My Love for Pulp Magazines Part 2

        Hey everyone! Last week I made a post about my love for the big three of the pulp magazine Weird Tales: HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E Howard. This week I wanted to talk about my interests in the book the Encyclopedia of Monsters and how it got me into pulps to begin with. 

        When I was 11, I moved to Bozeman Montana from Carson City Nevada and one of the places I liked to spend a lot of time was the local library. I used to walk around and peruse the shelves for interesting looking books. One day I found the horror section and discovered the book called the Encyclopedia of Monsters. It was a book published in 1989 by Jeff Rovin and it contains an absolute gold mine for all things monsters. It includes entries of monsters from poetry, mythology, b movies, comics, trading cards, and of course pulps. 

        Even though I didn’t have access to actually read the stories until much later, the synopsis of the stories, the pictures, and the descriptions of the monsters was always so fascinating to me. Stories such as the Amazing Stories story "Giants out of the Sun" by Peter Horn, where a long lost Inca civilization has used the suns rays to turn their people into colossal blue giants in an effort to take over the world.

        Another creature I really like is the Grimalkin from the Fantastic Adventures story "Lair of the Grimalkin" by G.H Irwin, where the Grimalkin, a giant winged reptile that was worshiped as a god on Venus attacks a colonial city on Venus and has a fight with Earthlings.

        One last story for today is the Worm of the Abyss from the Fantastic Adventures story "Slaves of the Worm" by Richard S. Shaver. In this story a worm lives deep down in an abyss and has many human slaves that it uses to try and conquer the planet and defeat the White Hearted people, who are his enemies.

        While some would call these stories "goofy" and "lame", I find them fascinating. Not only do they have a lot of spirit and imagination, but the art work that goes along with them is just utterly fantastic. Perhaps I too would wish to make a similar story to these I mentioned. Even as an adult, the Encyclopedia of Monsters is without a doubt one of the greatest books ever made, and I'm very thankful for the day I discovered it. Until next time, stay weird!