The Death of Pulp Fantasy
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
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Fantasy used to be so much weirder. What happened?
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Reminds me of Weird Westerns tbh. We really should have more of them I think :) sorry I am not trying to justify frontier Settler Colonialism and racist caricatures of Native Americans, I just find Westerns interesting and the more weird ones are quite fun imo......
Hey, thanks for putting the ad at the end of the video rather than the start or even worse, the middle of it all. It saves your talk being abruptly interrupted with all the transitional subtlety of a golden codpiece. I'm glad you value viewer immersion when so very few content creators ever do. Have a great day.
Dude, you need to check out Royal Road.
Question 🙋♂️
Is Junji Ito's work pulp fantasy?
Can you still hear my voice?
Pulp-fiction was basically predecessor of internet. Rise in costs of paper during WW2 and especially growing accessibly of other media, killed the genre. In case of Pulp-Fantasy especially. Target audience was immediately taken by Radio and TV. Ironically Pulp-SF enter its Golden Age, with most notable writers switching to full publications targeting way more dedicated fans. Fun fact, Astounding Stories actually is still in publishing! Under brand Analog Science Fiction.
I think the thing that Pulp fantasy has that a lot of modern fantasy is missing is that there is a feeling of unapologetic over-the-top-ness to it. It's not ironic, it's not trying to deconstruct itself or be something else, it's just unapologetically itself. There's a certain level of confidence to it that I feel like a lot of modern fantasy lacks. It's genuine.
I feel like that goes for modern popular media generally. So many multiverses of varying genres that mash together to create a story that has a tiny bit of everything. There's so many meta jokes and crossover shenanigans that nothing feels like it's own, distinct property.
Not to be an old man yelling at clouds, I lot of modern media is really awesome. But a lot of it just has no real identity, and I think that's what makes pulp fiction so good.
I understand. You see a Frank Frazetta picture of a woman with enormous breasts practically spilling out of her scanty costume that defies sewing conventions and gravity. She's riding an impossible beast and wielding a sword. It's ridiculous, it's sexist (and howdy!) and absurd but you get that it's meant to be fun as well as grandiose (as well as stroke material for horny boys). It's also brilliant artwork that is unique to the artist. You see one of these and say, "Yep. That's a Frazetta." Whether you're male or female, you appreciate the talent and care that went into making it. Nowadays, you see some comic book female character drawn in a skintight outfit with exposed boob window and midriff and you roll your eyes and think. "Geez. How is she supposed to fight in high heels or keep herself safe with her heart exposed like that?" Maybe that's one reason pulp fiction died out as it did. We were no longer willing to accept the fantastical elements of it, even when it spilled over into our favorite genres.
@@sukunasgaylover Could be an argument for playing it safe to unhealthy extreme. Using meta humour or meta writing. to get people to respond in the most cheapest way. Then there's the Isaki Having characters teleported to a different world, which I'm getting tired of looking at when it comes to animation. I'd rather have characters fit and born into the world they come from.
Also everything is too ironic and there is a sense of nihilism that permeates everything. Nothing dares to take itself seriously and feel sincere.
@@QueenBoadicea in fairness to both frazetta and the ladies, all the men he drew were also like that. The man loved the human body and the unapologetically fantastical nature of fantasy, but he hated pants.
Pulp Fiction was Confidently fantasy.
It didn't need to be meta, or worry about how it would read in another medium if adapted. It didn't try to use humor to uncut its own genre. It didn't try to make characters sound like the audience in cadence and prose. Its didn't build its entire narrative on the desire to meditate on a single theme or topic but rather touched upon them when appropriate.
Pulp Fiction got to be Fiction in a way that modern fiction is often at odds with. Because Modern fiction is trying so hard to be taken seriously that it undermines it own imagination.
Meta is something that I feel is bound to happen. I think however that sometimes we need to be able to say no to meta stuff and just write something interesting. Who cares if the idea of a soul stealing sword is now seen as a cliche it became a cliche because the idea conceptually is still a neat one.
Technically both SF and Fantasy, show in England as far as 19'th century. With such authors like Marry Shelly, Verne and Lord Dunsany. But Pulp-Fiction definitely help pushing concepts to general audience.
People don't understand that Sci Fi is a subgenre of Fantasy, which itself is a SubGenre of Adventure/Romance fiction.
@@bar-1studios There is a some division in classification in different languages. In English the general category is Speculative Fiction. Where horror and SF evolved from Gothic novel and Fantasy from Fairy Tales (~Fables). But nowadays there is also a massive mixed genre called Science Fantasy (~Sci-Fi), sometimes due to share size considered as own thing.
@TheRezro Both SF and fantasy exist from ancient times. In 4000 years old Greek myths you will find stories of robots, machines made from brass that on the outside look like human girls. Maybe we can talk about modern format of stories beginning in 19. century Britain.
“Fantasy is a lot like Rock and Roll, once you go in knowing what to expect, it stops being rock.” -Michael Moorcock
As someone currently writing online web fiction, it struck me how many similarities there are with pulp fiction, which I was too young to have ever gotten into.
Both tend to have many amateur writers due to a lower barrier of entry, both use the cheapest wildly available medium of the time, and both are community focused. One with paper and letters, the other websites and comment sections.
Web fiction even seems to share the 'low brow' nature of pulp fiction, simple weird fantasy stories made for an audience looking mainly for wish fufilment, yet sometimes you find something that is much more.
Definely agree as avid reader of web novel, they possess some of the broadest range of quality
Reminds me a bit of modern Japanese web and light novels. Sure, like with pulp, there is a lot of junk and wishfullfillment stuff there, but also like with pulp, there is some truly out there stuff that is only really concerned with being itself.
Avesta of Black and White was one I came across that really stood out with a rather interesting take on classical morality while also being so unabashed with it chessier elements that it was real charming.
You are so right about web fiction. I read a mountain of the stuff and there are so, so many hot garbage litrpg progression fantasy system harem apocalypse schlock stories that certain tags just... make me turn my head away in disgust, and then you can find absolute gems, real, genuine art like The Last Orellen, Super Supportive, or Virtuous Sons just waiting to be discovered.
Absolutely true!
Agreed
Ah yes, love a good Sword and Sorcery story.
Same here! I went to a vintage paperback show and picked up a bunch of Conan and Eternal Champion books.
I have an original paperback for Kyrik.
Ship of Ishtar is a must read. Basically a guy gets sucked into another time and place a magic GunPla model.
But what if the sword was actually yourself from the future, and the sorcerer was actually your lover which you had vowed to avenge!! Yeah, I love that crunchy stuff nomnomnom give it to me
I just watched the intro, and I am gonna predict what killed pulp fiction is the death of whimsy. Not just whimsy, but a particular kind of whimsy. The kind of whimsy that blurs daydream and fantasy and shower thoughts.
