Q. What were pulp magazines?

A. As the name implies, pulp magazines were inexpensive, popular magazines printed on paper made from the cheapest pulpwood. Publishers weren't very concerned with the durability of the magazines, only that they were able to crank the magazines off the presses and get them into the hands of readers as cheaply and as often as possible.

The pulps were easily recognizable when compared to "slick" magazines, such the Saturday Evening Post or Time magazine, which were printed on slick, higher-quality paper. The pulps also typically had rough, untrimmed edges.

But the difference between the pulps and other magazines didn't end with appearance; it extended to the quality of content. Escapism was the pulps' main goal, and they used any method they could to achieve that goal. Colorful, outlandish and sometimes risque covers beckoned newsstand perusers to escape into the magazine. And the stories inside were equally as colorful, outlandish and sometimes risque.

Pushing Depression-era woes out of their minds for a short while, readers were able to escape into realms of science fiction, horror, fantasy, crime and mystery, sports, westerns, romance and adventure through the pulps.

Among the more famous authors who got their start during the half-century of the pulps were: Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, Dashiell Hammett, Louis L'Amour, Ray Bradbury, Earl Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Max Brand, Robert Heinlein, Robert E. Howard and Robert Bloch. Many of the pulp authors wrote under pseudonyms or "house names," which were fictitious author names assigned by the publisher to specific titles or characters. Also, by using pseudonyms, writers were able to publish more stories, which was important since they were paid by the number of words they wrote. The more stories they had published, the more money they could make.

The first pulp appeared in the mid-1890s, but the cheap magazines didn't reach their heyday until the 1930s. In fact, there were more than 1,000 different pulp titles published during that period. But by the end of the 1940s, the days of pulps were numbered. The final pulps ended their runs in the mid-1950s, replaced by television and the paperback book.