The authors of the new age

13 Jul

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I remember a while back I wrote about dime novels and penny dreadfuls. They were short novels, often in a serial format, published during the late 18th early 19th Centuries and continued on into the 20th Century, where they became known as pulp novels. I recently watched a documentary on H.P. Lovecraft, who’s work almost all appeared in pulp novel and serial series formats. Very much like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes and Lost World stories, the former appeared on a regular basis in the Strand Magazine, these stories would come out in regular intervals to an audience that wanted to know more and more and more about them.

Cover for an issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

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Books like Weird Tales, Amazing Stories and much more that were all mainstays of the pulp area. Some of those styles of books lived on in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Asimov’s Science Fiction, both of which are still published and reader’s can still order subscriptions to. But they are few in a market that used to be flooded with them, which often times makes one think is the age of the pulp writer gone. Will we no longer see Penny Dreadfuls or Dime Novels?

Perhaps note in book form, though there are anthology books often published which are similar to pulp novels, but there is the new face of fiction in such a serialized format. The community is small, but it has been growing for many, many years. Unlike the penny dreadfuls and pulps of one hundred years ago, these writers aren’t trying to scratch together a living out of writing. Though, one could say that any money they receive can be equal to what many of those authors of the late 19th Century made (it’s said H. P. Lovecraft made $5 from his first story), many of these new age pulp fiction authors write for the pure joy of it.

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Some of the work is original, some of it is fanfiction, but it’s all writing, all serialized. And they have a following.

These new authors have tastes that many fans crave, as mainstream media seems to refuse to place certain characters in certain roles. Urban Fantasy? It’s there. Gothic horror western? Look hard enough and you’ll find it. Looking for strong female characterizations? There’s lots out there. Any genre, any characterizations, any style, it’s out there for the reading public. And most of it is free.

The 21st Century authors are no different than the ones who wrote for Weird Tales or Amazing Stories. They’re filling a desire by the reading public, and with today’s technology, it’s so easy to get written work out there. Maybe, it one hundred years a lot of these online serial authors will be looked at in the same light as many of the pulp and serial authors are from the 19th Century. I guess we’ll have to see.

Until next time…

…keep ’em flyin’!