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Unlike Walker Martin, who has been attending pulp cons since 1972, Laurie Powers has only been to the first two PulpFests. But she’s already considered part of the gang. One of the sixteen nominees for the 2010 Munsey Award, Laurie is the granddaughter of Paul S. Powers, a prolific author of pulp fiction during the 1930s and 40s. An author herself, Laurie’s work can be found on the Internet at Laurie’s Wild West where she writes about books, movies, life in Los Angeles, and pulp fiction. Her three-part convention report began appearing on her website on Friday, July 30. It appears here in revised form with permission.
 

Today was the first day of PulpFest, going on until Sunday at the Ramada Plaza in Columbus Ohio. It was a terrific day–a good turnout and a whole lotta really, REALLY nice pulps laying around. This is a place where you can see some of the rarest pulps, like Strange Suicides, on the same rack as Adventure, Popular and Dime Detective.

The day did not start out auspiciously for me. I set two alarms the night before for 6 AM. Or, at least I thought I had set two alarms. I woke up at ten minutes to eight. So for most of the day I had to deal with feeling rushed AND with jet lag.

But never mind. It’s been wonderful catching up with everyone, including our regulars Walker Martin (who has been so wonderful in dragging people over to my table so they’ll buy a copy of Pulp Writer) and Barry Traylor, Ed Hulse, Jack Irwin, Will Murray and so many others I am forgetting to mention.

Will Murray aka Kenneth Robeson

I would like to send out again my condolences to Scott Hartshorn, whose father passed away just a few days ago, while Scott was on his was to PulpFest. Only a few months earlier, his mother had passed. Scott is here, and it’s probably a good thing. All of his friends as well as all of the treasures in this room will keep him occupied.

We had a TV cameraman from the local news station show up and take photos; we’re hoping that it showed up on the local news tonight. Last year we had the same coverage and it brought a lot of people out to the convention.

I was on a panel Friday night about the Western pulps, along with Ed Hulse, William F. Nolan (the guest of honor and author of Logan’s Run) and Don Hutchison (who wrote The Great Pulp Heroes). This year is the 90th anniversary of Max Brand’s first appearance as a pulp writer in Western Story Magazine. So a lot of the discussion was about Brand. But I did get my two cents in about Pulp Writer and those lesser-known writers such as my grandfather, Paul Powers. It was a great time.

Before our panel, Bill Nolan spoke about his writing career and how Logan’s Run came about. A very entertaining speaker, Nolan has tons of knowledge about the pulps. He is now working on a biography of Frederick Faust, the man who was Max Brand.

So far I have been very good in my pulp buying. I’ve bought a Popular–the October 1904 issue that has the first "Chip of the Flying U" story by B.M. Bower, a female Western writer I am very interested in. I also picked up a wonderful Western Story, the October 12, 1929 issue that features a story by Cherry Wilson. I’m expecting that tomorrow I won’t be as disciplined because I will realize that time is running away with me. As for Sunday when the dealers start slashing prices, forget it. I might as well clean out my savings account now.

Things have been popping here at PulpFest. Yesterday was a terrific day on a lot of levels, no small thanks to all of the wonderful people here. The dealer room was packed for a good portion of Friday. Pulps were sold, (and bought), deals were made, friendships formed, and I managed to sell quite a few copies of Pulp Writer as well. Of course I had to turn right around and spend the money on pulps, which wasn’t my plan, but.."Oh, well." I bought more Populars (including three I won in the auction), a few Love Stories, and a amazing 1930 Wild West Weekly with a very unusual Kid Wolf cover. I have my sights set on a Sea Stories this morning.

Last night was the announcement of the Munsey Award, which went to Mike Chomko, who is most deserving of the award and was a popular choice judging from the reception of the room. I was very happy to see Mike win. After the awards announcement, a panel consisting of Bill Nolan, Ed Hulse, Walker Martin, and John Wooley spoke on the 90th anniversary of Black Mask magazine, birthplace of the hard-boiled detective story and launching pad for some of the finest crime fiction of the 20th century. Nolan spoke of the very early years, Ed on the hard-core years of the late 1920s and the early 1930s, Walker on the early 1940s and John spoke of the later years. It was a fascinating panel and the turnout was excellent. I would say at least 100 people attended.

