Where Pulp Is Now
It is, specifically, in the pages of Jonathan Maberry's The Dragon Factory. I know what you're saying right now: "Sure, Ken. Maberry's novel has Nazis, deadly killer clones, savage ape-human hybrids, weird sex, albinos, a secret government agency, loving descriptions of weapons and hand-to-hand combat, a pell-mell pace, globetrotting for the sake of globetrotting, an apocalyptic plot by an evil mastermind, Commies (or near as dammit), a conspiracy of rich bastards working Within The Very Government Itself, a gorgeous sidekick (I mean "strong, independent female viewpoint character"), impossible borderline technology in the hands of villains and heroes alike, and a secret island full of Neanderthals -- but that doesn't make it pulp. It's clearly a thriller." Well, unless you're ratmmjess, you can back off with your negativity, mister.
Thesis: Thrillers begat the pulps; pulps in turn influenced thrillers; new thrillers drove new pulp. Hakuna matata. In all cases, pulp fiction is printed in the cheapest available format; when hardcover novels become too expensive, it becomes periodical magazines; when those become too expensive, it becomes serial novels; when those become too expensive, it becomes ... whatever is next. Something on the Web, likely. This neat sequence is rather spoiled by the habit of early thriller writers of serializing their works in newspapers, but the point stands at the back end, anyhow.
Demonstration: Do we have to explain the origins of pulps yet again? No? Good.
When the pulp magazines died (final Shadow Magazine and Doc Savage Magazine issues 1949, final Black Mask issue 1951, final Weird Tales and Dime Western Magazine issues 1954), their niche -- cheap, action-packed, lurid fiction -- was taken up by the "men's adventure" magazines, or "sweats." (For which see Taschen's excellent survey Men's Adventure Magazines or, if you can somehow find a copy, Adam Parfrey's luminescent "an RPG-cover-on-every-page" compendium It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps.) Less wildly creative than the best of the pulps, the sweats nonetheless filled the void for the WWII and Korean War veterans seeking plainspoken action and sex. (Stag begins publication in 1950, becomes straight-up p0rn in 1969; Man's Life published 1952-1974.) But inexorably, the realities of publication meant that the demand for pulp style action would overflow into the brand-new paperback novel market. (Mike Hammer: first appearance 1947; James Bond: first appearance 1953) There were, of course, characters who we now think of as "pulp heroes" who mostly appeared in novel series: Tarzan of the Apes (first pub. in the pulp All-Story Magazine 1912) and the fiendish Dr. Fu Manchu (first pub. in The Storyteller in 1912) to name only the top of the list. "Max Brand" and Louis L'Amour switched from writing Western pulps to Western novel series (often expanding their old pulp stories into novels) with nary a hitch; science fiction pulps adapted less successfully (possibly because SF's only two strong series characters -- Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon -- were comics heroes). Although Amazing didn't stop publishing original SF until 1965, and Astounding still creaks along as Analog today, they both rapidly removed themselves after the war into a pure genre ghetto. (Dominated likewise by series paperbacks, though.)
The original pulps' hard-boiled detectives made the crossover easily, and that branch of pulp fiction merged with (and no doubt some would say "polluted") the still-thriving "detective fiction" serial novels, which predated and survived the pulps. (The pulp magazine True Detective survived until 1995. And of course the first thriller writer, Alexandre Dumas pére, published "true crime" and "true detective" stories in 1839. Hakuna, as I said, matata.) Some of the pulp detectives made the transition more easily than others: Sexton Blake (first issue 1893) became a hard-boiled detective in 1956, and kept publishing for twelve more years. Nick Carter (arguably the first pulp hero, being only five years younger than Sherlock Holmes), who ended his original pulp career with the cessation of Nick Carter Detective Magazine in 1936 (fifty years after his first story appeared) was reborn into pulp's Silver Age in 1964 as "Nick Carter: Killmaster." (That same year, Bantam Books began to reprint Lester Dent's Doc Savage novels.) The pulps' wilder side popped up in comics (which, of course, began with a number of pulp heroes from the Green Lama to the Shadow) and, more relevantly to our discussion, in supernatural action series (The Guardians 1969-1970; Doctor Orient 1971-1979; The Mind Masters 1974-1976, etc.), almost all of which were written (most likely because the publisher demanded it) in the spy novel serial format made famous (and lucrative) by James Bond. (There were, of course, lots and lots of pulp spies, from Operator #5 (1931-1939) on down.)
And it was the spies (and their ilk) who dominated the new pulp1. Not just Killmaster (1964-1990) but Assignment (1955-1976), Executioner (fighting the Mafia from 1969-present), Death Merchant (1971-1988), Destroyer (1971-2008), and other "men's adventure novels" became the core of the New Pulp. (How do you know it's still pulp? It has big numbers on the cover, and the character gets top billing over both the title and the author.) I'd swear that lemuriapress has already written an entry on these modern pulps, but I couldn't find it in a desultory search.
Anyhow, this modern pulp sensibility has, by now, picked up the "villain's viewpoint" and "flawed, occasionally introspective hero" ingredients from Robert Ludlum's (Scarlatti Inheritance, 1971) and David Morell's (First Blood, 1972) reinvention of the thriller in the 1970s. Which is why The Dragon Factory is two or three times as long as a classic pulp novel. But fortunately and delightfully, it reads just as fast. It just doesn't have a big number on the cover. Yet.
