EDitorial Comments

Now Available: The First Volume Of BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER PRESENTS

In case you hadn’t heard, last fall we brought to an end Blood ‘n’ Thunder‘s 14-year run as a periodical. The zine went out with a bang: a double issue numbered 49/50 and packed with some of the best articles in BnT history. In the editorial we promised to continue the franchise with a series of standalone volumes, issued at irregular intervals, covering various aspects of pulp and pop-culture history under the general title of Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents.

Well, this week we proudly release the first volume of Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents, subtitled Pride of the Pulps. It’s been designed in the “deluxe” trade-paperback format of 8 1/2 x 11 inches, with the series title in a wraparound banner and the volume number printed at the top of the spine. All future volumes will have a uniform design.

Pride of the Pulps devotes nearly 100,000 words to in-depth surveys of six classic rough-paper magazines: Adventure, All-American Fiction, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, The Popular Magazine, Short Stories, and West. Earlier versions of these overviews were published in back issues of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, but all have been revised and expanded for this book. Greatly expanded, in some cases: the essay on Short Stories, for example, first appeared as a two-parter with a total word count of 11,500 words. Its counterpart in Pride of the Pulps runs close to 17,000 words.

The addition of new material extends as well to illustrative matter. The surveys in Pride include more pulp covers and interior illustrations than accompanied their earlier versions in BnT, but we’ve also added more scans of original cover paintings.

In short, this is not a reprint volume that simply repurposes old copy. It has a significant amount of new content and is a veritable textbook of pulp-fiction history. Even if you’d be satisfied with the essays as printed in BnT, it would cost you well over $100 to purchase those issues individually. And that’s assuming you could find them all: the two issues with the Short Stories survey have been out of print for many years.

Future volumes of Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents will be devoted to the following topics: a history of Argosy, the working life of pulp writers, the output of legendary scribe Edgar Wallace, a history of Doubleday’s Crime Club book division, and a survey of films made during 1932, which we posit to be fantastic cinema’s best year. We hope and expect to issue at least two volumes per calendar year, although we’re on track to publish three in 2017. Stay tuned for more announcements.

In the meantime, don’t miss out on our first release in the Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents series. We guarantee it’ll make a valuable addition to any home library of reference works covering pulp fiction and vintage American popular culture. You can get it right here.

Collectibles Section Updated

We’re doing some Spring Cleaning at the Murania Press storage facility and have just added a slew of pulps to our Collectibles For Sale section. In the days and weeks ahead we’ll be listing vintage hardcovers, paperbacks, and non-pulp periodicals as they are unearthed from the bowels of our archives. Meanwhile, there are some attractive and relatively scarce mags among the latest offerings. Some of them are pictured below. Look for them in the Collectibles section; you’ll find them righteously priced.

Now Available for Shipping: THE BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER SAMPLER

Blood ‘n’ Thunder last year ceased publication as a periodical, and I’ve been an abject failure at keeping this blog updated, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting on my hands. Far from it! In addition to collaborating with Doug Ellis on the upcoming The Art of the Pulps (more about that in a future post), I’ve just finished putting together Pride of the Pulps, the first volume in an irregularly published series I’m calling Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents. (More about that in a future post, too.) And I’m currently working on Volume Two of Blood ‘n’ Thunder’s Cliffhanger Classics—which, unlike the first, will feature a substantial amount of all-new content.

What brings me here today—just as I’m preparing to leave for the annual Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention—is the arrival of The Blood ‘n’ Thunder Sampler, now available for purchase and shipping.  It’s a large-size trade paperback of 250 pages, reprinting 17 of the very best articles that appeared in issues 22/23 through 30.

Long-time BnT readers and subscribers will remember that Murania Press has previously published two volumes titled The Best of Blood ‘n’ Thunder. Those books, which were published in a smaller format and used relatively few illustrations, have continued to be good sellers because they reprint material from the first 21 issues, now many years out of print.

I wanted to try something different with the Sampler in hopes of attracting new readers to Blood ‘n’ Thunder. Being a profusely illustrated, large-format book with a two-column page design, it replicates BnT to a much greater degree than did the Best of volumes. With any luck, buyers will find it sufficiently appealing to justify purchases of back issues still available here on the site. Of course, the Sampler is a bargain in its own right: One would spend a hundred dollars buying the eight issues excerpted in its pages. Speaking as objectively as possible, the book offers a terrific cross-section of BnT material; I deliberately cast a wide net, making sure to represent not only pulp-related essays and articles, but also the zine’s other areas of interest, specifically vintage movies and Old Time Radio. Pulp-fiction content dominates, of course, and two of the movie articles (covering early Zorro and Tarzan films) have pulp connections.