Following the panel was the auction, with an astounding 142 lots up for bid. Items ranged from Walter Gibson’s (The Shadow) typewriter, to lots of pulps, to massive collections of science fiction paperbacks, to a Shadow thermos.

I spent both Friday and Saturday catching up with everyone and meeting new people. Karen Cunningham Davis, Frederick C. Davis’ granddaughter showed up for a while and it was great to see her again. We’re tossing around the idea of having a panel in the future for "pulp writer grandchildren" or some such thing. I met many others friends that I’ve "known" for years on the Internet like Morgan Holmes, Ron Hanna (pictured) of Wild Cat Books, Will Murray, Anthony Tollin, Ron Fortier from Airship 27, Matt Moring from Altus Press, Tom Roberts from Black Dog Books, and on and on.

I never really recovered from jet lag which was worse on this trip than when I went to England. Go figure. I have been trying to figure out why, and the only reason I can come up with is because I arrived late at night and I was tired to begin with. For those of you who I didn’t get around to seeing, or if I didn’t stick around to talk much, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to snub anyone–I was just unbelievably tired. As it was, I forgot to say good-bye to about 80% of the people I knew.

It was heartening to see a lot of new people there. Some were walk-ins, and some had come in from as far as both coasts. I met a lovely couple, Ann and Craig George, who came all the way from Denver. Ann and Craig have started up a new online book store, George’s Curious Books, and say they have a web site coming soon. As soon as it’s up I’ll pass along the link.

Another nice surprise was Arlene Hilfer, a professor from Hiram College in Ohio. Arlene says that she has already taught one class in pulp fiction at Hiram, and will be teaching another one this fall on…drum roll….The Spider vs. The Empire State, published by Age of Aces Books. I am going to try to talk Arlene into doing an interview for the blog.

I want to give a special shout out to Barry Traylor, Jack Cullers, Mike Chomko, and Ed Hulse, directors of the convention. They did a fantastic job and I know that the great turnout can be directly attributed to these men’s efforts in putting on a professional and very well-run convention.

REHupa is an amateur press association dedicated to the study of author Robert E. Howard. A long-running press society whose focus is the life and writings of the legendary pulp writer, REHupa was founded in 1972 and has since grown to become the foremost source of Howard scholarship and fandom in the world. Assocation member Morgan Holmes wrote the following synopsis of PulpFest 2010 for the organization’s web site. 

The weekend of July 30-August 1st was the time for Pulpfest 2010. Rising from the ashes of the old Pulpcon, Pulpfest is picking up speed. If you ever thought of getting into reading pulp magazines, this is the place to go. Held in Columbus, Ohio, which makes for easy driving for me, it is an excuse for a three-day weekend, 2/3 of the way into the summer.

There you will finds dealers of pulp magazines, paperbacks, and pulp reprints which includes both books and pulp replicas.

Membership was just a few people shy of 400 this year. Guest William F. Nolan, author of Logan’s Run among others, proved to be a great raconteur. I was able to ask him about the claim that he rewrote some Frederick Faust/Max Brand stories for several collections back in the 80s. He denied he did, stating he wrote a framing sequence for one novella at the request of Faust’s family for copyright purposes. He told me there is a Faust biography by him on the way. Also a new treatment of Logan’s Run.

Saturday, there was a Robert E. Howard Foundation luncheon at the Pig Iron Grill. Those pictured below include myself, Jason Landers, Jim Barron, Ed Chaczyk, Eric Johnson, Scott Hartshorn, Rusty Burke, Don Herron, and John D. Squires. Don Herron told tales of E. Hoffman Price while John Squires reminisced about Karl Edward Wagner.

