Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Pulp Magazines Project Launches!!!



Pulp fans ans scholars should be very jazzed to find out about a new internet archive and resource that has just launched, The Pulp Magazines Project aka pulpmags.org. It's a developing project that promises to be an excellent source of information on pulp magazines, and, even better, a place where anyone the world over can read pulps online. In my post earlier in the week on Frank Munsey's re-invention of Argosy as a pulp magazine, I generalized about the early pulps, but at The Pulp Magazines Project you can see the real deal as The Pulp Magazines Project already has many issues on display. The issues in their archive can either be downloaded as .pdf or (this is the cool part for the not-so-tech-savvy) can be read online in a flipbook format that is true to the feel of reading an actual pulp (minus the odor). Already online in the project archive are sample issues of Adventure, All-Story Weekly, Amazing Stories, The Argosy, Blue Book, Breezy Stories, Cavalier, Detective Story Magazine, Ginger Stories, Green Book, New Story Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Short Stories, Snappy Stories, Western Story Magazine, Wonder Stories, and World Fiction. And there's more to come, as the proprietors have many plans for adding titles and more issues in the future. I've contributed an introduction for Ginger Stories, and other contributors have written introductions for the various magazines as well.

Also, the site has a great pulp bibliography page listing the best secondary sources on pulp mags and a great list of links to many of the great resources out there web regarding pulp magazines. Connected with the project is the PulpMags Blog that updates information added to the project as well as a Facebook page (the one internet phenomenon to which I'm apparently the only holdout). Heading the project is David Earle who has also put together a cool website I keep in my blog links to the right, the 1925 newsstand, in which he has students scan and contextualize magazines from the Summer of 1925. Magazine lovers or those interested in the roaring 20s should check that site out as well.

Kudos to David and Patrick for getting the site going and to all who have contributed to the site so far. It has great potential as a site for the study and enjoyment of pulp fiction where readers the world over can have access to these disappearing magazines.

1 comment:

Dan N said...

Sounds like a great project. Thanks for mentioning it here.