I'd have to agree with that. Everyone wants themselves and their work to be taken so seriously, rather than just having fun with the most random, wonderful thoughts that can come to you out of nowhere. Taking anything very seriously is death to the whimsical.
@@thing_under_the_stairs I mean, it is easy to see why people want to be taken seriously; being taken seriously confers advantage and prestige when widely acknowledged. I think the danger there, however, is everything becomes serious, and so things that provide those little flickers of life and chance die out on the alter of social privilege.
@@rambysophistry1220 It's true. When I was younger I wanted to be a "serious" artist, and that desire sabotaged my work badly. I've since realised that mass appreciation and doing work I really love don't much intersect, so I do what I can for a living, and make my art for me, and the few who appreciate it. Should it gain wider appreciation, that's great, and if not, I'm living an interesting life and making interesting work that's entirely mine. And that's enough for me.
Channels like the Cybrarian make these Pulp Stories come to life. Just like old time radio theater productions.
@@rambysophistry1220 Revelation. Same as Roman Empire, it didn't die. It transform. Paper shortage during WW2 killed pulp magazines. But majority of typical audience simply migrated to radio and TV. Meanwhile SF has its Golden Age switching to full publications and Astounding Stories is in fact still in publishing under brand Analog SF&F.
I've been reading a lot of pulp fiction lately. The sheer sense of fun and entertaiment these stories provide is unmatched. Not to mention the absurd productivity of these writers, releasing story after story after story. It was really a very special period in literature.
Short stories are a lot easier to write than full on novels. You don't have to world build an entire universe (just a tiny portion of one), don't have to think much about character actions and motivations (there's only 1 or 2 that you care about) and you don't have to worry about sequels (there won't be one). You can just jump straight into the interesting part of the story and have it be exciting stuff all the way through, which is hard for a novel to match.
I can’t unread or unhear the 1994 movie each time I read the term Pulp Fiction.
Can you give any solid recommendations?
@@Denny_BoiHP lovecraft’s dream cycle stories( recommend the del ray collection “Dreams of Terror and Death”)
Robert E. Howard’s stories (also collected by del ray in paperbacks by Character: Solomon Kane, Conan - 3 Volumes, Kull, and Bran Mak Morn)
Clark Aston Smith I haven’t read but many of his stories are recommended and have audiobooks free on UA-cam
Manly Wade Wellmann - his John the bandoleer stories are collected by Valancourt books, also recommend Heroes of Atlantis & Lemuria by DMR Books which collects his Kardios the bard stories.
There are others but those are both popular and obscure starting points. Also recommend checking out the authors in the original Appendix N from AD&D. Hope this helps!
@@Denny_BoiLovecraft or Robert E. Howard
As someone who loves writing and world building this video helped remind me that not every fantasy adventure I write has to have an extensive magic system or unique culture. It can just be a story about characters in fantastical situations with no explanations or expectations.
Yes, BUT! if you come up with the extensive magic system, or unique culture, and then fast forward time enough to where these things can be mysterious and unknown in the eyes of a protagonist, you'll get the best of both worlds IMO. You have a rigid set of rules, but the protagonist doesn't know them, and so when you have them encounter something magical, it doesn't just have to be weird, it can be weird and still maintain internal consistency.
Just want to agree with @@atilathenun , you can tell your audience as little as you want, you don't work for them.
I think scientific thinking killed creativity. people try to write evolutionarily accurate dragons, patch up every little plot hole, or explain magic and alchemy like it's science. I think it's really constraining, because people in medieval or ancient times, when scientific thinking wasn't widespread, made the most unapologetically insane stories. mythology or the bible is some of the craziest and most creativity writing ever
At this point I really can't be bothered to invent some functional conlang and make sure all the names in my story are consistent with it or whatever. That was Tolkien's thing and I respect that, but I think it sorta takes the fun out of just making stuff up. I don't care if the geography or geology of my fantasy world don't make real world sense: There are volcanoes in this region because that's where the bad guys have their evil fortress. The world probably wasn't even created with realistic plate tectonics in the first place.
I do like to have a decent magic system to work with, but I keep them simple and versatile: Magic will have a set of basic mechanics so you can keep track of how it works but not much in the way of limitations on what you can do with it, other than in terms of scope, power and skill. Also, all magic will work pretty much the same: I just think magic systems specific to certain cultures or factions, or magicians having uniquely personal abilities X-Men style, gets kinda gimmicky.
Most of the good fantasy don't really have clearly explained magic system.
If it is comprehensible then it is not magic anymore.
Even really nuanced (but good) ones aren't fully explained (like Wheel Of Time or Malazan Book Of The Fallen).
If you make your magic too "systematic" then you end with boring-ass "sandersonian" vide-gamish magic.
The community those Pulp authors created was the best part of the video. Especially when you know the tragic ends of authors like Lovecraft and Robert Erwin Howard.
If Lovecraft was a Fantasy character, he would probably fit the "Master" archetype, with all the other writers he helped to create, thanks to his own universe.
Supposedly Randolph Carter from "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" and "The Silver Key (and a few other stories) was a Lovecraft insert, but a very mild one at that.
@@WickedWickaAnd then he and Robert Bloch took turns over a trilogy killing each other in fiction for funsies. Once you know the other authors, it gets funny, these guys were the first version of the Marvel Bullpen Era. A circle of zanies tossing profound wild ideas and bouncing off each other's creativity.
"Ervin".
@@bar-1studios I still ask myself what would be of Pulp and derivatives, if Robert Ervin Howard and Lovecraft didn't died too soon.
REH writing was improving a lot, and Lovecraft was becoming less reclusive, and also toning down his prejudice towards certain groups. Just imagine what they would create...
@abcdef27669 I don't think HPL ever would have gotten as big as Seabury Quinn, who was the cover star of Weird Tales (and a good writer as well Jules de Grandin is an awesome character) as HPL was never into commercialism. But he would have held an ever greater sway as tastemaker and influencer.
REH might have lived to see a Conan radio drama.
Fun Fact: Gary Gygax explicitly designed Dungeons & Dragons around the adventures in pulp fantasy over the adventures in books like Lord of the Rings. Gygax preferred the idea that heroes would accrue powerful treasures, rather than try to destroy one. Other designers, like the equally important Dave Arneson, were able to get Tolkien-esque elements included, sometimes with contention from Gary
Appendix N for the win!
@@lapisphilosophorum2313 Appendix N directly led me to Elric and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser
I know that system was kinda what ended up influencing the scores and experience points found in video games, which would then get put on its head and deconstructed in later games like “Undertale”.
