paypal will not be accepted after 10 PM on July 27.

Although PulpFest 2010 officially gets under way on Friday, July 30, the convention’s organizing committee is urging dealers to arrive on Thursday to set up their displays. The dealers’ room will be open from 6 PM to 12 AM on July 29 for set-up. It will also be open for set-up on Friday morning for one hour during early bird admission. The dealers’ room will be open to everyone beginning at 9 AM on Friday.

During Thursday set-up, dealers will be asked to arrange their displays and, upon completion, cover them up and then depart the room. No selling will be permitted during Thursday evening’s set-up.

The general membership is also welcome to arrive on Thursday. Early registration will take place beginning at 7 PM at a location to be determined. All members, dealers included, will be able to pick up their registration packets at this time. For those of you who have not yet registered for PulpFest, Thursday evening will be an ideal time to do so. Three-day memberships will be available for $35. Early-bird memberships will be available for $60. Early-bird memberships will not be available after Thursday.

For those members arriving on Thursday, July 29, refreshments will be provided courtesy of the PulpFest organizing committee. Film historian Ed Hulse has also put together a short film program to help celebrate the convention’s themes–the 90th anniversaries of the debut of Black Mask Magazine and the first appearance of Max Brand in Western Story Magazine.

Single-day memberships will be available at the door for Friday or Saturday at the rate of $15 per day. Sunday only memberships will cost $5. Full three-day memberships will also be available at the door for $35. Children who are accompanied by a parent and are fifteen years of age or younger will be admitted free of charge.

The hotel’s special room rate of $79 per night plus tax will continue through the start of the convention. However, rooms are going quickly. If you want to take advantage of this or other offers by the hotel, be sure to make your reservation as soon as possible. For further details, visit the Ramada Plaza page under "The Details." You can also make a reservation by calling the hotel at 614-846-0300. Be sure to mention PulpFest to get the special convention rate whether placing your reservation by phone or online.

The Ramada Plaza Hotel and Convention Center is located just off Exit 116 of I-71, about ten minutes north of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Heading north on I-71, get off at Exit 116, the Morse Road exit. Turn left onto Morse Road. Follow Morse until you get to Sinclair Road. Turn right onto Sinclair Road. The hotel is at 4900 Sinclair Road. Heading south on I-71, get off at Exit 116, the Sinclair Road exit. Turn right onto Sinclair Road and follow to the Ramada Plaza Hotel. For those who would like a map to get to the hotel, click here.

The PulpFest organizing committee is looking for volunteers to serve as hospitality suite hosts on Friday and Saturday evenings. If you are willing, please write to jack@pulpfest.com. Haffner Press will be sponsoring the con suite on Friday  when it will be temporarily renamed "The Otherness Suite." The Robert E. Howard Foundation will sponsor the con suite on Saturday.

The convention will officially open on Friday, July 30 at 9 AM. Early-bird registrants will be allowed into the dealers’ room beginning at 8 AM. The doors will open to everyone, beginning at 9 AM. The dealers’ room will be open until 5 PM on Friday evening. It will be open from 9 AM to 5 PM on Saturday and from 10 AM to 3 PM on Sunday.

There will be a full schedule of programming on Friday and Saturday evenings from 7 PM until about midnight. There will also be several presentations during the daytime hours. Please visit our programming page for further details.

All PulpFest attendees will be able to submit material for inclusion in the Saturday Night Auction. For additional information, please visit our Auctions page or contact Barry Traylor via email.

The second annual Munsey Breakfast will take place on Sunday, August 1, beginning at 9 AM. This will be an informal meal in the hotel’s restaurant to celebrate this year’s Munsey Award winner and your PulpFest experience. All convention attendees are welcome to attend.

PulpFest 2010 will have many freebies available for all attendees. There will be a variety of materials at the entrance to the dealers’ room. These will be accessible on Saturday morning. So bring along a BIG bag!

For those attendees who would like to ship their purchases to their homes, PulpFest 2010 has arranged for a local UPS provider to be available at the hotel on Sunday, August 1. A local FedEx office, located about two miles from the hotel, will also be open for shipping your purchases. Transportation can be arranged through the hotel’s shuttle service. Further information is available on our FAQ  page.

The entire PulpFest 2010 organizing committee–Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, Ed Hulse and Barry Traylor–is looking forward to seeing you all in just a few days. Have a safe trip to Columbus.

