Good ideas don’t grow on trees.
The good idea behind this post was stolen from author Barry Reese‘s blog.
A top ten of my favorite pulp characters.
Why not?
I normally say that I came to the pulps in a very circuitous way – but the fact is, I’ve been reading pulps for most of my life (say, the last thirty six years), only I did not know it.
Starting at the age of ten, with Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space, I read a lot of old SF – stuff that was published in pulp magazines like Astounding, or Amazing. Then, when two or three years later I discovered fantasy (through the books by Lyon Sprague de Camp), I started reading things that came from Unknown and Weird Tales.
And then, of course, there were hard boiled mysteries – Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade…
Pulps.
And the movies and TV, of course – Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, Guy Williams as Zorro…
And what about TinTin comics, or Terry and the Pirates?
What I really missed until much later were “proper” hero pulps – The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage etc.
I was more of a strange worlds/exotic locales sort of reader.
As a consequence of my reading history, my top ten heroes list is strange.
Maybe.
Therefore, in no particular order…
. Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark
. Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future
. Norvell Page‘s The Spider
. Robert E. Howard‘s Solomon Kane
. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan
. Walter B. Gibson’s The Shadow
. Lester Dent’s Doc Savage
. C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith
. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op
. (various authors) Sexton Blake
Double-feature special mention
. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter
. Robert E. Howard’s Conan
. Norvell Page’s Wen Tengri aka Prester John
“Is this actually pulp?” special mention
. Russell Thorndike’s Captain Clegg aka Dr Syn
And there’s still a lot of characters I have to read seriously – next on my list is Henry Kuttner’s Thunder Jim Wade.
Such was the amount of solid fiction published by pulp authors, there’s truly a world worth exploring out there.
Related articles
- Guest Blog: The Need for Pulp Literature (barryreese.net)
- New Pulp Best Seller List (Based on Amazon Sales Ranks 10/15/13) (barryreese.net)
- Doc Savage: Death in Silver on Fear Cay (#SFWApro) (frasersherman.wordpress.com)
- Pulp Heroes reviewed (alchemypress.wordpress.com)
- Vintage Pulp in the Digital Age (trolldens.blogspot.com)
- My Favorite Pulp Heroes (barryreese.net)