@HÆL1X and thats why the Porcs were a thing. I miss Porcs.
It's funny that you mention D&D because this video kind of explains why I prefer older editions of D&D over the newer ones *aesthetically*
They really did value having an insane amount of really weird and disturbing creatures in the monster manuals. Things with eye hands that move and trample at impossible speeds, demons that literally build castles out of corpses and lounge on them like cats, etc.
5e is great, and you can always include whatever you'd like tbh with the power of homebrew and creative applications, but it doesn't change the fact that clearly the company behind the product wanted to move towards a "cleaner" vision that fits in more nicely with mainstream fantasy. Some of those old D&D monsters are Lynchian nightmares come to life appearance wise.
That is to say, I get it, but man some of that old stuff went really hard.
Showed my dad this. Hes a great writer and book collector, and got me into pulp fiction and fantasy. He's the reason i do dnd and game development. Shared this video with him and hopefully it gets him back onto writing.
Who's your dad? Does he have any work out?
@@milesmanuse1569 he talked with a few publishers before, but sadly was a bit green at the time. He didn't realize at that time that, when they were taking too long with sending his copy back, that it actually was a sign they were interested in it and reading through it. He sent them a letter asking them to send it back, and it didn't go any further :/
14:40 Fun fact: Kuttner and Moore met because of their association with Lovecraft, Kuttner thought Moore was a man before he met her in person. So that's funny
Really? That's a cool factoid indeed
@@dc9277 the man literally Crafted Love.
@bar-1studios Lovecraft having a role for two of his buddies being married to each other should be considered the ultimate example of irony, as Lovecraft hated love stories and would probably make a story that satirizes this scenario
I think this is why manga and anime got popular in the west as well. There’s a pulp fiction aspect of them that fills this void.
Even the texture resembles pulp fiction.
Digimon springs to mind.
No. There was a whole 20 years gap, and the people who read pulp read pulp.
Manga is so totally different.
Manga and anime got popular in the west specifically because it goes against the notion that cartoons are for kids. But I'd agree that the pulp spirit is there.
@@myautobiographyafanfic1413
More of an example of convergent evolution really.
I can proudly say that the fiction I am writing is not only heavily inspired by pulp fiction fantasy, but I've taken elements from my philosophical studies to implement contemporary aspects in it. When you write stories of a world of a society of industrialized Demon Hunting, you are bound to ask yourself questions through your characters! But I'll say pulp is having a revival in the indie scene, specially through narrative based tabletop games.
Great to hear!
Have you published anything? I would love to read it or hear the ideas you came up with
I was waiting for you to mention the SCP foundation forums. That whole cooperative project is basically the same thing as the magazine, except the authors don't get paid. Anyone can potentially get an article on there and make it part of the whole canon, which I think is very welcoming! And people might even recognize you if you write well.
Same, although SCP makes a lot of tradeoffs; in exchange for the platform you (generally) have to conform to certain constraints, namely working within the SCP universe and all that entails.
Creepypasta
I heard SCP has gotten worse, such as their 2021 pedo scandal
Yeah I was thinking the same thing, that website has spawned such a fascinating world of talented people slowly chipping away at an entire universe like nothing gets me more excited than DJ kaktus stories, also not as exciting for me but also a great example I think is the backrooms, even analogue horror and unfiction and args are a great example with low barrier of entry yeah it's mix quality but there's plenty of variety from a cat god deleting math to a national park inside a giant subterranean creature I think we're blessed with how many unique projects are coming out in such radical forms of storytelling it really feels like a fiction renaissance. If you're willing to dig a little bit and not let the algorithm just feed you slop I think there's never been so many unique projects out there.
That project actually started around 2007, before social media strangled socialization. And as it grew in size, it caught the Tumblr disease in the 2010s and became just as stale, vacuous and iterative as anything else. It exists now as a fanfiction to itself.
I was so ready for you to say Tale Foundry was becoming a magazine for pulp fiction. I got really excited
That's a great idea. I'd love to see that happen.
is it not? it could be in one. it's a weird robot talking about books.
I mean the discord does have a nice community of creatives who talk about writting.
"Who ever heard of..."
Me. I read those as a teen scrounging books together in second-hand stores. A lot of these were re-published in various fantasy anthologies way later. And I'm telling you, _Black God’s Kiss_ is one of the most disturbing things I ever read. Yikes. Loved it, though.
The writing community thing - that's fandoms now. Fanfic has sort of filled that niche; with the writers taking original IPs and often warping them until they are nigh on unrecognizable. They take things and make them their own; one zany AU at a time.
Who wrote Black God's Kiss?
@@catchPegasus C. L. Moore wrote it; it's a Jirel of Joiry one. Have fun!
Really. I got into HPL and later REH after researching the Necronomicon after watching the "Evil Dead" films. And this was back in the 90s too. Long before Google and Wikipedia. It was more like a treasure hunt than going to a index system in a library. I just wish I knew what we had back then.
“Black God’s Kiss” is one of the textbook examples of “dark fantasy.”
Recently read “Black God’s Kiss” and loved it - that’s the kind of weird fantasy I’m looking for. It’s wonderfully surreal. I’ve been reading anthologies of old Weird Tales stories, and most of them are more like The Twilight Zone episodes. But “Black God’s Kiss” is something else altogether.
I’ve always wondered why as attention spans have grown shorter, as a culture we haven’t gravitated back around to short stories. We instead have latched onto short summaries of longer stories. Instead of reading or listening to a half hour audio book, we put on (in the background) hours long videos that summarize gigantic stories.
I did a presentation for my Reading as Writers class during my Junior year of college about Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and Michael Moorcock. It all started when I collected old DAW paperbacks and when I got into the Conan stories and the Tarzan/John Carter novels back in July of 2021. These stories gave me the confidence to keep writing and to be proud of the fiction I make.
Love John Carter.
Once you realize what has been suppressed in schools, in favor of garbage like Lord of the Flies, you'll understand why young people don't read.
Modern governments *fear* the Notorious ERB. They couldn't withstand a million men aspiring to John Carter, Doc Savage or The Shadow.
I loved pulp fiction growing up. I think one of the first books I ever read like that was one called Fire Brand, about a pure human born to alien parents in a universe where humanity was practically a myth and he spends most of his life trying to find earth which has been lost to time and when he gets there discovers it's so lame and weird and unlike what he expected he starts a revolution.
Really appreciate this video! As someone who constantly wants to do a creative project, but is immediately overwhelmed by the idea that we have to make everything into a famous consumable/life's work... this video is a great reminder that you CAN just create for yourself and your small community. You don't have to be the next Lovecraft or Sanderson to be successful--if you make even one person (like yourself) smile or laugh or cry or cope, that's more net positive than there was before.