This is a golden age for pulp reprints. John Gunnison’s Adventure House continues to bring forth a steady number of affordable replicas. Black Dog Books has sprinted, and I mean sprinted, ahead to become the leader of pulp reprint authors collections and anthologies. Paradox should give serious thought to allowing Black Dog to do some Robert E. Howard books. I can remember when Tom Roberts was producing cool chapbooks. Now he is producing cool trade paperbacks. I just started reading The Best of Adventure, Volume 1: 1910-1912, edited by Doug Ellis, and am enjoying it mightily.

Haffner Press continues to be the benchmark for small press hardbacks. Steve Haffner just unveiled Detour to Otherness, a great big honkin collection of Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore stories.

Ed Hulse’s magazine Blood and Thunder is a great publication. The production values keep going up with each issue. It might be the best looking pulp-oriented magazine today though I am awaiting the triumphant return of Pulp Vault.

So next year, block off the last weekend of July and make plans to head to Columbus. Remember, all serious Robert E. Howard fans wear Hawaiian shirts at events such as these.

Longtime art, book, and pulp collector Walker Martin has been attending pulp conventions for many years, including the very first Pulpcon in 1972. The report following originally appeared on the Yahoo news group, PulpMags, followed by appearances on Steve Lewis’ Mystery*File and Laurie Powers’ Laurie’s Wild West blogs. It appears here with permission.

I’m just back from one of the most enjoyable four days in my life as a collector. It’s true. I only got four hours of sleep each night and I ate and drank beer to excess, but I hung out with the greatest group of collectors and happily wallowed in a sea of pulps, books, vintage paperbacks, and original pulp art paintings.

Since I was going to leave for the convention on Thursday, I started to pack up on Wednesday the pulps that I was going to sell at my table. As I sorted through the hundreds of issues I came to the horrifying realization that I simply could not bear to part with any of them. So I put them back on the shelves and decided to just sell canceled checks from the Popular Publications and Munsey files and a box of DVDs. As usual the checks sold well.

The last few years I’ve driven out to the pulp conventions with Steve Kennedy, a NYC art dealer who is a not an early riser. Thursday morning at 5 AM, I began the usual ordeal of getting Steve out of bed and into the car so that we could be on the road by 6:00.

Nine hours and 500 miles later we arrived in Columbus, Ohio at the Ramada. Though it was only 3 PM, pulp collectors were already showing up and several rang my room to see when we could get together. Within a few hours, several of us were chowing down the hotel restaurant food.

I’ve heard several complaints about the hotel food and the lack of restaurants within walking distance. Frankly, I don’t care if the food or restaurants are good, bad, or indifferent. I’m there for the books, pulps, and artwork.

Most mornings I ate breakfast in the hotel with such crazy collectors and longtime friends as Scott Hartshorne, Nick Certo, Dave Scroggs, Ed Hulse, and Digges La Touche. The one breakfast that we ate at the Waffle House, I made the interesting discovery that Lollipops, The Gentlemen’s Club was next door. Some of us were going to visit to see if any of the girls were pulp collectors, but there was a Shriners convention also at the hotel and these guys were real party animals without the distraction of books and pulps. Maybe next year…

The hotel was a real bargain and despite the lack of nearby restaurants, I’ve never seen room rates so low for a hotel which also provided a large dealer’s room, hospitality suite, and meeting rooms. In fact the lack of restaurants is not really a problem at all because the hotel has a nice 15 person shuttle van that will take you and pick you up from any place in town.

The hospitality room was excellent, full of beer, soda, and snacks. Also full of knowledgeable collectors talking about pulps into the early morning hours. I would like to thank the great guys who are responsible for stocking the beer. I’m very thirsty after a long day of breathing in pulp chips and talking about the joys of collecting to just about anyone who would stand still.

The dealer’s room this year was far larger than last year’s room with a lot of space between dealers. The attendance was even better that last year’s 350, reaching at least the 390 mark. This attendance of almost four hundred is more than any that the old Pulpcons ever had.

