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[1.] Fantastic story quarterly, Vol.1 No.2, Summer 1950.
[2.] Fantastic novels magazine, Vol.1 No.4, January 1941
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For the first half of the 20th century, pulp fiction was one of the English–speaking world’s most popular forms of entertainment. The typical pulp magazine consisted of a colour ‘slick’ cover containing 128 pages of fiction and advertising printed on poor quality ‘pulp’ paper. Crime, romance, westerns, war, sport, science fiction, horror and fantasy were all staples for the pulps. Illustrators and painters created thousands of original works to adorn the covers and attract readers. These were usually sensational and lurid depictions of the short stories, articles and ‘novelets’ inside, although sometimes writers were asked to provide a story to match the illustration!
The bulk of Fryer Library’s collection of pulp was donated in 1988 by Donald Tuck, (1922-2010), a science fiction fanatic from Tasmania who began collecting science fiction and fantasy material as a young man in the 1930s. He also compiled A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy and published an Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy in three volumes from 1974 to 1982. Finally running out of space in his home to store his collection he began looking for an institution interested in acquiring it and the Fryer Library eventually became the beneficiary. Because of the inherently poor quality of the paper, the pulp collection is best housed in a temperature and humidity controlled environment such as Fryer Library.
While much of the fiction published in the pulps was not of an enduring quality, many writers went on to have distinguished careers in fiction, journalism or the new graphic medium of comic books. Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories (PN6071.S33 A55), for example, introduced science fiction authors such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Arthur C. Clarke, amongst others, to the reading public and it was the pulps where Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced his two most famous characters, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.
While a product of their time and chauvinistic by today’s standards, the cover illustrations for the magazines also have a charm and exuberance all their own. The years between 1930 and 1960 are considered the golden years of pulp illustration and some illustrators became as popular as the authors of the stories.
The display in the Fryer Library features some of the work of Earle Bergey (1901-1952), a typical pulp illustrator. Bergey produced covers for a wide variety of pulp magazines and is probably best known for his cover of the 1925 Anita Loos novel Gentleman Prefer Blondes. His science-fiction illustrations of scantily–clad women in space helmets are reputed to have been the inspiration for Princess Leia’s slave-girl outfit in the film Return of the Jedi and Madonna’s brass brassiere.
At their peak, individual issues of the most popular pulp magazines sold more than a million copies each and the form remained popular until World War II when a chronic shortage of paper sent circulation figures plummeting. Soon after, television broadcasting began and finally laid the pulps to rest.
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