If anything Lovecraft is successful because he is Lovecraft. Lovecraft let himself write strange stories simply because he was a man who was constantly fretful about what was out there. If Lovecraft focused on sales we wouldn't have his stories.
My sister, a few friends, and I started a writing club on a discord server two years ago. It’s a small group, and we don’t always *write* (sometimes game dev, sometimes music), but it’s always something creative and non-commercial. I look forward to it every week :)
Any possibility to join?
I think most of the pulp's soul still resonates on indie, basically fan made, interactive fiction.
Indie is where it’s at lately. Trad is only good for literary fiction these days.
@@Nope44bigpapA
One of the last really good non-literary trad fiction books was the Hunger Games series.
We need to return to the time where a 6 or 7/10 was something people could enjoy or at least would try to explore.
A lot of people still don't understand that a 5/10 is supposed to be average and end up inflating the numbers, like: 5: bad, 7-8: average, 9-10 good
Its going to be hard to return to that time. Now we have sooo much content all vying for our undivided but meager time and attention (and ultimately our money) that watching anything that is not considered to be good or excellent is a waste.
It really depends on the genre. I'd argue comedies are typically given more slack but even then, people have higher expectations. Personally, as I've developed as a writer, I've also expected higher standards from the media I watch. I want quality. Yet, I'm conflicted about this. Honestly, maybe if more movies were above average, people would be more receiving to average movies.
@@prisaodasbolhas With the word "mid" used as an insult and the word "average" as a derogatory remark, it is not hard to imagine that people shy away from using the middle score in reviews.
@@prisaodasbolhasThat's not how numbers work?
1+10 is 11, which halved becomes 5.5. Every decent math teacher will teach that UNLESS REQUIRED differently, upon simplifying it to not have decimale, a X.5 should be moved up.
Which is logical as well. 1 to 5 are five numbers. 6 to 10 are five numbers.
1 to 5 describes shades of bad with 5 being on the lower side of a central area while 6 is the upper sude or the same area.
"5 as average" works only in systems including 0 are as a vote.
Pulp fiction is a tool of the fan creators these days. It takes a certain kind of person to pull off such a genre, and the guy who posted a 30000000 word epic to the misadventures of [character]'s weapon, who somehow gained a soul and a personality is just the guy to use the technique again.
In fact pulp magazines commonly did publish what we would now define as fan-fiction and writers for those magazines created community exchanging mail on level of modern forums.
Light Novels owe a LOT to Pulp Novels. For a blatant example, read *Vampire Hunter D* which references several pulp icons over it's run.
@@bar-1studios Exactly!
Light novel is just the idiotic newspeak name for illustrated fantasy fiction, or in other words, pulp.
Pulp definitely isbt dead, you have authors like Lesley Lawrance releasing a whole series every year. They just dobt get the same hype Snaderson and his cult does.
I really like the fact you brought up Jirel. She is a key example of what you were talking about at the end of the video. Robert E Howard wrote a story with a character named The Red Sonya, CL more thought that that character was pretty neat and wrote to Howard asking to use the general idea of the character, a red-haired swords woman. That's where Jirel came from. Howard read Jirel, then wrote back to Moore asking to re-borrow the red-haired swords woman and made Valeria in a Conan yarn.
In later years Howard would be credited with inventing the genre of swords and sorcery, and the Very name of that genre was because of a result of authors communicating with one another through many fan magazines. Key luminaries in that era of fiction included Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and Karl Edward Wagner. Through their writings to one another they would name the genre, and Wagner would go on to write his own rendition of a Conan story, work on editing a more loyal to the original versions Omnibus editions of the Conan stories, end with morecock write his own Elric story.
Michael moorcock would go on to work with bands like Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult, and as recently as last year worked with a band called Smoulder, who have tracks based on both Jirel and the Red Sonya. Smoulder associates with other bands like Viigoth, Gatekeeper, and Eternal Champion (named after Moorcock's series). The lead singer of Eternal Champion would go on to write in a compilation featuring members of Gatekeeper and other bands in a collection of swords and sorcery stories written by heavy metal musicians.
I've been to a festival that features some of these bands, and the best I can describe it is like that section of letters in the back of Weird Tales where we can talk about the fiction we read and the music we like to listen to and create.
You also have authors like Roy Thomas who was a huge fan of Conan. Roy Thomas would wind up working at Marvel when they had the rights to Conan and he would create the character of Red Sonja that we think of nowadays. Thomas continues to interact with the Conan fandom and other pulp stories. Mike Micnolla of Hellboy fame is the one who created the graphic novel adaptation of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. DC at one point seriously considered making Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser DC staples to try and compete with how Marvel had Conan. Fafhrd and Mouser met Catwoman and Wonder Woman and it was cool. To bad it didn't really stick. The Roy Thomas and John Buscema era Conan and Red Sonja are very worth reading in my opinion. Shame that those collections are not printed nearly enough.
I gotta know the name of the story mentioned at the beginning where the dungeon turns out to be living creature and its treasure is its brains, that is so cool!
that's "The Jewels in the Forest" by Fritz Leiber! It's one of the first Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories- really fun, quick read!
@@accordingtosophia I'm going to be looking that one up!
I highly reccomend Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Cloud of Hate, Bazar of the Bizarre, Birds of Tyaa, Two Sought Adventure, they are all great.
@@accordingtosophia thank you
@@accordingtosophiaDo you know the other two as well? And why weren't they referenced originally 😭
I’ve recently gotten into pulp due to reading some golden age Batman comics, and I think the indulgence is a part of the fun, and it’s very striking (although I get the complaints of the exploitation aspects), and it’s a good jumping off point for something deeper. I think the best modern example is the comic series and the motion comic miniseries Batman Black And White is a good example. They’re striking and bite sized but still really deep. A good example is a story where Batman mourns a murder victim while performing an autopsy.
I grew up in the 80s and I absolutely loved magazines like Omni, Heavy Metal, and Dragon Magazine. Along side the smaller digest format magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction and Weird Tales. I still have copies of all of them stored away in boxes and I will pull them out once in a while and revisit them. The combination of stories and images in a tactile format was a joy for me! I think in a lot of ways comic books have maintained that tradition of unapologetic over-the-topness, so to speak.
And to answer a question in the video, I absolutely remember and love Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser! Along with Elric of Melnibone, Red Sonja and the more famous Conan of course. Sword & Sorcery was always my favorite pulp genre, especially in the Lankhmar books that leaned into Lovecraftian style dark gods and mysterious beings, and a dose of horror to go along with the fantasy.
