2013 Pulp Factory Awards - Winners!

2013 PULP FACTORY AWARDS ANNOUNCED

For the fourth consecutive year, the Pulp Factory Awards were presented at this year’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention.

These awards are given to the best in new pulp fiction and art published during the previous year as voted on by the 111 members of the Pulp Factory; an internet group made up of pulp writers, artists, editors, publishers and dedicated fans.

Writer William Patrick Maynard and artist Rob Davis once again co-hosted the award presentations, handing out the sculptured trophies done in the shape of a quill pen set against factory-like gears.

The pen represents both writers and artists, the gears paying homage to the assembly-line production of the old pulps of the 1930s.



This year’s winners for the best in fiction and art for 2012 were:

For Best Pulp Novel –
THE LONE RANGER – VENDETTA by the late Howard Hopkins, published by Moonstone Books.

For Best Pulp Short Story –
"The Ghoul" by Ron Fortier from the anthology, “Monster Aces,” published by Pro Se Productions.

For Best Pulp Cover –
Joe Devito for THE INFERNAL BUDDHA published Altus Press.

For Best Interior Illustrations –
Rob Moran for THE RUBY FILES published by Airship 27 Productions.

This year’s preliminary nominations and final ballot represented a total of twelve New Pulp Fiction publishers.

The Pulp Factory membership congratulates all the winners for their exceptional work.

Congratulations to the winners!

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage #36

MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA - FEBRUARY 1936

This adventure starts with another great Doc Savage story opener. A fully clothed man comes ashore on Long Island Sound and refuses help. He manages to grab a train into the city and escapes his would be rescuers. Shortly thereafter, a boatload of pursuers arrives at the same beach.

After a number of chases and an unpleasant journey on an ocean liner, Doc and his men Monk, Ham, and Renny arrive at the destination just after two factions of sea borne skallywags. There is much fighting and underwater adventure in this novel. I found the premise far more compelling than the telling and the rich treasures more interesting and clever than usual. The femme fatale, Diamond Eve is also charming and interesting.

What is beginning to bother me about some of the stories (like this one) is that just when we finally get to some wondrous place, in this case a lost city called Taz, the story is almost over. There is little time to explore, no time to enjoy the incredible place the writers have (at least partially) imagined. There is often far too much getting there and not enough there. I will have to remember this in my own stories.

The ideas within this story are fantastic and I wish we could have spent far more time in these fantastic undersea ruins. Further research shows that 30 issues later, Doc returns to the underwater lost city of Taz...

Here are the paintings that Walter Baumhofer and James Bama did for their covers of the February 1936 issue of Doc Savage Magazine. It is rare that I can find the paintings for both publications of the novels.

For this review I read my copy of the Bantam paperback from August 1968 that I bought used for $2 in the late 1970s...

I'll give Mystery Under The Sea a 7.5 out of 10. The story had much promise and some good ideas, but just didn't get there... Research for this post was aided by Chris Kalb's great site and by a new to me post on SCRIBD that is great.

Doc and Kong are 80... together

HAPPY 80th

KING KONG

DOC SAVAGE

Through the persistence and talents of Will Murray and Joe De Vito we get to celebrate the creation of two enduring legends...

Altus Press says on their blog, "Eighty years ago in February, 1933, the Street & Smith company released the first issue of Doc Savage Magazine, introducing one of the most popular and influential pulp superheroes ever to hit the American scene. Doc Savage was the greatest adventure and scientist of his era, and while his magazine ended in 1949, he influenced the creators of Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE and the Marvel Universe—to name only a few.

"While that first issue of Doc Savage was fresh on Depression newsstands, RKO released one of the most important fantasy films of all time. Everyone knows the story of how King Kong was discovered on Skull Island and hauled back to New York in chains, only to perish tragically atop the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Empire State Building.

"As it happened, that was where Doc Savage had his world headquarters. For decades, fans have wondered: Where was Doc the day Kong fell?

