Pulp Fiction Novels and Pulp Books

What is Pulp? True pulp fiction has little to do with the movie which shares its name. It’s instead a reference to the cheap nature of a specific genre of fiction, as it was printed on lower quality pulp paper than other books and magazines of the time, and generally considered not to live up to the quality of the more expensive genre. This misconception has created a subculture of Pulp Fiction Novel, short story collections, and Pulp book fans. Critics often profess them unimportant works of pure fantasy and entertainment, relating them more to Comic Books, than true fiction. However, these are misconceptions, as some of the most prominent names of fantasy and science fiction have written for Pulp Books or pulp magazines over the years.

This type of writing was also known as Dime novels, and was more akin to a magazine than a book, as they contained collections of short stories, such as Amazing Stories, and Tales of Wonder. The titles were sensationalized and designed to capture the reader’s attention. Though these may have been dubbed cheap fiction doesn’t mean that the writers weren’t actually quality. The fallacy here is that a great many of the best American writers have publish in these pulp magazines, including Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, Jack London and H.G. Wells, just to name a few. During this time in some of their writing careers they could be classified along with Romance Writers.

Pulprack.com is a valuable source of information regarding this genre of, sometimes unappreciated, American literature. This form of literature deserves better than the disrespect that has been culturally bestowed upon it for years. Pulprack hopes to inform the reader on the importance and interest of this particular vein of writing and its connection to American literature as a whole.