I would place this year’s show as one of the very best I’ve ever attended, and I’ve been to almost all since the first one in 1972. I rank the 2010 PulpFest with the first Pulpcon in 1972 and the 1981 Cherry Hill event, where I scored over ten pulp cover paintings for an average price of $200 to $400 each.

So many great collectors were there that I cannot mention them all. But I will mention two who have excellent blogs and websites that often mention pulps and paperbacks–Laurie Powers of Laurie’s Wild West and Steve Lewis of Mystery*File. Besides the PulpMags Yahoo group, these are the only two websites I make a point of visiting every day.

The evening panels were the best I’ve ever attended, though the Windy City Adventure panel was also outstanding. Friday night we had a panel on the pulp Western with guest of honor William F. Nolan, Mike Nevins, Don Hutchinson, Laurie Powers, and Ed Hulse. This type of panel never happened at Pulpcon because of the emphasis on such subjects as the hero pulps. Westerns were once extremely popular and outsold only by the love pulps. So we need more discussions concerning the Western pulps.

Also on Friday we heard William Nolan’s speech, Stephen Haffner on Leigh Brackett, and Tony Tollin on his favorite subject, The Shadow. During the day, I couldn’t drag myself away from the joys of the dealer’s room, but I’ve been told that Mike Nevins gave an interesting talk concerning his new book, Cornucopia of Crime.

I managed to get an advance copy signed by Mike and can report it is a major publication, collecting many of his essays on mystery authors that he has written over the years.

As good as Friday was, Saturday was even better, with the business meeting, Munsey Award presentation, Black Mask panel, and the auction.

The Munsey Award was properly awarded to Mike Chomko, but I didn’t hear presenter Tom Roberts mention why Mike was getting the award. Not only has he been one of the members of the PulpFest committee (the others are Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, and Ed Hulse), but he used to publish one of the very best of the pulp fanzines, Purple Prose.

It was a major disappointment when Mike had to suspend the magazine due to his nursing studies. I tried to talk him out of it to no avail. Hopefully he will find the time to revive this great magazine. In addition he is a major dealer of pulp-related books, selling just about every pulp reprint that’s available. We haven’t had such a dealer since the great old days of Robert Weinberg Books. Congratulations Mike.

The Black Mask panel ranks as one of the very best panels, right up there with the great Adventure panel at the 2010 Windy City. During an hour, Bill Nolan, Ed Hulse, John Wooley, and I managed to discuss every major period of the magazine and many of the writers and editors

Bill Nolan talked about the Joe Shaw years of 1926-1936 when the very best in hard-boiled fiction was published; Ed Hulse covered an overview of the magazine and discussed the Fanny Ellsworth years of 1937-1940; I talked about the Ken White years in the forties and John Wooley discussed the post-war period.

We also covered just about every major writer such as Hammett, Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Horace McCoy, Fred Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, Erle Stanley Gardner, Paul Cain, Merle Constiner, D. L. Champion, Robert Reeves, Dale Clark, John Butler, Norbert Davis, and others.

Perhaps many readers of this report will recognize such famous names as Hammett, Chandler, Gardner, but most of these other writers have been unjustly forgotten and may rank right up there with our favorite SF, Western, mystery and adventure writers. I say “may” because we did have some critical things to say about Carroll John Daly and Horace McCoy.

Bill Nolan, Ed Hulse, Walker Martin, and John Wooley on Black Mask.

The auction was very well attended and 142 lots went up for bids. Collectors managed to obtain such pulps as The Shadow, Golden Book, Frontier Stories, Western Story, Argosy, Popular, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Adventure, Nick Carter, Pete Rice, Fantastic Adventures, Air War, Startling Stories, Captain Zero, Super-Detective, Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Story, Flynn’s, Double Detective, Thrilling Adventures, Dime Mystery, G-8, Detective Tales, and many others.

The most interesting item was Walter Gibson’s typewriter, or at least one of them, with a letter of authenticity.

I obtained my usual pile of wants and interesting objects. I’m working on a complete set of Western Story, and I’m somewhere around the 1200 issue mark; so it’s getting very difficult to find the early issues I still need, but I found one from 1922.

