What is a Pulp Magazine?

Pulp magazines, often called simply "the pulps", were inexpensive text fiction magazines widely published in the 1920s through the 1950s. The first "pulp" is considered to be Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy Magazine of 1896. Most of the few pulps still thriving today are science fiction (SF) or mystery magazines.

The name comes from the cheap woodpulp paper on which they were printed. Magazines printed on better paper and usually offering content more oriented towards family reading were often called "slicks." Pulps were the successor to the "penny dreadfuls" and "dime novels" of the nineteenth century. Though many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines are perhaps best remembered for the fast-paced, lurid, sensationalistic and exploitive stories often featured in their pages. As well, the emphasis on series characters solidified that trend in popular culture; magazines featuring novel-length stories of heroic characters, like The Shadow, Doc Savage, The Phantom Detective, paved the way for comic books. Pulp covers were famous for their half-dressed damsels in distress, usually awaiting a rescuing hero.

Pulp magazines can be categorized into the following genres:

• Detective/Mystery
• Romance
• Science Fiction
• True crime
• Men's adventure
• Sports
• General
• Western
• Character (the precursor to the superhero fantasy genre)

Famous and Infamous Characters of Pulp Fiction

Popular regular pulp fiction characters included:

• The Avenger
• Biggles
• Conan the Barbarian
• Doc Savage
• G-8
• Operator No. 5
• Sexton Blake
• The Shadow
• The Spider
• Tarzan
• Zorro
• Batman
• The Incredible Hulk

Authors and Pulp Magazines today

Many well-known authors wrote for the pulps at one time or another. Note that many people would make a distinction between an author who wrote for the pulps but later went on to transcend the limitations of the genre, and a "pulp author", who did not.

Well-known authors who wrote for the pulps include:

• Poul Anderson
• Isaac Asimov
• Alfred Bester
• Robert Bloch
• Leigh Brackett
• Ray Bradbury
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Ellis Parker Butler
• Hugh B. Cave
• Raymond Chandler
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Philip K. Dick
• Erle Stanley Gardner
• Dashiell Hammett
• Robert Heinlein
• Frank Herbert
• Robert E. Howard
• L. Ron Hubbard
• Elmore John Leonard
• H. P. Lovecraft
• John D. MacDonald
• Johnston McCulley
• Seabury Quinn
• Richard S. Shaver
• Robert Silverberg
• Clark Ashton Smith
• Jack Vance

Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialized in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Black Mask. The format eventually declined (most dramatically in the 1950s) with rising paper costs, competition from comic books, television, and the paperback novel, although it is still in use for some lengthy serials, like the German SF weekly Perry Rhodan (over 2200 issues as of 2003).

The genre also gave name to the movie Pulp Fiction.