1] The apocalyptic world-ending threats of Bond and the old pulps got juiced by the renewed Cold War to spawn the thriving sub-genre of post-apocalypse pulps typified by The Ashes (1981-1990) -- this has nothing to do with my point, but I wanted to mention it.
Thesis: Thrillers begat the pulps; pulps in turn influenced thrillers; new thrillers drove new pulp. Hakuna matata. In all cases, pulp fiction is printed in the cheapest available format; when hardcover novels become too expensive, it becomes periodical magazines; when those become too expensive, it becomes serial novels; when those become too expensive, it becomes ... whatever is next. Something on the Web, likely. This neat sequence is rather spoiled by the habit of early thriller writers of serializing their works in newspapers, but the point stands at the back end, anyhow.
Demonstration: Do we have to explain the origins of pulps yet again? No? Good.
When the pulp magazines died (final Shadow Magazine and Doc Savage Magazine issues 1949, final Black Mask issue 1951, final Weird Tales and Dime Western Magazine issues 1954), their niche -- cheap, action-packed, lurid fiction -- was taken up by the "men's adventure" magazines, or "sweats." (For which see Taschen's excellent survey Men's Adventure Magazines or, if you can somehow find a copy, Adam Parfrey's luminescent "an RPG-cover-on-every-page" compendium It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps.) Less wildly creative than the best of the pulps, the sweats nonetheless filled the void for the WWII and Korean War veterans seeking plainspoken action and sex. (Stag begins publication in 1950, becomes straight-up p0rn in 1969; Man's Life published 1952-1974.) But inexorably, the realities of publication meant that the demand for pulp style action would overflow into the brand-new paperback novel market. (Mike Hammer: first appearance 1947; James Bond: first appearance 1953) There were, of course, characters who we now think of as "pulp heroes" who mostly appeared in novel series: Tarzan of the Apes (first pub. in the pulp All-Story Magazine 1912) and the fiendish Dr. Fu Manchu (first pub. in The Storyteller in 1912) to name only the top of the list. "Max Brand" and Louis L'Amour switched from writing Western pulps to Western novel series (often expanding their old pulp stories into novels) with nary a hitch; science fiction pulps adapted less successfully (possibly because SF's only two strong series characters -- Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon -- were comics heroes). Although Amazing didn't stop publishing original SF until 1965, and Astounding still creaks along as Analog today, they both rapidly removed themselves after the war into a pure genre ghetto. (Dominated likewise by series paperbacks, though.)
The original pulps' hard-boiled detectives made the crossover easily, and that branch of pulp fiction merged with (and no doubt some would say "polluted") the still-thriving "detective fiction" serial novels, which predated and survived the pulps. (The pulp magazine True Detective survived until 1995. And of course the first thriller writer, Alexandre Dumas pére, published "true crime" and "true detective" stories in 1839. Hakuna, as I said, matata.) Some of the pulp detectives made the transition more easily than others: Sexton Blake (first issue 1893) became a hard-boiled detective in 1956, and kept publishing for twelve more years. Nick Carter (arguably the first pulp hero, being only five years younger than Sherlock Holmes), who ended his original pulp career with the cessation of Nick Carter Detective Magazine in 1936 (fifty years after his first story appeared) was reborn into pulp's Silver Age in 1964 as "Nick Carter: Killmaster." (That same year, Bantam Books began to reprint Lester Dent's Doc Savage novels.) The pulps' wilder side popped up in comics (which, of course, began with a number of pulp heroes from the Green Lama to the Shadow) and, more relevantly to our discussion, in supernatural action series (The Guardians 1969-1970; Doctor Orient 1971-1979; The Mind Masters 1974-1976, etc.), almost all of which were written (most likely because the publisher demanded it) in the spy novel serial format made famous (and lucrative) by James Bond. (There were, of course, lots and lots of pulp spies, from Operator #5 (1931-1939) on down.)
And it was the spies (and their ilk) who dominated the new pulp1. Not just Killmaster (1964-1990) but Assignment (1955-1976), Executioner (fighting the Mafia from 1969-present), Death Merchant (1971-1988), Destroyer (1971-2008), and other "men's adventure novels" became the core of the New Pulp. (How do you know it's still pulp? It has big numbers on the cover, and the character gets top billing over both the title and the author.) I'd swear that lemuriapress has already written an entry on these modern pulps, but I couldn't find it in a desultory search.
Anyhow, this modern pulp sensibility has, by now, picked up the "villain's viewpoint" and "flawed, occasionally introspective hero" ingredients from Robert Ludlum's (Scarlatti Inheritance, 1971) and David Morell's (First Blood, 1972) reinvention of the thriller in the 1970s. Which is why The Dragon Factory is two or three times as long as a classic pulp novel. But fortunately and delightfully, it reads just as fast. It just doesn't have a big number on the cover. Yet.
1] The apocalyptic world-ending threats of Bond and the old pulps got juiced by the renewed Cold War to spawn the thriving sub-genre of post-apocalypse pulps typified by The Ashes (1981-1990) -- this has nothing to do with my point, but I wanted to mention it.