Jungle Fight!
A pulp moment.
Thanks to my friend Germano “Hell” Greco of Book and Negative for pointing this picture out to me.
Tag Archives: postaweek
Pulp History: nobody does it better
Me and my big mouth!
I promise a short post in a few hours.
Yes, you genius… about what?!
About the pulps, and adventure, and exotic locales, of course – because that’s what we deal in, here on Karavansara.
And when it comes to adventure, and the pulps, to me nothing beats reality.
It’s a tough statement from someone writing books with tentacles on the cover, but it’s one of my most rock-solid certainties: no matter how good is your pulp, the real world can trump that.
In fact, to be a good writer, you have to be as outrageous, unlikely, absurd and strange as only reality can be.
It takes practice.
One of the best places in which to practice is history – not so much the slam-bang, big numbers history of great men and nations, but the small-scale, local, oft-forgotten, “useless” sort of history.
Consider, if you will, a book like Running the Show, by Stephanie Williams, roughly 500 pages of paperback dealing with those faceless bureaucrats that managed the affairs of the British Empire.
Boring, right?
Not so.
In this globetrotting overview of the men (and women) that ran the Empire, we find no end of adventures, madness, tragic death, slapstick, espionage, two-fisted diplomacy and the natives are restless tonight.
Not faceless paper-pushers but often young men in search of their place in the world, the heroes (and villains) of this book are a good example of the way in which history can hit you with a curved ball when it comes to plausibility.
It’s good – and thanks goodness, there’s a lot of books dealing with this shadier, pulpier side of history.
I should know – I wrote one.
Related articles
- Guest Blog: The Need for Pulp Literature (barryreese.net)
- Comic Books and Genre Freedom (ianeller.com)
- Saving Pulp Fiction (blogs.loc.gov)
Today’s Post, Tomorrow!
Yes yes, I know.
The board on the right says you get a text post on Wednesdays.
It’s Wednesday, so where’s the post?
Well, the main feature has been moved – for extraordinary reasons – forward twenty-four hours.
Correct, you’ll read today’s post tomorrow.
This is because tomorrow post is special – it’s the review of a movie that does not exist.
And for reasons long to explain, it goes online on the third of October.
But I’d hate it should you feel shortcharged or something, so I promise a short post in a few hours, ok?
See you later.
The rules
I’m stealing a page (three actually, but only the headers) from Guy Kawasaki’s “What the Plus!” to post a short list of good practices and “rules” to increase trustworthiness online.
I’m not so hot about rules – you have to have some, you have to be smart enough to know when to bend or ignore them.
But you need standards, too.
I’ve tried to stick to many of these instinctively – they are not that different from what my mother taught me.
But I’ll repost them here, because they are useful in many situations – from blogging to self-publishing, to interacting with other human beings.
Here they come.
- Show up
- Make the community better
- Don’t be an orifice
- Keep it clean
- Trust others first
- Disclose your interests
- Gain knowledge and competence
- Bake a bigger pie
- Resist bad means
That’s it.
It works.
Related articles
- The 5 rules of Blogging (1hw.in)
- 10 Rules of Life (successinindustrry.wordpress.com)
Where the hell was Biggles?
“So, where the hell was Biggles when you needed him last Saturday?”
Cover of “Biggles of 266” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Biggles was mentioned, last Saturday, on a discussion group devoted to pulp adventure, among other things.
While American classic pulp heroes are getting some attention right now, there’s this feeling their British counterparts are somewhat neglected.
Sure, there are fine reprints (and new stories) about Sexton Blake, but what of Biggles and Bulldog Drummond?
As luck would have it, I’ve a Biggles novel right here on my desk – a twenty-odd years old paperback edition of The Camels are Coming I bought second-hand for 1 eurocent.
So, why not write a small post about Biggles*?
Written by a veteran of the First World War, W.E. Johns, the Biggles novels follow the adventures of James “Biggles” Bigglesworth – an ace pilot that, starting as a fighter pilot in WWI, basically goes through most of the conflicts of the first half of the 20th century… flying most of the available planes in the catalog. Continue reading
In the Jazz Age…
A great montage of sequences shot in China and the Far East in the 1920s, set to some suggestive and atmospheric jazz music.
A treat from the YouTube collection of marvels by Aaron1912.
Enjoy!
Related articles
- Jazz Consciousness 🙂 (anumel6.wordpress.com)
- The Jazz Age The 1920s (bendersc.wordpress.com)
- “Tweet Me!” Jazz in the Digital Age (swissvibes.org)
Firing Up “Ignition”
I’m posting a short ad, here.
My friend Marco Siena is crowdfunding the English version of his novel Ignition (in Italian, Ignizione) – the first installment of a quirky, highly entertaining steampunkish trilogy.
Marco plans to get enough to hire a professional translator and other help, then hit the English-language market full tilt.
He already has a very good story, and a great cover (here’s a detail):
The novel is well worthy of the effort – and it would be a nice opportunity for international readers, to learn about a different approach to imaginative fiction.
So, take a look at the Indiegogo page, and if you feel like, do your part.
Karavansara 