Compiling these writings for the Sampler also enabled me to improve some of them with additional information and correction of minor mistakes that slipped into print the first time around. And while most articles are illustrated as they were in the magazine, a few are accompanied by artwork not available to me when I initially published them. For example, my piece for #26 on the making of Gunga Din (which reworked an earlier essay I’d done for the Lone Pine in the Movies magazine) now includes several fantastic candids taken on the set during production. And a portfolio of illustration art by the legendary Norman Saunders sports repros of numerous pulp-cover paintings that have come up for auction since we first printed the gallery in 2009.

I’m satisfied that the Sampler will make a great introduction to Blood ‘n’ Thunder and related publications. I daresay that even veteran BnT readers might find it useful, if only because it contains between two covers a lot of good reading you’d otherwise have to fish through eight different issues to find.  You can get the Sampler right here.

Murania’s First Release of 2017

Yes, it’s been a long time since this blog was updated. But at last we have some exciting news to report. Pulp fiction’s first super-villain is back after nearly 100 years in obscurity—and his criminous exploits are just as thrilling now as they were a century ago!

After a lengthy, unanticipated delay we’re finally releasing the first volume of our Johnston McCulley Collection, which brings back into print several long-forgotten characters whose adventures were chronicled by Zorro’s creator for Detective Story Magazine. McCulley’s most famous hero has long overshadowed the others, but this astoundingly prolific ex-journalist also wrote series with more than 20 recurring protagonists, good guys and bad guys alike, for that legendary Street & Smith pulp.

The first of these debuts in 1915, Detective Story‘s first year. He is named Black Star, after the star of jet emblazoned on the hood he wears to conceal his identity. His minions, also clad in black hoods and robes, use vapor guns to subdue their victims and adversaries. These non-lethal weapons emit a gas that instantly renders unconscious those who breathe it in close quarters. Black Star avoids the use of deadly force and always keeps his word. But that doesn’t make him any less terrifying.

An early 20th-century metropolis trembles in fear at the mention of his name. His meticulously-planned depredations leave victims quaking in their shoes and baffle the police, who seem helpless to stem the rising tide of panic that threatens to engulf the city. Amateur criminologist and millionaire clubman Roger Verbeck, aided by his loyal valet Muggs, sets out to apprehend Black Star and finally does. But the master criminal makes good his escape and, once again in command of his army of robed and hooded henchmen, plots a campaign of revenge that will find the mayor, police commissioner, and prominent citizens under his control and at his mercy—with even the brilliant Roger Verbeck powerless to stop it!

September 30: Collectibles for Sale Section Update

This evening I’m adding more than two dozen new items to the site’s Collectibles for Sale section, most of them first-edition hardcovers of Western, detective, and science-fiction titles, including a handful of rare fantasy/sf anthologies culled largely from the pulps. Among the latter are Donald Wollheim’s Flight Into Space, Phil Stong’s The Other Worlds, and the seldom-seen From Off This World, compiled by “Thrilling Group” editors Leo Margulies and Oscar Friend from the “Hall of Fame Classics” reprinted in Startling Stories. There’s also a like-new, unread copy of The Night Nemesis, a long-out-of-print collection of “Moon Man” mysteries by Frederick C. Davis.

Other goodies: two first-edition anthologies of Raymond Chandler’s Black Mask and Dime Detective stories, Red Wind and Spanish Blood; the scarce hardcover edition of Richard S. Shaver’s notorious I Remember Lemuria; a signed As New copy of William F. Nolan’s The Black Mask Murders; and jacketed first edition of S. Fowler Wright’s fantasy/sf classics The World Below and The Island of Captain Sparrow. And more!

My last batch of vintage hardcovers sold out within days, with many of the books going to dealers who will no doubt mark them up considerably. So if you’re tempted by any of these new offerings, don’t waste any time pulling the trigger!

Collectibles Section Updated

As we go into Labor Day weekend I’ve just concluded my labors by adding two dozen new items to the Collectibles for Sale section. The previous update, you recall, was in July and featured several dozen vintage hardcovers. Well, practically every one of them sold, and in record time. So, with the site’s Collectible cupboard practically bare, I’ve restocked again.

