Pulp Adventures #21

Pulp Adventures #21 (Spring 2016) is the seventh issue of the new version from Bold Venture Press. Once again we get a collection of classic and New Pulp fiction (with some notes), all under a Norman Saunders cover (a detective one). And do we get some goodies this time! In my view, this blend of new and old pulp fiction (with occasional pre-pulp and post-pulp) that doesn’t focus on one pulp genre — we get horror, science fiction, crime & detective, railroading, and pulp hero in this one — makes this one of the best pulp fiction fanzines coming out now. You might not like everything that appears in an issue, but I know you will like something. The issue kicks off with Ron Fortier providing a Brother Bones tale: “The Hideout.” His Undead Avenger has appeared in several short stories and a couple of novels. And soon a roleplaying game and a movie! Sadly, I have to admit that Brother Bones is probably the only major New Pulp Hero that I haven’t read. A very strange short story is “Death of a Pulp Writer” by Patti Boeckman, window of pulp author Charles Boeckman. This one has a slight connection to various “writer aides” like the Plot Genie, which Bold Venture has reprinted. We get two Sherlock Holmes tales. First off is a reprint of “The Red-Headed League” by Arthur Conan Doyle. A strange, exclusive club leads Holmes to a bigger mystery. An added bonus is seeing the original story illustrations. Then we have “Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Quarantine” by Adam Beau McFarlane, which is yet another attempt to answer the mystery of the “Giant Rat of Sumatra,” something mentioned by Watson that was never told. I think I’ve read three or four such stories. “Flowers for Christina” by Johnny Strike is a tale of love found and lost. A short sf tale of time travel, “Highway J” by Charles Eric Maine is next. I’m not familiar with the author, but he has a novel, Timeline, that has similar themes. The author’s best-known work was filmed as The Mind of Mr. Soames. We get a short crime story, “Death Steps Down,” by C.K.M. Scanlon. “Scanlon” was Thrilling Publications’ house name used to hide a wide range of authors on a wide range of stories, including some of their second-tier pulp heroes. So probably no idea who really wrote this. We then get a couple of Lovecraftian horror tales. First, an actual H.P. Lovecraft story, “The Tree,” which is more of a dark fantasy than one of his “Cthulhu Mythos” tales. Then John Petty gives us “The Doom That Came to Roanoke,” which ties the lost colony of Roanoke to the Cthulhu Mythos. Finally we get “From the Ground Up” by Leland S. Chester, a railroad story reprinted from Argosy All-Story Weekly from 1922. Another excellent volume. I look forward to the next one,