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BLACK_MASKS
December 1, 2004
Rev: February 9, 2005
Rev: July 17, 2005
I often use phrases like "the
Black Mask school" or "the Galaxy But why should they?
school", and I forget that some It's not like this
people don't know what I mean. stuff is taught in
English lit classes. BRAIN_PULP
"Pulp Fiction" is just
The "Black Mask" the name of a movie.
was one of the
many and various And because of that
magzines that movie many people seem
came out of the The "pulp revolution": to think that "pulp"
pulp revolution. a technical development, is synonymous with
in cheap (in all senses) "gangster" or "crime".
paper made from "pulp".
Many of the pulps were
aggressively trashy,
pandering vehicles for
trite "entertainments",
but there was also room
for the occasional editor
with a higher concept, The focus of the pulps was
someone with a vision that literally anything that would
danced across the barrier sell, (and that they could get
between high and low art. away with selling).
(And it often seemed Airwar!
like an impenetrable Romance! Another key pulp:
barrier in those Detective! "Weird Tales",
days, far more so Occult! which published
than it is today.) Railroad stories! H.P. Lovecraft,
Spicey stories! Robert E. Howard,
and Clark Ashton
Smith.
The history of the comic book hero
clearly stretches back into the world
of pulp magazines, where masked
vigilantes of various sorts-- most The effect of new media:
famously The Shadow-- waged their (1) uncertainty of formula
illegal War on Crime. (2) explosion of diversity
Cracks in the wall.
The "Black Mask" magazine was
one of the main driving forces
in the rise of the hardboiled private
eye, as opposed to the old
British drawing room mystery.
This is where Dashiell
Hammett first published, in GLASS_KEY
the early twenties.
The hardboiled reign of the
"Black Mask school" is BARBELL
usually associated with the
editor Joseph Shaw, though it (It was founded in 1920
was already going in that as one of H.L. Mencken's
direction when he took over moves to float the "Smart Set".)
in 1926: they were already
publishing Hammett. (As was the aforementioned
"Spicey Stories".)
The history of American Science
Fiction begins with an editor As opposed to the
named Hugo Gernsback. He was a European "scientific
guy publishing electronics porn romances" of Verne
for radio technology geeks, who and Wells.
decided to try his hand at a gosh
wow fiction of the future
celebrating fancy gadgetry Gernsback serialized his "Ralph 124c41+"
through the medium of terrible in his "Modern Electrics" magazine in
writing. This was the original 1911, and founded "Amazing Stories" in
"scientifiction" of "Amazing 1926.
Stories".
"Scientifiction"
A bit later (1938), an editor turned into
named John Campbell took the pulp "science fiction"
magazine "Astounding Stories" and pretty quickly, Some unsuccessful
began mutating it in strange and there it attempts have been
ways, creating what's sometimes stuck. made to rename it
called "modern science fiction". something else,
After some years, he changed the e.g. "speculative
name of the magazine to "Analog". fiction" (endorsed
by Heinlein) or
Campbellian SF was a complicated "sci-fi" (Forry
creature, though in retrospect Ackerman).
it is often reduced to one
cliche: a celebration of the
superiority of the omniscient
engineer, and the manifest DEAD_HAND
destiny of the human race.
In the fifties, another voice
emerged, "Galaxy Magazine" under First issue:
the editorship of Horace Gold. October 1950.
Galaxy (at least in retrospect)
is viewed as a refuge for social HORACE_GOLD
satire, liberal-left premises,
and perhaps a higher literary
standard than Analog. Though "higher literary standards"
is more often thought of as the
domain of "The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction", aka F&SF.
Edited by Anthony Boucher (along
with McComas at first), until
1958, and then by a number of
others, with a long stint by Edward
Ferman (~1965-1991).
In the present day era, the WORLDS_OF_IF
preeminent science fiction magazine
is Asimov's under Gardner Dozois
(an early champion of "cyberpunk"). GENESIS_OF_THE_CYBER-PUNKS
But this is not to say that Dozois is
a figure at all comparable to Campbell
or Gold.
Magazines play a much smaller role
in today's world; and written SF
in general often looks like a minor
realm, the retreat of people who would
be happier writing TV scripts.
But once upon a time, these
magazines were where the
action was. Books were a very
slow-moving form (before the To state the obvious:
"paperback"), and reading was
a very big part of popular There were live events
entertainment. (plays, music, sports)
and there was reading.
The top of the line was There was no television,
"the slicks" such as The and the radio-play was
Saturday Evening Post, only gradually ramping-up
the realm of writers throughout the 30s.
like Damon Runyan and
C.S. Forrester.
Science Fiction writers
could only dream of cracking
the slicks some day.
(Heinlein is one of
the few who made it.)
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