We are of a feather. Remember thieves world or another fine myth? Robert aspirin is a name that has unfortunately fallen by the wayside. Some other favs sadly out of print And not to be found are Barbara hambly a fear in the dark & Ursula la ruins tales of the flat earth.
@@brianhirt5027 Oh yeah I loved the Another Fine Myth Series!
@@iananelson8256 It was a fantastic series that holds up on review, i've found!
I too have been getting into Pulp Fiction for the past few years. Robert E Howard's Conan and Solomon Kane, along with Edgar Rice Borough's John Carter series and EE Smith's Lensmen series. I found them all to be quite enjoyable.
There are a few small publishers out there trying to keep pulp alive, but sadly, they are just that. Few. And it's not in the form of magazines, but as regularly published anthologies. It may not be quite the same as the old magazines, but the spirit is at least alive in some pockets of the world. I'd been in a serious writing slump myself for quite a while until I discovered pulp through one such publisher, and it immediately shook me out of my rut. It's amazing the kinds of stories people are able to tell when they're not trying to keep up with the almighty algorithm.
Lately I’ve been buying short story collections at used bookstores. Either by assorted authors, or the collected work of just one. There are some priceless gems hidden amongst them. One I got at Dollar Tree, of all places - Yellowcake (I don’t recall the author atm) - is one of the best I’ve ever read. 🥰
Ooh, and I’ll never pass up an old issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction!
I was introduced to the Lankhmar series by a friend back when I was in grad school. I was intensely studying archaeology, my friend (who was a literature graduate student) thought that the adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser would be a good escape for me to help me reduce stress. She was absolutely right, but what struck me was how Fritz Lieber managed to simultaneously write some of the greatest pulp fantasy stories while also taking the whole thing down a few notches by mocking it, the stories were both exciting and hilarious in their mockery of the ways in which they were exciting. It was weird and wonderful in a way that no other stories I have read has ever quite managed and, truth be told, I think few people would want to try. They are favorites.
I have since read many of the Conan stories, John Carter of Mars, the Dying Earth, and scads of obscure writers (most of whom I don't recall the names of at this point) who wrote these wonderfully strange and imaginative stories for the pulps that, while unpolished and often very much guilty of the crimes of which the pulps are often accused (including plenty of casual racism and sexism) are nonetheless so truly unique and weird that they just can't be written off. There's a lot of crap, but there's also a lot of brilliance, and even some of the crap has something really interesting and compelling about it.
I learned of Sanderson from you. Thank you so much!
Pulp fantasy was charming. It gave us a lot of classics, like original warhammer, Conan the Barbarian, and many, many more.
warhammer was a pulp?
@@tsm688 First edition with the Rogue Trader.
Oh I got that community, it's very nice.
Here in Argentina we have had something called a "literary workshop" for decades.
The workshops are organized by someone who has knowledge of writing and literature, from an amateur to a professional writer, and this "workshop leader" guides others on how to write narratives of all types.
I have had a literary workshop for 5 years, people from the neighborhood come to learn to write with me and end up creating a community. They talk to each other, share things and aspire to do projects together. We even published a collective book.
That sounds really fun!
@@asdf9890 It is! :D
The mid-century authors like Heinlein, Norton, Bradley etc. are an interesting bridge from the pulp era because they started at the tail end writing in the same magazines. Their first novels were often less than 200 pages not 600+ pages. The restriction of page count required the reader to do a lot of the imagining themselves. And they weren't afraid to leave the rules unstated. Unless you're Asimov you don't need to tell the audience exactly how the amazing tech works it does and allows the story to function.
Something important is lost when you infodump.
@TheTaleFoundry I have been collecting pulp sci-fi for about 5 years now and am continually amazed by the stories, drawings and concepts that can be excavated from between the laser / radiation blasts and latex clad bosomy space-women. Thank you for this video drawing appreciation to a lost literary tradition!
There's lots of channels that narrate creepy pasta, I think that's the new pulp fiction. My expectations are usually pretty low but every now and then I'm quite impressed.
It's called horror.
@@zufalllxpulp fiction doesn’t exclude horror
Right? Most of the time I’ll sit there, listening with low expectations, nodding along to familiar plot beats and themes, but every now and then, one will strike me in just the right way and it’ll linger in the mind.
The other day I watched the Stark Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars" and I felt exactly what this video says. That yearning for a niche community without having to make it a social media or huge production thing.
good point bro,
last of these pulp giants Karl Wagner wrote a story 'Two suns setting'
and it's literally about this - how the time of the giants have pass, and now we are left to wander alone while remembering them...
Wagner is criminally underrated
In a way, Newgrounds is like a modern pulp fiction magazine. DIY nature and accessibility, curation of content instead of just having an algorithm, and of course the community.
The transition of fantasy from flights of fancy to these rigid worldbuilding PhD-level projects is not something I ever though of before.
Excellent video!
I went to High School between 1977 and 1980, and we had a Science Fiction club who was in charge was a huge science fiction fan and his focus was on the Dune Trilogy. (God Emperor of Dune did not come out until 1981, so in my HS years it was known as a trilogy.) He had stacks of weird tales in our club office and we'd read these things and have fun with them. You have to understand the idea of them being collector's items wasn't a big thing in the 1970s. They were just the foundation of everything that came after them. Authors like Steven King and Robert R. McCammon often spoke of reading them as kids. When the first Action Comics #1 sold for a million dollars, that was all over. But there were days that these were just foundations. William Shakespeare wrote his plays under the expectation of a live audience made up of people from every class. He didn't know that his play would be the foundation for every English class in the known universe. And his plays didn't travel the world like a road show. But he did create a foundation. The old pulp stories are gone, because everything we read and experience now are built on their foundation. Now the audience is bigger, it's online and it is created with a different expectation. And if you have to lay blame for fantasy becoming what it is today, that's not the fault of teh internet or social media. JRR Tolkien gets all the blame for that. Because Fantasy were just these all over the place stories about great heroes fighting weird shyt. Tolkien is the one who made things epic. After that there was pretty much no turning back. What we see now is just the extension of foundation built on the groundwork of various eras. It will change again. Sooner or later someone will come up with another way to tell the tale no one has seen before. And something new will come out of it. That's the nature of art. That's the nature of fantasy.
I feel like it’s how everyone naturally starts writing, and it’s really cool to see what you first think of making a story even if it’s very rough
Fritz Lieber, Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, all great authors, now underappreciated
Fred Saberhagen, Roger Zelazny
@@zufalllx Yes!!
Love Zelazny! Amber, Jack of Shadows, Light and Dark, and Lord of Light FTW
Poul Anderson and Lin Carter.