Over the last several months, the PulpFest organizing committee has been busy promoting the convention through a wide variety of media providers, including Internet news groups such as Pulpmags, TheREHcomicsgroup, and WesternPulps, the popular social networking site, Facebook, and through events calendars such as UpcomingCons.com and experienceColumbus.com. 

However, our efforts to promote PulpFest have not been limited to cyberspace. We have also been reaching out to print and broadcasting media as well, targeting the Columbus area in the interest of securing regional publicity and, through it, attracting more walk-ins. Thanks to these efforts, PulpFest landed an article in the June 23, 2010 issue of ThisWeek, a community newspaper serving central Ohio. Additionally, PulpFest committee members Jack Cullers and Ed Hulse, as well as Ohio State professor Eric Johnson were interviewed for a three-page article entitled "Amazing Tales in Columbus" that ran in the July 2010 issue of Ohio Magazine, a glossy periodical devoted to promoting travel opportunities in the state of Ohio.

By our reaching out to a wide variety of media providers, the use of Internet news groups, our print advertising, and outreach efforts via other conventions and book and paper shows, PulpFest 2010 hopes to draw a record crowd to Columbus at the end of this week. Rest assured, your PulpFest committee will continue to work to assure that PulpFest 2010 will be a resounding success.

PulpFest 2010 would like to thank the following organizations for their generous contributions to our convention:

Book Source Magazine for sending copies of their publication for distribution at PulpFest.

Chaosium, the developer of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, for donating a number of books to the convention that will be awarded as door prizes during our evening programming.

Dell Magazines for giving us over 100 copies of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for our members.

Engle Publishing for sending copies of The Paper & Advertising Collectors’ Marketplace for distribution to PulpFest attendees.

Experience Columbus for putting together a VIP package that will get you and your family members reduced admissions to many of the city’s fine attractions. Copies will be available at our freebies table, but you can also download copies through the Visiting Columbus page of our website.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the award-winning magazine that celebrated its sixtieth anniversary in 2009, for donating a number of back issues to hand out to our members.

Galaxy Press for sending copies of The Golden Gazette for our freebie table.

We’d also like to thank Acorn Bookshop, Blue Jacket Books, Dark Star Books, The Dust Jacket, Karen Wickliff Books, and Mavericks Cards and Comics for their help in promoting our convention, and we invite PulpFest attendees to visit them in Ohio. You’ll find links to their websites under "Friends" on the PulpFest home page.

Many thanks to cartoonist and publisher Michael Neno and Eric Johnson, Associate Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts and an Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, for their help promoting PulpFest in the Columbus area, as well as Mark Trost for his work to promote us through the media.

Finally, Haffner Press will be sponsoring the PulpFest hospitality suite on Friday, July 31. The suite will be renamed "The Otherness Lounge" to honor the release of Haffner’s Detour to Otherness, a collection featuring some of the best fiction from Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, two of the greats from the pulp era.

Saturday night’s hospitality suite will be sponsored by The Robert E. Howard Foundation, an organization that works to foster understanding of the life and works of Robert E. Howard through its publishing efforts, its support of Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas, and other methods.

Six years after serving as the guest of honor at Pulpcon 33, Francis M. Nevins returns to the spotlight with an appearance at PulpFest 2010. Mike will be talking about Cornucopia of Crime, his forthcoming book from Ramble House, a hefty volume of 449 closely printed pages featuring chapters on pulp titans such as Cornell Woolricjh, Erle Stanley Gardner, John Lawrence, Cleve F. Adams and John D. MacDonald. Also included are interviews with James Atlee Phillips, better known as espionage novelist Phlip Atlee of the Joe Gall series, and with his brother David Atlee Phillips, a career CIA officer who shadowed Graham Greene in Castro’s Cuba and is suspected in some quarters of having had a hand in the JFK assassination.

Best known as the author of the ultimate Woolrich biography, First You Dream, Then You Die (which won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, Nevins is a professor at the St. Louis University School of Law where he has taught since 1971. Some of his other books include Hopalong Cassidy: On the Page, On the Screen and The Cisco Kid: American Hero, Hispanic Roots. He has also edited many mystery anthologies and collections including Night and Fear and Leopold’s Way. Additionally, he has authored six mystery novels and two short story collections.

Join Mike Nevins at PulpFest at 2 PM on Friday, July 30 for Cornucopia of Crime.

