With April approaching, the pulp con season begins. First up will be the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show, followed by the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention beginning April 12th. PulpFest committee members Jack Cullers, Mike Chomko, and Ed Hulse (who will be releasing a new issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder) will all be there with information about PulpFest 2013.

A couple of weeks after Windy City, the South’s leading “pulp culture” convention, Pulp Ark will take place in Springdale, Arkansas while Canada’s premier pulp event, the Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale, will be held May 11th in Toronto. About a week later, Morris, Illinois will host the 2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship Gathering while Columbus, Ohio will be home to Cinevent 45 over Memorial Day weekend.

June 7th and 8th are the dates for Robert E. Howard Days in the author’s home town of Cross Plains, Texas. Still to be announced is the date for the spring edition of Classicon, but the Derby City Comic Con will go off on June 29th in Louisville, Kentucky.

Of course, all of these events are a prelude for the best pulp event of all, the summertime destination for fans and collectors of vintage popular fiction and related materials, PulpFest 2013. This year, we’ll be celebrating Doc Savage and the pulp heroes of 1933 and the centennial of the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu. Our guests will include Will Murray, author of twelve Doc Savage novels, including the just-released King Kong crossover, Skull Island; Lamont Award winner Don Hutchison, leading pulp anthologist and author of The Great Pulp Heroes and numerous articles about the pulps; Nathan Madison, author of Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comics, 1920-1960; William Patrick Maynard, the writer authorized to continue the Fu Manchu series; and pulp art expert David Saunders. There will also be a showing of the complete movie serial, The Spider’s Web, produced by Columbia Pictures in 1938.

PulpFest is now accepting registrations for this year’s convention, running July 25th-28th. From our registration page, you’ll be able to download our member and dealer registration forms. You can pay for memberships and dealer tables through our Paypal order page. You’ll also be able to book a room at the Hyatt Regency Columbus at the convention rate of $112 plus tax via our special link to the hotel.

We are also happy to once again supply a third table free of charge to dealers who stay at the Hyatt and rent two tables in our hucksters’ room. That’s three tables for the price of two, or six for the price of four. The massive size of the Regency Ballroom enables us to provide this extra exhibit space to loyal PulpFest dealers. Remember, this special offer is good only to dealers staying at the host hotel.

With about a quarter of the vast collection of pulp researcher Al Tonik tucked away in storage, PulpFest is delighted to report that the remainder of Albert’s superlative library of hardcovers, paperbacks, pulps, dime novels, comic books, fanzines, art books, and reference books will be sold during our Saturday night auction on July 27th. For additional details, including a link to the catalog, please visit the Tonik Auction page under our Auctions button.

All this and more can be found by clicking the buttons along the left side of our home page. And don’t forget, you can make your nominations for the 2013 Munsey and Rusty Hevelin Service Awards through the end of April. Please send the name of the person that you’d like to nominate and a short paragraph describing your reasons for your nomination to Mike Chomko, 2217 W. Fairview St., Allentown, PA  18104-6542 or to mike@pulpfest.com.

In the coming weeks, PulpFest will start previewing its highly respected programming on this site. So please visit often. We look forward to seeing you July 25th through July 28th.

This year’s Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention will be saluting ninety years of science fiction and fantasy magazines including the August 1923 issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Science and Invention magazine, its “Scientific Fiction Number” which sported front cover art by Howard V. Brown. The scan is from the January 31, 2012 Tellers of Weird Tales.