Previous Guests

PulpFest 2010–William F. Nolan

Since 2010 marked both the 90th birthday of Black Mask magazine and the 90th anniversary of Frederick Faust’s first appearance in Western Story Magazine, award-winning author, editor, biographer, screenwriter, and poet William F. Nolan was the ideal guest of honor for PulpFest 2010.

Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Nolan is a leading authority on pulp fictioneers Max Brand (a pseudonym for Frederick Faust) and Dashiell Hammett as well as the other Black Mask contributors who flourished under the regime of editor Joseph T. Shaw. His numerous books on these writers include Hammett: A Life at the Edge (1983), The Black Mask Boys (1985), the key work on this legendary pulp magazine, and Max Brand: Western Giant (1986).

William F. Nolan was born in 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and worked as an artist for Hallmark Cards before moving to California in the late 40s. Soon he began concentrating on writing rather than art. Not long after his first genre fiction, "The Joy of Living," was published in the August 1954 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction, Nolan became a full-time writer. It was during this period that Nolan, along with Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Chad Oliver, and John Tomerlin, formed the nucleus of the group known as "The Southern California School of Writers," working together to develop their skills. According to a recent interview, everything William F. Nolan has written since his second short story has been published–more than 1500 stories, articles, books, and other works.

Nolan is best known as the co-author (with George Clayton Johnson) of Logan’s Run and sole author of its sequels. The original novel sold over a million copies in the United States alone, spawned a popular MGM movie, a CBS television series, a Marvel comic book, and dozens of websites. Bluewater Productions recently launched a new graphic version of Nolan’s creation entitled Logan’s Run: Last Day and a mega-budget film version of the novel is in development.

With 85 books to his credit, plus hundreds of articles, scripts and short stories embracing a dozen genres, Nolan is a regular word factory. He has written countless works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, particularly in the short story form. The best of his dark fantasy was collected in 2001 under the title William F. Nolan’s Dark Universe: Stories 1951 - 2001, while a representative sampling of his science fiction appeared in 2005: Wild Galaxy: Selected Science Fiction Stories. He is a two-time winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s prestigious Edgar Award, was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006, acclaimed a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild, and recently received the Lifetime Achievement Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. Additionally, his work for television has garnered two Golden Medallions in Europe.

In the pulp field, Nolan has not only authored works on Hammett, Faust, and Black Mask, but has also written about his friends Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont. Additionally, he has edited six collections featuring the work of Frederick Faust. He has also penned a trio of mystery novels featuring Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner as detectives. The first of these, The Black Mask Murders, appeared in 1994. His Sam Space series, a joking homage to Hammett, transported the hero of The Maltese Falcon to outer space. Although Nolan began his "fiction career too late for the pulps," he "did have letters printed in Planet Stories and Famous Fantastic Mysteries" and "grew up reading Argosy and Weird Tales."

Nolan’s most recent work is The Bleeding Edge: Dark Barriers, Dark Frontiers, an anthology of dark short fiction and film scripts, co-edited with Jason V. Brock. Published as a limited edition by Cycatrix Press, it features works by Nolan, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Frank Robinson, George Clayton Johnson, the late Dan O’Bannon, Joe R. Lansdale, and others. Additionally, Nolan penned a short piece that is included in The Pulpster #19, this year’s PulpFest program book.

At PulpFest 2010, Nolan headlined panels on Western and hard-boiled detective fiction and discussed his long writing career. He was available for autographs and conversation for all of Saturday afternoon. A resident of Vancouver, Washington, Nolan is currently at work on ten new books including a biography of Frederick Faust. He lives in an apartment filled with books, pulps, and stuffed animals.

PulpFest 2009–Otto Penzler

Otto Penzler, whose 2008 anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps did more to renew interest in pulp fiction than any mainstream publication in recent history, was  a perfect  fit for the first PulpFest. Born in 1942, Otto regaled conventioneers with stories of his adventures in the publishing business and as a lifelong collector. He also gave attendees a preview of his much anticipated Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories, an anthology collecting rare yarns from the prestigious pulp magazine that was home to Hammett, Chandler, and other giants of hard-boiled detective fiction. It will be released in 2010 and be followed by a collection of adventure fiction.

Mr. Penzler first endeared himself to pulp-fiction fans in the late 1970s by publishing a two-volume collection of stories featuring Norgil, a magician-detective created by Walter Gibson, who also wrote The Shadow novels. In the years succeeding, Penzler released  a variety of pulp fiction collections as well as a biography of pulp scribe Cornell Woolrich.

In addition to his myriad accomplishments in publishing and editing, Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop, a New York City landmark that celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2008. The winner of numerous awards, he is also a world-class collector of crime fiction, many of whose most notable authors toiled in the pulp vineyards before achieving mainstream success with major publishers.