@@saunteringspellcaster Poul Anderson's the Broken Sword is a must read for any fantasy fan
@@vtheawesome I liked Broken Sword ,but personally I found Three Hearts Three Lions and A Midsummer Tempest to be more fun.
I didn't expect to get emotional about an essay on Pulp Magazines, and yet, here we are.
HOooooooooo! That one about the two dudes dreaming each others' lives! I read that as a kid! I completerly forgot until you brought it up! Thank you thank you thank you!
I feel like some of the spirit of pulp fantasy lives on in the romantasy and LitRPG genres. Both tend to feature formulaic yet sensationalist plots, with a focus on action over detailed worldbuilding or complex characters. And they’re both driven by passionate and dedicated fandoms. Romantasy is basically pulp fantasy by way of paranormal romance, and LitRPG is pulp fantasy by way of fantasy RPGs.
I don't really like romantasy but i think your on the money. that is our romance pulp.
I'm in a group of friends, a trio, all of us enjoy writing. Even though one of us simply reads and writes fanfics, the other a marvel and dc fan, planning on making a story already, and makes great short ones. And finally me who writes, because I wanted to, for a long time. It's thanks to these two and even maybe this channel that inspired me to finally write the jumbled up ideas in my head. I totally get how you feel, we never expect our stores to be famous, but we sure as heck love writing them. ❤❤🎉
This is lovely
I have to say the intro of the Dungeon being the Monster with the treasure being it's brain, is something I TOTALY want to steal for a D&D campaign.
"wistful," I think, is a good word to describe how many talebot videos make me feel. In a good way.
I know intellectually that this is a UA-cam channel that also has to bow to the algorithm, but all the videos feel so removed from the frenetic energy of the general UA-cam meta
Fantasy stopped being a subculture to be a full culture with its own subcultures
True
Great presentation! Star Trek DS9 has a very interesting side story about Captain Sisko and how he lived a shared life (i guess?) with a fantasy pulp writer. I just rewatched em last night, nice coincidence. I always seek out the weird pulpy fantasy/sci-fi. You're right, those stories have something magical to them!
Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are some of my favorite fantasy stories. Howards Kull stories are also amazing. I find the old short story style of pulp fantasy often a lot more digestible than longer series. Some longer, full-sized series, like LoTR obviously, are also awesome reads, but it's nice to have a quick snack once in a while, as opposed to a full meal.
This makes me remember my old Kothar the Barbarian books...
The mention of Jirel of Joiry triggered a core memory.
Anybody here heard of Filk music?
Back in my parents' and grandparents' days, there were really only 2 ways you really got to feel like you were part of a national or international community of fans. Read independent Zines of fanfiction and essays that got shared around at conventions, or to participate and contribute in Filk Circles, where simple folk-style songs were written about whatever books they happened to be reading that month, performed by whoever on the friend group happened to know how to play guitar. Names like Kathy Mar, Leslie Fish, and even established fantasy authors like Mercedes Lackey contributed, creating a wealth of fan-works and original music that is now slowly being forgotten. The way those old ideas used to spread was by word of mouth and meeting in person.
The *only* reason I've ever even heard of Jirel of Joiry is because of these filk circles, which started to die out right around the dawn of social media. The core of that old style of Fandom tried really hard to digitize in the 90s and 00s, but never really made it to web 2.0, with most of those old geocities websites now being dead.
I think that the idea of people wanting to capitalize on their Fandom isn't new, and the evolution of Fandoms into endless piles of merch and tie-in media and IP crossovers can be traced back to the humble beginnings of people making something small but special that makes them Con Famous, and then they get attached to a major license, and then they produce media that gets seen by hundreds of millions of people. It started as an attempt at community, and upon finding success, inevitably grew into capital.
I was scrolling until I found a comment mentioning filk. The community is still around, but it's definitely a lot different. I miss the era of sci-fi themed filk (not that I was there to experience it though.)
"Dreamers worlds" sounds absolutely fantastic
The collective creation aspect I think is something we need to keep doing. I'm currently reading a book about creative writing and the introduction was clear to say: "we don't write to become famous authors, we write because we need it". The simple act of creating a story and sharing it with a group of like-minded people is in and of itself valuable and satisfactory.
I really hope we get to see more people forming groups to create and share their unapologetic, honest, crazy stories.
We need pulp more than ever today.
My mum bought me Black God's Kiss (an anthology of the first 5 Jirel of Joiry stories) and it blew me out of the fucking water. I wish I could make a movie series or a TV series about her, the worlds created in those 5 short stories were so incredibly rich and strange and Jirel herself was such a powerhouse of fury and willpower.
The SCP wiki Was Weird Tales for a year or two... Not so much anymore but for awhile there, that small, collaborative vibe Was there
Wow, you have put into words what has been plaguing my mind for a while! I have always favoured older films and stories and have been trying to figure out why I just can't click with a lot of newer stuff. I see now it's because I like it when people come up with stories that aren't polished to a sharp edge based on what's "good" and "sensical", they just make what comes to them. Often the works feel more like dreams because they don't do with the pinning down every detail and how it all works if it even makes sense at all. Even in my own work, I keep feeling like I have to figure all these details out but that defeats the point. I like fiction when it's scenere, genuine and a look into someone's creativity, a reflection of a person. I am slowly becoming better at letting myself be genuine in my work.
I really love that Meow Wolf are creating what are essentially weird fiction theme parks.
This is now my favorite of your videos.
Ah, to be a part of that era. A small, niche community where your fellow nerd peers shared ideas and came up with extraordinary worlds. A place to belong. It's definitely the kind of thing you wish you could be a part of. As someone who writes a web novel, my biggest inspiration has always been these guys. The authors of those weird little tales of fantasy that you just never see these days anymore. Sometimes I don't know if I should keep going. The writing is still niche, after all. But this video has inspired me to never stop. To write what I want because it's something I enjoy. No matter how weird it is.
Shoutouts to Cirsova Magazine, for being one of those projects keeping the spirit of pulp alive.
Also, please read Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts Three Lions" for one of the most central pillars of Original Dungeons & Dragons.
Love this channel. Your calming voice and even pacing make it all so relaxing while giving you plenty of food for thought. Also, your sponsor transitions are always so smooth. May Tale Foundry live long!
Horror Babble is reading all sorts of weird fiction from all of these authors. I go to sleep listening to it most nights. Although I'm not a fan of the damp man or that one where the guy finds a centaur. I was surprised by the number of stories that weren't from decades ago but were from contemporary authors like Aaron Vlek.
I made a pilgrimage to Cross Plains, TX to visit Robert E. Howard’s house. I stood in the room where his mother died, saw the tiny patio room where Howard wrote, read his grade school English papers, bought a book about his literary influences in his own house. It was amazing.
