Pulp magazine

Pulp magazines, often called simply "pulps", were cheap, often sensationalistic and/or exploitative text fiction magazines widely published in the 1930s - 1950s. The first "pulp" is considered to be Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy of 1893. Most of the few pulps still thriving today are science fiction or mystery magazines. The name comes from the cheap woodpulp paper on which they were printed. Pulps were the successor to the "penny dreadfuls" of the nineteenth century.

Pulp magazines can be categorized into the following genres:

• Detectiv/Mystery Romance
• Science Fiction
• True Crime
• Western
• Character (the precursor to the superhero fantasy genre)

Popular regular pulp fiction characters included:

• The Avenger
• Biggles
• G-8
• Doc Savage
• Sexton Blake
• The Shadow
• The Spider
• Tarzan
• Zorro

Many well-known authors wrote for the pulps at one time or another. Note that many people would make a distinction between an author who wrote for the pulps but later went on to transcend the limitations of the genre, and a "pulp author", who did not.

Well-known authors who wrote for the pulps include:

• Poul Anderson
• Isaac Asimov
• Robert Bloch
• Ray Bradbury
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Raymond Chandler
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Philip K. Dick
• Erle Stanley Gardner
• Robert Heinlein
• Frank Herbert
• Robert E. Howard
• H. P. Lovecraft
• Johnston McCulley
• Clark Ashton Smith
• Seabury Quinn

Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialized in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Amazing Stories and Black Mask.

The format eventually declined with rising paper costs, competition from comic books, television and the paperback novel.

The genre also gave name to the movie Pulp Fiction.