They were called scribes, word slingers, hacks and penny-a-worders. But perhaps the most favored term, especially among the men and women who labored for the bloody pulps, was fictioneer—a fiction writer, especially a prolific creator of commercial or pulp fiction.

Join PulpFest as we celebrate today’s fictioneers—the authors writing the new pulp fiction. Indiana’s David Walker, a longtime friend to pulp historian Nick Carr, will be on hand to read from The Dawn of Midnight, a story originally penned for Airship 27’s Lance Star, Sky Ranger, Volume Two, published by Cornerstone Books and featuring the popular adventure hero, Captain Midnight. He’ll also be available for questions, critiques and good, old-fashioned schmoozing.

David’s New Fictioneers reading will take place on Friday, 7/30 at 3 PM. Please visit our programming page for further details on this and PulpFest’s other exciting programming events.

As he has for the last nineteen years, Tony Davis has come up with another dynamite issue of The Pulpster. The official magazine and program guide for PulpFest 2010, the new issue is 44 pages long and, for the first time in its long history, features a color cover.

Like this year’s PulpFest, one of the focal points of The Pulpster#19 is the 90th anniversary of Black Mask. With that in mind, Bruce Stirling has contributed a detailed analysis about the origins of hard-boiled crime fiction in "Whatever Happened to Three Gun Terry?", illustrated by Kenney Mencher.

The former editor of Singing Guns magazine, Dave Fox, sets his sight on Frederick Faust with "Max Brand and Western Story Magazine: Year One," another ninety year anniversary in 2010, while PulpFest guest of honor, Bill Nolan, covers both anniversaries with "Spade, Destry and Dr. Kildare."

But there’s plenty more as Don Hutchison takes a look at author David Goodis and John Locke presents an overview of the career of Avenger writer Paul Ernst. Wayne Leighton is on board with a piece on L. Ron Hubbard and Theodore Sturgeon while Pulpster designer Bill Lampkin (of ThePulp.Net) discusses "The Lost Doc Savage Movie," illustrated by Francescho Francavilla, and longtime pulp historian Nick Carr answers "10 Pulp Questions I’ve Been Asked." Filling out the issue is a reprint of a Frederick C. Painton article from the April 1936 Writer’s Digest plus editorial content.

Except for "Sunday Only" attendees, all members (including supporting members) of PulpFest 2010 will receive a complimentary copy of The Pulpster #19.

Lester Dent, Laurence Donovan, Paul Ernst, Ryerson Johnson…were pulp writers with one thing in common: they were all Kenneth Robeson.

When Street & Smith launched Doc Savage Magazine in 1933, they decided to use a house name to mask the identity of the author behind the new adventure series. Six years later, they did it again when the first issue of The Avenger hit the stands. Warner Books followed suit when Ron Goulart continued the series in the 1970s.

On Saturday afternoon, July 31 at PulpFest 2010, you’ll have a chance to meet the latest Kenneth Robeson when Will Murray discusses his seven-year effort to get new Doc Savage novels back in the book stores. He’ll also talk about his latest novel featuring the Man of Bronze–The Desert Demons, a story based upon an outline by Lester Dent–and related subjects.

But wait! If you prefer green over the color bronze, Martin Grams will be on hand with a history of The Green Hornet. Although the character never crossed over to the pulps, The Hornet had the same feel and essence as many of the rough paper masked vigilantes. Get the lowdown on this character and his companion Kato, their earliest adventures, why most of the recordings for the radio series don’t exist, and more through this fascinating slide show presentation. Additionally, Martin may have some tidbits about The Shadow that will surprise even the most dedicated enthusiast of the dark avenger.

For further details on all of the programming at PulpFest 2010, please visit our programming page.

Almost a full year before his first appearance in the pulps, The Shadow debuted as the narrator of The Detective Story Hour, a CBS radio program sponsored by Street & Smith. A mysterious storyteller with a sinister voice, the character soon had listeners visiting their neighborhood newsstand to ask for "that Shadow detective magazine." Bowing to demand, Street & Smith created The Shadow Magazine and the hero pulp genre was born.

On July 31, join Sanctum Books publisher and pulp historian Anthony Tollin as he commemorates the 80th anniversary of The Shadow’s radio debut with a multi-media presentation featuring interview material with Walter Gibson and other important figures from the history of the Knight of Darkness.