It’s just a tiny old house in a small Texas town but it’s also the land of the Hyborian Age.
Two pulp authors I highly recommend if apocalyptic fantasy sounds appealing: Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance. If you like them you can advance on to William Hope Hodgson.
Zothique, Dying Earth, and The Night Land are some of the best dark fantasies I’ve ever read.
God, I wish I could finish The Night Lands. It's such a great setting, but the language feels almost deliberately obtuse. It's so hard to get into the rhythm of it. But God, what a setting.
I'm glad at the end there was the mention of how pulp fiction adjascent media has kind of taken a new, different form these days. Because while watching and hearing about all those niche communities of passionate creatives, I found myself feeling a bit sad and almost left out?
But then at the end it clicked- technically I *am* in those circles and communities. Some big ones (yet still also niche on the scale of the internet) include things like SCP, The Magnus Archives (and its sequel The Magnus Protocol but we haven't finished that yet), hell, even the Legends of Avantriss (especially with the Chuckles stuff I see everywhere, though I have yet to watch their stuff).
And then there are some little ones like youtubers writing stories about characters their audiences initially made about them for the fun of it but now have dedicated theorists and fans who adore every piece of new content (a big one we love is the IRIS project/ALTRverse in general, or the stuff Markiplier has made (like Date, Heist, In Space, etc) as a few examples), or the DND games and minecraft semi-roleplay servers we share with other friends that aren't exactly private but aren't made *for* anyone other than ourselves, where we craft random stories and plotlines and excitedly talk about what happened in the lore/roleplay sessions after they're done. Hell, a few of the admins for one of those minecraft servers is attempting to code a magic system into vanilla minecraft *from scratch* just cause, and one of our DMs has been hard at work for ages making a world for us idiot players to mess around in.
All the examples I mentioned tend to have the campiness and/or outlandishness and/or "WTF" vibes of pulp fiction of past, while also having some genuinely serious and intriguing thoughts and writing- both of these things combined probably wouldn't work if they were trying to be commercialised and palatable for the general public.
TL;DR: I think pulp fiction hasn't exactly died as much as it's evolved to fit this day and age. And I think that's pretty cool!
- Oliver 🌒
You got to love those weird classic fantasy stories! Im personally a fan of the science fiction side of it, rocketships and interesting stories with concepts and ideas that is generally ignored in modern scifi. My favorite is Have Spacesuit-Will Travel, such a fun story about a relatively normal guy who starts the story with a real spacesuit he won in a contest, and ends with him somehow representing humanity! Lots of unique aliens in these stories, many unique and fascinating worlds!😊
I know Lankhmar very well, have all the books, have played a decade long campaign in the D&D RPG version and have even cos-played the Grey Mouser on occasion.
Related: there's a series of podcasts under the collective label "Escape Artists" that are audio presentations of short stories, each podcast in a different genre, Escape Pod is SF, Pod Castle is fantasy, PseudoPod is horror, etc. They're basically the audio equivalent of the the pulp magazines. Fully proffesional publisher, not somebody's hobby project, or works of ongoing serial fiction. Each episode is one shrot story, authors are paid properly, they cast appropriate voices, with only the odd story being read by somebody in-hourse, and they make an active effort to have a very solid variety in their stories. I've fallen off the train as a podcast listener, but when I had commutes measured in hours, they did a lot to keep me sane.
There's also a number of preserved radioplay broadcasts from back then, often adaptions of stories directly from the pulps.
That aside, another feature of the old pulps is that genre conventions really weren't much of a thing back in the 30s and 40s. Folks weren't writing with the specific intent of being placed onto a clearly labeled "fantasy" shelf that would offer a rather consistent notion of what "fantasy" meant. Heck, a lot of the authors referred to their category of writing as "weird fiction". They're weird precisely because there just weren't the sort of expectations we've seen develop for the last 50+ years.
Reading the old stories today is a lot like consuming fiction from other culture's literary traditions: the things that you've been given to expect don't necessarily hold up because the tradition that established your expectations just wasn't present.
yay a new Tale foundry video
Rebrand pulp magazines as a subscription box that sends short stories and novel samples to your door every month? Maybe you can add some collectables / art prints... basically, just a magazine reprinted as a subscription box. With access to discord servers / etc.
I'd... send that idea to my buddies in the PulpRev scene. Then again, Cirsova isn't that big. I mean, it blows Maberry's Weird Tales revival out of the water.
I as a scholar know that while Brandon Sanderson is the poster boy for magical systems these days, he only stand on the shoulders of Jack Vance. The guy basically created hard magic as a concept.
Jack Vance would never, _ever_ utter such silly words as "hard magic", except in jest maybe.
@@nerzenjaeger Doesn't change the fact that's what it's called now. Used to be called Vancian Magic at first.
@@geofff.3343 It's still called Vancian Magic, what are you talking about?
I’ve been speaking to a friend about this for the past 2 years. I’m glad you made a video of this. Thank you . Sometimes you just want to write something fun and exciting without checking boxes
That's one thing I wish I knew before publishing. I used to write more because I loved to write. The moment I published and threw money into the project, it just became a losing race to recover the money I spent. I still want my fantasy series to be known... but I don't know how.
What’s it called homie give it a shoutout
@@J31 Huh? Where did they say that they're writing to get attention???
@@J31 Absolutely bonkers assumption to make.
@@J31 Counterargument to what??? You didn't make an argument, you made an absolutely wild assumption with no basis and then gave a lil lecture based on your assumption. Why? That's weird and actually kinda rude.
@@JustAHorrorShowOh for contrarian's sake!
6:30 the description reminds me SO MUCH of the group writing projects of the SCP foundation and R/nosleep.
I dont think pulp fiction really died. I think it just became so easily made and easily available that weve stopped noticing it.
How am I not already subbed to you? This is really good.
The writing comradery you described in the pulp fiction magazine days reminds me of the creepypastah writers and narrators of today..collaborating together and co-writing stories while being a part of a supportive community..and even a good part of the fan base is like that and have formed their own little fan communities....the feeling of flipping pages of a magazine might be nearly gone but the core of pulp fiction still lives on.
The illustration helped me immensely, of course, but that first story, at the very start of the video, is an actual adventure of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the recurring "heroes" of Fritz Leiber's works. I've read a few of their adventures earlier this year, and now I want more.
This being said, I really, REALLY love pulp stories. Sure, they were products of their times, for better or for worse, but after reading several compilations of such works, I've come to really love how diverse and imaginative those stories can be. Here are a few examples that stuck with me (sorry if I don't give the titles, I can't remember them) :
A man berates a water spirit because he's not letting him fish in peace. In retaliation, the water spirit curses him so that water would actively avoid him. Funny hijinks ensue.