I showed the issue to Laurie Powers and other collectors, and they must have thought I was crazy to be so happy about one issue of Western Story, but that’s the excitement you feel as you near the completion of a lifelong project.

Another find that impressed everyone was a 1940′s issue of Love Book. Normally you would think such a find to be of very little interest, but over 30 years ago I obtained a love pulp cover painting showing a pretty girl typist smiling.

I’ve hunted decades for the magazine to go with the painting and had just about given up, thinking that I’d never locate the issue among the thousands of love pulps that were published. But at this convention, while digging through rows of love pulps, I found not only the issue, but a second one as well.

I proudly showed it to my pulp collecting pals who over the years had become bored with my constant whining about finding the love magazine to go with the painting. They will now be pleased to hear that I will now shut up about the subject.

I also obtained an original cover painting from Detective Fiction Weekly and an interesting piece of artwork showing the "Yellow Peril" dangers of World War II.

John Locke’s Off-Trail Publications just put out an excellent two-volume collection of Ghost Story fiction. It also contains a history of the magazine and original research on the writers. This is a must buy because the original magazines are so rare.

I bought several of Tom Roberts Black Dog Books reprints. I especially am looking forward to reading the first volume of The Best of Adventure, edited by Doug Ellis. Also three of the first four of the Talbot Mundy Library are out.

We are living in the Golden Age of pulp reprints and I saw plenty of tables packed with reprints by Altus Press, Age of Aces, Girasol Collectables, Haffner Press, and others.

The new issue of Blood n Thunder made its debut and it’s a stunner, perhaps the best issue yet, 100 pages long, containing a long article by Tom Krabacher about Gordon Young, an unjustly forgotten writer. The issue is a celebration of Adventure‘s 100th birthday and also contains pieces by Ed Hulse on the Lady Fulvia series, a serial based on a W.C. Tuttle novel, and an article by Adventure editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman on writing for the pulps.

There is also a long section titled, “The Campfire: Summer 2010 Edition.” Reading this section will point you toward some of the best fiction published in Adventure. It’s sort of a “My Favorite Issue” discussion by such collectors as Doug Ellis, Tom Krabacher, Dave Scroggs, Brian Taves, Ralph Grasso, Digges La Touche, Ed Hulse, and myself.

Many years ago Doug Ellis published one of the great magazines about the pulps, Pulp Vault. I had hoped that the new issue would finally be available at PulpFest but Doug gave me the sad news that it was delayed.

When this issue is finally published, it will be the greatest issue of a magazine about the pulps ever published. It will be over 200 pages with an unpublished Virgil Finlay cover and full of interesting articles such as Mike Ashley’s article on Blue Book, over 15,000 words long. Readers and collectors, this will be an issue worth the wait!

I know I’ve left a lot out and perhaps other attendees can contribute comments or correct any mistakes. I would like to thank the committee members for all their hard work on this convention. I’m referring to Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers and his family, Barry Traylor, and Ed Hulse.

Also thanks to Chris Kalb for his work, John Gunnison for his voice in the auction room, Tony Davis and others involved with The Pulpster, and the collectors who stocked the hospitality suite.

Fellow readers and collectors, this is not a convention to be missed. Start making plans for next year because we have to support this event with our attendance. If it wasn’t for these people, by now we would mourning the death of the summer convention, because the old Pulpcon was on its last legs.

J. Randolph Cox, editor and publisher of Dime Novel Round-Up, offered the following summary of PulpFest 2009 in the August 2009 issue (Whole No. 718) of his journal dedicated to the study of dime and nickel novels, story papers, series books and pulp magazines. The article is © 2009 J. Randolph Cox and used with permission. Accompanying photographs are © 2009 Brian Earl Brown and Lohr McKinstry and used with permission.

Convention Report: PulpFest 2009

All hail the new beginning! PulpFest 2009 replaced the traditional Pulpcon this year and by all accounts was a great success. There were more than 350 in attendance (many of them walk-ins for the day) and the word that flashed around the dealer’s room to describe the atmosphere was "energy." At any time during the three days there were dozens of collectors at the tables examining the wares of the dealers.

