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A LOOK AT THE PULPS
Part Three: Horror Magazines
Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of an evil —- or, occasionally, misunderstood —- supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three of which categories are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction. See also supernatural fiction.
Horror fiction reached a wider audience in the 1920s and 1930s with the rise of the American pulp magazine. The premier horror pulp was Weird Tales, which printed many of Lovecraft's stories as well as fiction by other writers such as Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Seabury Quinn, C.M. Eddy, Jr. and Robert Bloch. At a lower intellectual level were the weird menace or "shudder pulps" such as Dime Mystery and Horror Stories, which offered a more visceral form of horror.
Henry "Harry" Steeger was co-founder and President of Popular Publications, one of the major publishers of pulp magazines.
With Horror Stories and Terror Tales, Steeger started the "Shudder Pulp" genre. Albeit short lived, this genre was responsible for some of the most striking cover art of the pulp era. The over the top stories of torture and titillation however, led the public look down on the fiction found in pulp magazines.
Horror Stories was a U.S. pulp magazine that published tales of the supernatural, horror, and macabre. The first issue was published in 1936, three years after the weird menace genre had begun with Dime Mystery Magazine, and the Horror Stories title went on to become one of the major pulp magazines of the 1930s. Magazines such as Horror Stories set a benchmark in macabre storytelling that inspired many of the U.S. horror comics from their appearance in 1947.
The title was published by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith, trading as "Popular Publications, Inc." Horror Stories was issued were luridly illustrated with damsel in distress covers. mostly executed by artist John Newton Howitt (1885-1958). Only one original cover painting has survived.
Due to the nature of its content and its relatively short run of 47 issues, Horror Stories is now one of the most sought-after collectable pulp titles. In 2005, Black Mask magazine published a facsimile of Horror Stories issue 1, first issued Jan 1935.
[Thrilling Mysteries] From Ned Pines’ publishing house, this is another of the famous “thrilling” group's fine publications. There were 74 issues published from October 1935 through May 1947, going from a monthly publication to a bi-monthly, finally to a quarter publication before its demise after the World War II period. Many pulps were on the way out, although some would stick around through the early to mid 1950s.
Although Thrilling Mystery published the same authors as did Thrilling Detective, it was not as popular as the longer running magazine, thus its life was cut short in 1947, while its sister publication, Thrilling Detective continued through 1953 and 213 issues. This was the way of the pulp magazine. The new pocket sized novels were more trendy than the larger pulp magazine. Plus, the paperback author was bringing a more hardboiled writing style to genre fiction. Basically, America was growing up after World War II, and the pulps just could not grow up fast enough.
But they tried. Ned Pines fired his old time editor, Leo Margulies, and brought in newer, and younger talent, hoping to give the readers what they wanted. More adult entertainment. Private eyes got tougher. Ladies started cussing. Sex entered the stories. But it was too late. Ned Pines shut his pulp empire down in 1953 or shortly thereafter, and started Popular Library, a paperback publishing house. Unfortunately, the “thrilling” was gone.
Leo Margulies had spent his life in the production of pulps. After college, he had been hired by Robert Davis, an editor at Argosy, and eventually became head editor for Ned Pines. He ruled the “thrilling” groups editorial staff, directing the path that led to success for the magazines that he controlled. When Ned Pines let him go, he wasn’t ready to retire. Although the pulps were dead, their descendants, the digest magazines, were alive. Leo and his wife, Cylvia started their own chain of pulps: Satellite SF, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Zane Grey Western Magazine, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Shell Scott Mystery Magazine, and Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine.
http://lifeloom.com/II4GingerJohnson.htm
Uncanny Tales was an American pulp science fiction magazine that ran from April 1939 to May 1940. Published by Martin Goodman (publisher) under the "Manvis Publications, Inc." imprint. It should not be confused with Goodman's "shudder" publication Uncanny Stories.
