It’s 2018, so with that we have the 2018 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention and the new Windy City Pulp Stories #18, again published by Black Dog Books.
This year’s focus is on Wings and the air war pulps, along with pulp publisher Harold Hersey. Unlike past years, the bulk of this volume is all reprint.
First up is a section looking at the air war pulps, a long-running genre within the larger pulp world that many publishers got into. We kick off with an article by Steve Young and Michael Chomko on Fiction House’s Wings. While not the first of the air pulps, it launched in 1928 and lasted until 1953 with 133 issues. This article gives a great overview of the pulp and the major authors who wrote for it.
We then get two reprint works. The first was a three-part series that ran in The Author & Journalist in 1929-30. It looks at several of the major air pulps of the time- Sky Riders, War Birds, Air Stories, Wings, Aces, and Air Trails. The second, from Writer’s Digest, is by Arch Whitehouse, a former RAF pilot and one of the major air pulp authors. He created The Griffon series, among other characters, now being reprinted by Altus Press. Here he gives advise to would-be air pulp authors. I did enjoy his “don’t” list for such authors.
Harold Hersey (1893-1956) was a long-time pulp editor and publisher, probably best known for establishing Magazine Publishers, which after he left became the heart of Ace Publications. Some may know of him due to his published reminiscence of the pulp world: Pulpwood Editor (1937), which is still available today in an “expanded edition” from Adventure House. While some think he overplays his own importance, he wrote a lot in various writer’s magazines. This section reprints some of this non-fiction, as well as a fiction piece and a few of his poems. We have an early autobiography he wrote in 1927 for The Author & Journalist. For that magazine that year, he did a five-part series giving a 20-year reminiscence as an editor. It was followed by a four-part series on authors he had dealt with, though no names were given.
The last two articles are also from The Author & Journalist in 1928. The first is a somewhat different work looking at several authors known to Hersey. The second, more or less, announces the launch of Magazine Publishers and a solicitation for authors, and a promise of better pay rate if circulation improves. Wonder if that happened?
Finally, we get a fiction piece by Hersey, followed by a trio of poems.
As always, this is another good collection of articles and materials. This will go with the rest of my collection of these volumes (though I wish I could find some of the earlier volumes). I look forward to next year’s edition. I am getting The New Pulpwood Editor, so keep an eye out for a review of that at some point.