This time around the new offerings are mostly high-grade pulps, among them choice examples of such popular titles as The Spider, G-Men, Planet Stories, and Wild West Weekly. You’ll also find a practically new copy of the scarce Red Star Adventures, a short-lived hero-pulp title from the Munsey organization. And those of you who commented favorably on Blood ‘n’ Thunder‘s recent survey of Famous Fantastic Mysteries should note the many copies of that classic pulp for sale.

Of course, I haven’t totally ignored vintage hardcovers. This update includes two books by Talbot Mundy, a Fu Manchu novel by Sax Rohmer, the 1984 Mysterious Press reprint volume of Shadow stories, and a sharp copy of Alan Green’s What a Body!, which won the 1949 Edgar Award for Best First Mystery. The copy I’m offering once belonged to famed crime writer Dorothy B. Hughes and is signed by her.

Some great deals here, folks. Check ’em out!

PulpFest 2016 Report

The eighth annual PulpFest, held for the fourth year in downtown Columbus, Ohio’s Hyatt Regency Hotel, got off to a running start last Thursday, July 21st. Once again a fairly small but hearty group of pulp-fiction enthusiasts—more than 400, according to convention chairman Jack Cullers—from all across the country assembled to buy, sell and trade vintage books and magazines as well as audit pulp-themed solo presentations and panel discussions.

Actually, although most PulpFest attendees stayed at the Hyatt, the hotel meeting rooms we customarily occupy had been booked by a larger group that same weekend, so we were shunted rather unceremoniously into the adjoining Convention Center—an upgrade in that the massive room given over to our vendors was fronted by a wall of glass, allowing considerably more light than we’ve been used to in the Hyatt’s grand ballroom. A hundred or more dealers’ tables, along with a dozen or so round banquet tables at which attendees could sit and schmooze with fellow hobbyists, filled this space nicely while allowing wide aisles for easy passage.

Thursday evening saw hucksters and early-bird shoppers wheeling and dealing during the evening hours, and programming got underway at 9 p.m. with presentations on Street & Smith’s second-string hero pulps and the time-travel fiction of H. G. Wells. At 10 a.m. on Friday morning the dealers room was opened to all and the festivities began in earnest.

I missed the “opening bell” because a serious attack of heart palpitations the previous evening had persuaded me to visit the emergency room of Columbus’ Grant Medical Center. The palpitations ceased about an hour after I arrived, while the doctor was still awaiting test results, but the good folks at Grant insisted I remain under observation for a day. As you can imagine, this annoyed me no end because I could visualize my fellow collectors beating me to all the good stuff in the dealers room. Since every test indicated no damage had been done, the palpitations were written off as a manifestation of accumulated stress and excess adrenaline—no doubt the result of two sleepless nights before undertaking a 12-hour drive and then rushing around in blistering heat to unload our van before dashing through the dealers room to snap up those early-bird bargains. My ticker started thumping irregularly once I sat down to relax and have dinner with friends. I’d endured the palpitations for several hours before taking a cab to Grant’s emergency room.

Released from the hospital at 2 p.m. on Friday, I lost no time returning to the Hyatt and made a beeline for the convention center. It took only a few minutes to arrange my sales stock on the Murania Press table and open for business. Sales were brisk and I picked up some nice pulps to boot.

Still seriously sleep-deprived, I took a nap after dinner on Friday and missed presentations on Philip José Farmer (have I mentioned that Farmercon is held in conjunction with PulpFest every year?) and the artists who illustrated Argosy. By the time I got down to the programming room, shortly after 9 p.m., science-fiction fan Joe Coluccio had already started his talk on Amazing Stories, the first all-science-fiction pulp magazine, whose 90th anniversary PulpFest celebrated this year.

Joe was followed by my good friend Laurie Powers, whose power-point presentation on Love Story Magazine and its famous editor, Daisy Bacon, was one of the weekend’s highlights. Laurie has been researching Bacon for several years now, preparatory to writing a long-overdue biography of this highly influential pulp-fiction personage, and she presented wonderful information along with rare photos of Daisy.

Novelist and pulp scholar Will Murray was to have discussed Western Story Magazine after Laurie’s talk, but pressing family matters kept him from attending the con. My old pal and traveling companion Walker Martin, possibly the only collector to have a nearly complete file of Western Story (lacking less than a dozen issues of the 1285 published between 1919 and 1949), joined me in substituting for Will. I can’t honestly say it was one of my finest presentations, because I’d not had time to prepare and by this time had not slept in three nights (having gotten not a wink in the hospital). But Walker and I muddled through reasonably well under the circumstances.