Eerie Mysteries published four issues from 1938 to 1939
About this title: EERIE MYSTERIES - August 1938 is another of those pure pulp inventions...a "Weird Menace" magazine. Mixing mystery and horror into a melting pot of pure purple prose. The lead story includes: "City of Stone Corpses" by Ralph Powers. "It was an awesome city of the dead in which Special Agent Butler fought the enemies of the people. Here the living had been petrified. Stone Corpses they were, symbols of the horrible fate which the victor could hurl upon a nation."
Eerie Stories published only one issue in 1937
Ghost Stories is, perhaps, the least remembered of the many pulp magazines which flourished during the golden age of the 1920s and 1930s. Yet the magazine managed to survive for more than five years, and during its lifetime published stories by such authors as Cynthia Asquith, E.F. Benson, A.M. Burrage, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Dreiser, Robert E. Howard, and Carl Jacobi. The magazine was the brainchild of flamboyant editor Bernarr Macfadden, who, although not himself a great fan of ghost stories, was aware of the public's fascination with ghosts and the supernatural. Ghost Stories became, therefore, a magazine which offered a mixture: reprints of classic tales, 'true' ghost stories supposedly related by those who had experienced them, and new supernatural fiction, ranging from the gentle to the horrific.
Sinister Stories was first published in 1940
Sinister Stories was a short-lived (only 3 issues) "weird menace" magazine, designed to thrill and titilate through a mix of suspense, science fiction, bondage, nudity, and grisly horror. Stories such as "Brides of the Half-Men," "Satan's Studio of Sin," and "White Flesh Must Rot" are surely masterpieces of over-the-top pulp writing!
http://www.anobii.com/books/Pulp_Classics/9780809510931/014bdee8b50c86d880/
Famous Fantastic Mysteries was published from 1939 to 1953
As suggested by the relative sizes of the words on the cover,
the emphasis of Famous Fantastic Mysteries was on the fantastic, and
the magazine was part of the science fiction and fantasy pulp genre, not the
mystery genre.
Recent BOTWs have discussed the unfortunate tendency in the
mainstream to be dismissive of anything published in the science fiction and
fantasy genre. There is sometimes a corresponding reverse snobbery in the SF/F
community toward science fiction penned by mainstream writers. More commonly,
however, SF/F readers have welcomed fantastic literature by authors who are not
associated with the genre.
Between 1940 and 1953, Famous Fantastic Mysteries found success reprinting older novels and stories in pulp format, and a great many of the stories were written by famous authors not typically thought of as sci-fi writers. (We will have another example next week.) Thus, the cover story of the Magazine of the Week is Anthem by Ayn Rand -- more social science fiction. Also listed on the cover is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The issue also contains stories by SF great Ray Bradbury and by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, yet somehow this diverse group of authors was able to appear in a single magazine without anyone getting hurt.
Fantastic was a fantasy and science fiction magazine published in the United States from 1952 to 1980. A sister publication, Fantastic Adventures, was merged into Fantastic beginning with May/June 1953 issue.
http://fantasticreviews.blogspot.com/2007/12/aarons-magazine-of-week-famous.html
The magazine was founded by editor Raymond A. Palmer in 1939 as a companion to Amazing Stories and was initially published in a large size format to emulate the early Amazing Stories magazines.[1] The magazine was published by the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, then headquarted in Chicago, Illinois.
Fantastic Adventures published much light, "frothy" fantasy in its early years, but by the late 1940s was printing much the same material as its companion, only more fantastic in vein.[1]
At one stage in the very early 1940s, the magazine nearly ceased publication.[1] Some stories featured in the magazine around 1950-1951 were of literary importance, but the story quality dropped considerably in its final year of publication.[1]
Fantastic Adventures' position as a companion publication to Amazing Stories was taken by Fantastic.[1]
The American pulp magazine Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror was published from September 1931 through January 1933 cover dates, for seven issues. The name was revived by Wildside Press in the 2000s. A second pulp, titled simply Strange Tales, was a British science-fiction magazine cover-dated April to October 1946.
Strange Stories, 1939 to 1941
NEXT WEEK: WEIRD TALES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_fiction
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