A man who constantly boasts his intelligence decides to make a pact with the Devil with the express intent of cheating and outsmarting him. He succesfully deduces that, once he would have upholded his end of the bargain, the Devil would wait behind a red door to eat him. What he didn't account for was that the Devil made him colourblind after fulfilling his wish.
A human spaceship accidentally encounters an alien spaceship, making the first contact between mankind and extraterrestrials. However, all the crewmembers and the officials back home are split between being ecstatic about the discovery of intelligent life and the possibility that those aliens would eventually find Earth and ravage it. It's however not long before they realize the aliens are going through the exact same dilemma.
Two guys exploring an unknown galaxy eventually find a perfectly suitable planet they could claim their own and sell. However, this planet was home to a civilization, which, apparently, destroyed itself, so they have to make themselves sure there are no survivors left if they want to be considered the new "legal owners" of the planet. What's left to explore is an apparently abandonned and autonomous space station. What they never consider was why that station was built, and how it would actually be a very bad idea to explore it blindly.
Name of the Fafhrd story?
@@erikmartin4996 Unfortunately, as I'm French, I only know the name they used in the french translation : "les bijoux dans la forêt", which means "the jewels in the forest". I can't guarantee that this is the original name of the story.
It is so important to remind ourselves that we need to be awake and actively fight this individualism the world is moving towards by participating in small comunity. We need to take the internet back from corporativism. It might sound like an exaggeration but IT IS THAT DEEP.
Beautiful video, loved it.
9:13 feels like more often than others, Fantasy (and Sci Fi) necessitate world building. Rare are vignettes without an explanation for everything.
Watching these videos always leaves me feeling a little sad, a little down at the end. Wistful, I guess, missing a time I could never know full of experiences that seem so commonplace for how small they actually were. I enjoy writing, if I could that's where I would put all of my attention, but between obligations of work and school, trying to build a better life for myself, and the mindless distractions I find myself doing more evenings than I want to admit, it's...I don't know. Sobering. Reading was so much to me as a kid, and picking it back up after university helped me get through a lot. Writing has given me so much personal happiness. Sometimes, though, when staring at that mountain of established work, it's hard to think I'll ever do anything more than be in my bedroom, on my laptop, writing my little fanfiction or the collaborative pieces I do with a friend with a small audience of friends. I don't know if I want to be famous, that feels like a lot. But I'd like to be somewhat impactful, somewhere. At least for me.
To quote Michael Moorcock "In my time it was kind of an Outlaw Genre. Like Rock and Roll."
And like Rock music, it was raunchy, flippant, outrageous, and at times deeply insightful, humorous and inventive.
Now, though, the delineating lines between sub-genres have become sanctified, and the industry became even more riskaverse than they already were, and we've become so used to craning our neck looking backward for decades, now we've became hopelessness derivative and conformist.
How's that for an irony?
You have a wonderful channel. Thank you for this video. It gives me hope. I've been disabled since I had a stroke in 2017 and I have so many unfinished works that I gave up on. Thank you for the courage to keep writing them. I hope I finish the work and then drop dead so that I don't have to worry about who likes it or not.
This may sound strange but I wonder if one of the reasons why fiction has become less "weird" is because, unlike the 60s and 70s, fewer writers are taking hallucinogens. Back then it was sort of expected that "hip" people took hallucinogens to enhance their creativity. Did it make them more creative? Probably not. But it certainly might have made them a little weirder.
I was recently lucky enough to experience something that kind of captured the same feeling as old pulp fiction. It was a student-led production by the theater department of my local college. When I say student led, I mean that this play was entirely written, directed, and produced by a student. It was a fantasy story about a disgraced warrior-priest of a forgotten god who kidnaps a sheltered princess in order to regain one of the lost relics of his temple from a nobleman.
Sure, you could see the fingerprints of Tolkien and Sanderson, but it had a lot of the same mix of passion and roughness around the edges that many of the old pulp stories have.
Holy Crap, at 3:55 there's an album cover from Golden Smog. I always assumed it was a member of the band in a goofy costume but I guess it was borrowed from an old pulp magazine. Very cool. Great video.
I think it's the simplicity of these stories and the magazine that made them special. They were not something for marketing or for the masses, they were just a lot of stories to share with others with the same tastes without fear of being judged. It's fine to have well-constructed and structured fantasy worlds, but sometimes people just want simple, weird stories that have nothing to do with reality, exploring concepts and themes without fear of failure or not being profitable.
You know, there is a quiet renaissance in the fantasy and science fiction space happening, sort of independent of brandon sanderson. Take a look at royal road and fiction press. Its such an interesting pipeline, from small characterized projects to publishing/self publishing to audiobook, usually in partnership with amazon in some form. Sounds something like the way you describe pulp. Many many novels that ive been reading lately had their start as a free project on royal road, whether its wuxian/cultivation, isekai, dungeon core, litrpg and progression fantasy. Much of it had its start being published for free on a website like royal road.
Just a thought.
About a year or so ago I bought a bunch of the old DnD novels featuring Drizzt the drow on "Austrian eBay" (we call it Willhaben over here) I got 10 books for about 5 euros. I've always been an avid fantasy reader but up until 2023 I've only read modern fantasy. When I read the first Drizzt novel I was pleasantly surprised by how over the top and "campy" it was. It was such a light and pleasant read through.
I actually recently came into a copy of Swords of Lankhmar, and mom named at least one pet Fafhrd when I was a kid. My parents also had a big white spitz, probably a Samoyed or cross, before I was born and it was named Elric after Elric of Melniboné.
HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard both initially released their stories in Weird Tales or similar publications. That is why those books are so sought after and expensive now for collectors.
My favorite UA-camr talking about my favorite genre. Instant classic
Awesome video! As someone who loves pulp fiction stories and wants to write pulp fiction stories, this is a great inspiration 🙂
The Shadow and Soloman Cain absolutely slapped.
ey fellow solomon kane fan, based
Solomon Kane and the Shadow are indeed both based.
My grandpa use to say "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow Knows"
@@dabba_dabba The Shadow is one of those characters that I wish got more recognition. I know that Garth Ennis is writing stuff for him,but I'm not a fan of Ennis. It's strange though that such a monumental character is for the most part languishing in obscurity nowadays.
@@saunteringspellcaster I'd like some spotlight on some of these characters myself. Sometimes though, I appreciate them being obscure because they feel like little treasures I can introduce to others without them having any idea what to expect
every Conan story I've read ends in a way I couldn't have imagined, with an alien or a ghost or a god banishing you back to life, it is invigorating