My Love for Pulp Magazines Part 1

        Hi everyone! For my second post I wanted to dive a bit more into my interests as a writer. I am a HUGE fan of pulp magazines and they have really shaped my taste in storytelling ever since I was in middle school.

        Pulp magazines refer to a type of magazine that was printed on very cheap wood pulp paper. The first pulps started in the 1880s and remained popular in the United States until the 1960s, where they had largely been replaced with TV and the few still remaining magazine titles transitioned into paperbacks. While pulp wasn’t specific to any particular genre, many of the most famous (and my favorites) were fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Some of the main pulp magazines were Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Astounding Stories, and Argosy. My favorite of these is Weird Tales as it includes three of some of my favorite authors, Clark Ashton Smith, HP Lovecraft, and Robert E Howard. 

       HP Lovecraft is the most famous of the three and is basically a household name at this point. He was an amateur astronomer, obsessed with space and science. His stories centered around “cosmic horror” and dealt with themes of eldritch beings so far beyond our comprehension that it would shatter our minds if we even looked at them. Some of his most famous works are “At the Mountains of Madness”, “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, and “Dreams in the Witch House”.

        Robert E. Howard might not be a household name, but “Conan the Barbarian”, his greatest creation is. Robert was an amateur boxer turned writer and used his interest in history, mythology, and anthropology to create some of the most exciting fantasy stories out there. Howard is commonly known as the father of Sword and Sorcery. Beyond Conan, he also wrote stories around other heroes such as “Solomon Kane” and “Kull the Conqueror”, as well as many horror stories such "the Black Stone" and "the Horror from the Mound".

        Clark Ashton Smith is sadly the least well known of the three, but he is by far my favorite and in my humble opinion, the greatest pulp writer of all time. Born in California, he began his career by being a rather talented poet and a sort of apprentice to poet George Sterling. When the great depression struck and he and his family were left destitute, he was encouraged by Lovecraft, a close pen pal he had made, to write short stories for Weird Tales. With that advice and in the span of just a little over half a decade, he wrote around one hundred different stories. His writing was full of the strange and the bizarre, as well as the heroic and the exotic. CAS had such an interesting mastery of language, and when using it to set a scene or build an environment, he just brings you into that world. He didn’t focus on recurring characters as much as Howard and Lovecraft, but what he did focus on was worldbuilding and environments, such as Mu, Atlantis, Averoigne, Zothique, and while he didn’t make it, he helped flesh out Hyperborea.

        I want to share a few passages of his works that really inspire me to write:

        From "the Abominations of Yondo":

The sand of the desert of Yondo is not as the sand of other deserts; for Yondo lies nearest of all to the world's rim; and strange winds, blowing from a pit no astronomer may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the gray dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns. The dark, orblike mountains which rise from its wrinkled and pitted plain are not all its own, for some are fallen asteroids half-buried in that abysmal sand. Things have crept in from nether space, whose incursion is forbid by the gods of all proper and well-ordered lands; but there are no such gods in Yondo, where live the hoary genii of stars abolished and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells.

        From "the White Sybil":

There came the forenoon when he climbed to a hill-meadow from which the roofs of the city were like littered shells beside a sea whose tumbling billows had become a smooth floor of turquoise. He was alone in a world of flowers: the frail mantle that summer had flung before the desolate peaks. The turf rolled away from him on every hand in broad scrolls and carpetries of flaming color. Even the wild briars had put forth their fragile, sanguine-tinted blossoms; and the very banks and precipices were heavily arrassed with low-hanging bloom.Tortha had met no one; for he had long since left the trail by which the squat mountain people came to the city. A vague prompting, which seemed to include a promise unspoken by any voice, had led him to this lofty meadow from which a crystal rill ran seaward amid the bright cascades of flowers.Pale, diaphanous beneath the sun, a few cirrous clouds went floating idly toward the pinnacles; and the quarrying hawks flew oceanward on broad red wings. A perfume, rich as temple-incense, rose from the blossoms whereon he had trampled; the light lay still and heavy upon him, dazzling his senses; and Tortha, a little weary from his climbing, grew faint for a moment with some strange vertigo.

        It's somewhat difficult for me to fully express how much I love these passages. I find these to excite the imagination and by simply using words, a person can create such fascinating worlds. They really want me to take out my dictionary! All three of these writers were amazing in their own way, Lovecraft had a universe of horrors beyond our comprehension, Howard had an immersive fantasy world, and CAS had both of those and more, amazing poetry, and a mastery of the English language I wish I had. Perhaps with enough work I could attain this level of writing.

    Well, thank you for reading this latest Weird Writing Corner post. This is a part 1 and next time I want to go more in depth with other pulp writers and magazine! Until next time stay weird!