Pulp Magazines
Today, Pulp Magazines. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
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A very important – very lowbrow – kind of literature arose at the end of the Nineteenth Century. And it lasted halfway through the Twentieth. The pulp magazine. That word pulp referred to the cheap wood-pulp paper upon which they were printed.
The word magazine did not really fit. By magazine, we usually mean something that covers a wide variety of subjects – news, sports, movies, theater, short stories, and more. The pulps were literature – if I dare use that term for popular storytelling.
It soon became obvious that this was a market where an author could speak to a huge audience. They sold for as much as a quarter or as little as a dime. And many significant writers saw the advantage of writing for them. Example: pulps are where Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced Tarzan.
Another feature of the pulp was the variety it gave us: Science fiction, romance, war, espionage, fantasy ... the list seems endless. They were an especially good outlet for detective fiction. Authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner – they all wrote for the pulps. The literati sneered while the American public read. And Read.
My own fascination with pulps was the fine way in which they served the medium of science fiction. And there they attracted some of the greatest: Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury – and so many more.
Science fiction is a medium of real importance. And here I should stress that it did more to promote than to predict invention. After all, inventors had – for example – made both airships and submarines before Jules Verne. Rather, it drew our attention and our optimism to evolving technology. Arthur C. Clarke was an important sci-fi pulp contributor – a great writer, trained in math and physics, and an important promoter of space travel.
I knew two prolific writers of pulp science fiction when I was a boy. Brothers Donald and Howard Wandrei were friends of my parents. My parents had been immersed in great literature, but they clearly recognized the Wandreis’ importance as writers.
Donald Wandrei. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
So when each following issue of Astounding Stories came out, I’d first groove on the wild cover picture. Then I’d seek out the story within. Those cover pictures were another important pulp feature – wonderfully dramatic and lurid. Pulp covers were an art form of their own.
Cover art a Donald Wandrei pulp story. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
But, by the time I was reading them, the pulps’ days were already numbered. Two other kinds of writing had begun spelling their doom before World War II. They were the Comic Book and the small pocket-size paperback novel. And then came the rise of TV
But compelling story-telling and lurid covers had a mystic appeal that’s not so easily replaced by CGI and slam-bang movies.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
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History of one pulp magazine: Black Mask | Encyclopedia.com
This is an episode about one of Arthur C. Clarke’s proposals – one that bridges between sci fi and real invention An Elevator to Heaven | The Engines of Our Ingenuity
Donald Wandrei - Wikipedia Howard Wandrei - Wikipedia
This Episode first aired on November 5, 2026.