Me saying something semi-profound while Walker listens bemusedly.

Saturday was another fun day. I sold more Murania product and did a little more shopping. PulpFest’s daytime programming is largely given over to the “New Fictioneers” contingent of writers turning out books in the classic pulp style. PulpFest regulars Ron Fortier and Win Scott Eckert, joined by several comrades, held forth on “Writing Hero Pulp” and read from their works. I’m always scurrying around the dealers room during PulpFest afternoons but one of these years I’m going to sit in on the New Pulp events.

Saturday evening’s program began with the annual business meeting, during which it was revealed that the Hyatt was no longer interested in hosting our convention on the grounds that their spacious facility could be more profitably rented to larger groups that, presumably, would book more sleeping rooms and spend more money in the hotel lounge and restaurant. Chairman Jack Cullers vowed to begin immediately the search for a new venue, in Columbus if possible but perhaps elsewhere in Ohio or a neighboring state.

After the meeting, convention committee member Barry Traylor presented this year’s Munsey Award to the aforementioned Laurie Powers. The Munsey (named for the publisher of the first pulp periodical, The Argosy) is given to an individual whose efforts—in writing, research, and/or publishing—have helped keep the spirit of the pulps alive for generations not yet born when the last rough-paper magazines disappeared from newsstands. Laurie joined our community as a result of her deeply personal mission to revive interest in her grandfather, the legendarily prolific Paul S. Powers, whose yarns filled the pages of Street & Smith’s Wild West Weekly from 1928 to 1943. Her labors on his behalf, along with her research on Daisy Bacon, certainly entitled her to this year’s award, and everybody agreed that she was the perfect choice.

Doug Ellis, super-collector and chairman of the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, did a terrific presentation celebrating Argosy‘s 120th birthday, showing dozens of covers from the magazine’s history. This was followed by the annual auction, conducted by Adventure House’s John Gunnison with his usual panache. Many great deals were to be had, but not by me: I bid on close to 20 lots but only won two.

As things wound down on Sunday morning, I made a few last-minute sales before closing up shop at the Murania table. I’d brought close to 70 pieces and was going home with just four. Not bad.

Unexpected hospital visit notwithstanding, I had a great time at this year’s PulpFest. Thanks go to chairman Jack Cullers and his family, committee members Mike Chomko, Barry Traylor, Chuck Welch, Bill Lampkin, and all the other volunteers who work so hard all year round to make this convention such an enjoyable event. Here’s hoping the search for a new venue bears fruit soon!

Another view of the dealers room. Photos by William Lampkin.

More Collectibles for Sale Being Listed for July 4th Weekend!

I’m adding another several dozen items — pulps, digests, and hardcover first editions — to our Collectibles section just in time for the Holiday Weekend sale that begins tonight (or, rather, tomorrow morning) at 12:01 a.m. For the next three days you can get a 20 percent discount on everything you purchase here.

The new batch of goodies includes many rare and desirable items, especially for lovers of science fiction. I’m adding several more signed first editions of Philip José Farmer’s “Riverworld” books, the 1951 issue of Galaxy with Ray Bradbury’s novella “The Fireman” (later expanded to become the novel Fahrenheit 451), and a dust-jacketed copy of Curt Siodmak’s 1933 F.P. 1 Does Not Reply, an extremely rare SF novel made into a movie that same year.

Those interested in mysteries and thrillers will find first editions of Dashiell Hammett’s Blood Money and Joel Townsley Rogers’ The Red Right Hand, both of which originally appeared in pulp magazines. Desirable items of later vintage include a high-grade first edition of Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs. And there’s lot of esoterica, as well.

Holiday Weekend Sale!

Here’s another great way to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Beginning tonight — or, rather, Saturday morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time — everything for sale on this site will be discounted by 20 percent until Tuesday morning at 12:01 a.m. That includes not only all issues of Blood ‘n’ Thunder and other Murania Press books, but everything listed in our Collectibles for Sale section as well.

Rather than reprice every item on the site, however, I’m going to offer the discount another way. Simply make your purchases as usual with our Shopping Cart function, and on Tuesday morning after the sale’s conclusion I will rebate the 20 percent back to you via Paypal.

In addition to what’s already listed, I’m spending this afternoon and evening (Friday) adding another several dozen items to the Collectibles section — pulps, digests, and more hardcover first editions. There’ll be something for every taste!