PulpFest 2009 was held from July 31 to August 2 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Columbus, Ohio, a ten-minute drive from downtown (although arriving in the midst of the late afternoon rush hour traffic as your editor did, it seemed to take longer than that all the while hoping that he was in the correct lane of traffic for making the proper exit).

From there it was a quick trip to the Ramada parking lot and registration at the front desk. Once settled in the room, the next step was looking for the usual gang of comrades in pulp adventure with whom your editor has become accustomed to hang out at this annual event. From there it was only a car ride away to a nearby restaurant for dinner and then back to pick up our registration packets. (Over the next few days there were many similar visits to restaurants and a few to nearby bookstores as well).

One of the reasons this convention may have been so well attended was the proliferation and variety of material for sale in the dealers’ room. Not only pulp magazines, the original raw material for the pulp generation of readers, but the books in which some of the stories were preserved and the related material that reflected an interest in high adventure. There was more than one dealer who sold DVDs of rare movies and movie serials and TV shows. Something for everyone.

The busy and energetic dealers’ room on Saturday

As has been noted in past columns, this is a golden age of reprints, from volumes collecting the orignal magazine stories (arranged by author or by series character or genre) to facsimiles of magazine issues themselves. Only a handful of publishers of these reprints had tables themselves, but their publications could be obtained from many different dealers.

The pulp conventions have never had a rigid program with an emphasis on panel discussions or presentations by authors or collectors, preferring to allow collectors more time to browse in the dealers’ room. PulpFest gave everyone a choice by making some events (generally readings from recently published fiction in the pulp tradition) available even while the dealers’ room was open. These ranged from G. Warlock Vance and Mike Glagola reading from The Missing Narrative of Neptune, described in the program as "a hardboiled novella from the weird-detective genre of mystery fiction" and from a forthcoming novel, The Bad Man, to Ron Fortier reading a chapter from his latest Captain Hazzard novel, Cavemen of New York, and S. Clayton Rhodes reading his novelette, "To Bite the Worm," from the revived Startling Stories. Your editor was able to attend William Patrick Maynard’s reading from The Terror of Fu Manchu, his newly published novel. Maynard is the second writer since 1959 (the first was Cay Van Ash) to be authorized by the Sax Rohmer estate to continue the famous thrillers.

On Friday, the official welcome from those responsible for PulpFest was followed by a panel discussion of "Pulp Collecting 2009: State of the Hobby," the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Operator #5 stories by Frederick C. Davis, and the early work of science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton. Late that first evening, Anthony Tollin and Will Murray discussed the new series from Sanctum Books reprinting The Avenger novels. An hour devoted to H. P. Lovecraft was appropriately scheduled for 11:00 p. m. in which Ian Lohr of Howling Wolf Lost Pulp Classics ably explored the life and legacy of Lovecraft and his influence on weird fiction and the way his stories have been interpreted (and misinterpreted) in the media.

Fred Davis/Operator #5 Panel (from left)–Garyn Roberts, Nick Carr, moderator Don Hutchison, Karen Cunningham (Davis’ granddaughter) and Rick Davis (Davis’ son)

Saturday evening began with a lively and informative business meeting where the founders of PulpFest took praise as well as suggestions for improving future conventions. Eric Johnson, Associate Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Ohio State University, presented an overview of OSU’s pulp and popular culture materials (including the Cartoon Research Library). The guest of honor was Otto Penzler who answered questions about his long career as publisher, editor, bookseller and collector. The evening was concluded by an auction of magazines, books and original art. The bidding was lively and thousands of dollars changed hands.

PulpFest concluded on Sunday with the Munsey Award Breakfast at which Bill Thom received the first Munsey Award for his work in keeping us all alert to new publications and activity in the pulp world at his Coming Attractions website.

PulpFest 2010 has already been scheduled for July 30 to August 1, in Columbus, Ohio.