"On the eightieth anniversary of these fictional giants, Altus Press is proud to release the first authorized clash between The Man of Bronze and the Eighth Wonder of the World—Doc Savage: Skull Island. Written by Will Murray in collaboration with Joe DeVito, creator of KONG: King of Skull Island, Doc Savage: Skull Island is a new pulp epic."

This is big news to me and I will be picking this book up.

Oscar 2012 - Les Miz and final recap

Les Misérables is the last of the 9 Best Picture Nominees that I screened. While it is not what I would choose for Best Picture out of the field, it has some very good qualities...

What stands out in Les Miz... The performances by Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway were spellbinding. Amanda Seyfried was a revelation. The production was spectacular—beautiful in its lived-in splendor and glorious in the detail of the design and photography. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I was surprised by the scale and sheer breathtaking audacity of it all. Well done.

The negatives are particular to me and my likes and dislikes. I don't care for Russell Crowe in general and didn't care for him here, either. His acting was good, but his singing voice is not of the caliber of the rest of the cast.

While I enjoy musicals, I am not a fan of the modern use of the word for shows like Phantom, Miss Saigon, and Les Misérables. To me, musicals have songs and dialog. Opera is all singing. The (what I would call) songs in Les Misérables are good. However... the dialog songs, the ones where a regular musical would just have the people talk, are not. The melodies are weak and not necessary. Just let the characters talk.

So, to recap, other than the dialog songs, and the sometimes dragging pace, I thought the film was outstanding, but not Best Picture.

Here is my personal (and really hard to do with this many really good movies) ranking of the choices for Best Picture:

Argo

Lincoln 

Zero Dark Thirty

Django Unchained

Silver Linings Playbook

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Les Misérables

Life of Pi

Amour

None of these are bad movies, in fact, they are all really good and this is a tough choice this year. All of these movies are very good. It was fun pushing myself to watch all nine nominees this year and something I haven't done in many years...

More Love For Studio Spectre

  

The All Pulp Blog has taken over the New Pulp Print Bestseller list from the overworked Barry Reese and The Studio Spectre is ranked #7!

The list goes up every Monday and covers New Pulp titles published in the last three months.

Here's the list - Visit All Pulp for the full list.

1) Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, Volume 4 by Various (Airship 27)

2) Finn’s Golem by Gregg Taylor (Autogyro)

3) Fight Card: Bluff City Brawler by Heath Lowrance as Jack Tunney (Fight Card)

4) Prohibition by Terrence McCauley, (Airship 27)

5) The Fangslinger and the Preacher by Bret Lee Hart (Western Trail Blazer)


6) The New Adventures of the Griffon by Various (Pro Se Productions)

7) The Studio Spectre by W. Peter Miller (Uchronic Press)

8 ) Sentinels: Metalgod by Van Plexico (White Rocket Books)


9) Three Against the Stars by Joe Bonadonna (Airship 27)

10) Pro Se Presents # 16 by Various (Pro Se Press)

There is a rumor that an eBook list may be next...

Pulp Ark Awards!

The Pulp Ark Award nominations were announced today on the All Pulp blog and I am proud to say that Mike Fyles was nominated for his cover of The Claim!

Congratulations, Mike!

2012 Oscar Nominations PT 3

LIFE OF PI

This adventure story features the journey of a young man who survives a shipwreck and ends up trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of the movie that did not take place on the boat. There were many places visited in the story of a young boy nicknamed Pi, whose family owned a small zoo in India. When the family moves, they pack up the whole zoo, load it up on a ship, and head off to Canada.

It is no spoiler to say that that the boy and the tiger end up in a lifeboat and there spend many months adrift at sea and learn to survive together.

The film is quite beautiful and much visually richer than one might imagine given such a confining sounding premise. However, in the final analysis, I found the film good, but not great.

AMOUR

This official Austrian entry which is also a nominee for Best foreign language film also got nominated in a number of other categories including Best Picture. The story follows an elderly couple as the wife slides into the decline of old age and her husband struggles to care for her. The film is wonderfully acted and starkly honest in dealing with the issues of aging. However, I found it leaning toward dull.

Just one more Best Picture Nominee to go - Les Misérables...