You are a pulp fiction writer. Seated behind your Remington typewriter, your fingers dance and the pages fly: trench-coated private eyes and sultry gun molls, hard riding sheriffs and gun-slinging desperadoes, fearless spacemen and bug-eyed monsters — for a penny a word, you can do it all.

It’s Friday night. After a long day at the keyboard, should you have a bite of supper or just go to bed? The phone rings. It’s the editor of Strange Science Magazine, and as usual, he sounds like he’s double-parked.

“I need a 50,000 word space opera,” he barks. “On my desk, first thing Monday morning!”

So much for supper and so much for bed. You pull the cover off your typewriter, brew up a fresh pot of coffee — and get out your story plotter.

As a pulp fiction writer, you are a professional. You have no time to sit and wait to be inspired — you must produce on demand. As much as you need your dictionary and thesaurus, you need your story plotter.

In a few minutes, your space opera is plotted out. One by one, the blank sheets go in and the finished pages come out: just like filling in a form.

And right on time, you are in the editor’s office. Smiling around his cigar, he takes your manuscript and signs your check. And he shows you the cover art of next week’s Thrilling Adventure: the Chinese Tong assassin raises his hatchet towards the terrified blonde, while the handsome American pilot rushes to save her. Short notice, the editor admits, but he knows you won’t let him down — because your story plotter never lets you down.

What is a story plotter? What are these magic books that, in the words of one critic, were “condemned publicly and used privately”? Where did these story plotters go — and where can you find them?