From August 1 – 4, PulpFest will be returning to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, PA.
For over 50 years, PulpFest has celebrated mystery, adventure, science fiction, and other popular fiction. The pulp magazines of the early twentieth century — cheaply-priced all-fiction magazines printed on pulpwood paper — were the vessel where the hardboiled detective, science fiction, and sword and sorcery genres developed and flourished. The pulps gave us Buck Rogers, Conan the Barbarian, Cthulhu, Doc Savage, Hopalong Cassidy, John Carter of Mars, Sam Spade, The Shadow, Tarzan, Zorro, and many other pop culture icons.
At PulpFest 2024, we’ll be celebrating “Spice, Spies, Shaw, and More.”
We’ll be saluting the 90th anniversary of the “Spicy” pulps — magazines that combined such popular genre fiction as detective, adventure, and western fiction with a small dash of sex. The earliest ones were published by the company that would later introduce Superman, Batman, and other early superheroes to the American public.
2024 is also the 90th anniversary of the popular spy pulps, Operator #5 and Secret Agent X. Our convention will salute these All-American heroes with a presentation on the magazines themselves, along with an interview with the granddaughter of one of the leading writers of early espionage fiction, Frederick C. Davis.
We’ll also salute the 150th birthday of Joseph T. Shaw, the editor of Black Mask magazine, the pulp where hardboiled detective fiction was introduced and evolved. Shaw was the editor of the magazine when Dashiell Hammett introduced his detective, Sam Spade, to the American public. He also introduced readers to Raymond Chandler, the author of The Big Sleep and other classics of detective fiction. We’ll celebrate the editor’s birth with presentations on Black Mask as well as an interview with the son of one of the leading writers of hardboiled detective fiction during the 1940s, Peter Paige.
Finally, 2024 is also the centennial of the first book publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, the story of a land where dinosaurs survived well into the 20th century. Perhaps they’re still around in the 21st century. We’ll have a presentation about dinosaurs in the pulps featuring award-winning artist Mark Schultz and more at PulpFest 2024.
We’ll have afternoon and evening panels and presentations on these subjects and more at this year’s PulpFest. Our presenters are writers, editors, and other creators with extensive knowledge about the pulps and popular culture.
PulpFest 2024 will also host an expansive dealers’ room packed with pulp magazines and related materials, vintage paperbacks, digests, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, contemporary genre fiction, first-edition hardcovers, series books, dime novels, original art, Big Little Books, Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age comic books, old-time-radio shows, gaming materials, and film serials, B-movies and related collectibles, and more!
On Saturday evening, August 3, the convention will hold a substantial auction featuring more than 150 lots of pop culture material.
To learn more about PulpFest 2024, please visit the convention’s homepage at pulpfest.com. You can also learn about PulpFest on its Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, and its YouTube Channel.
For more about PulpFest:
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