Pulp magazines – periodicals published on paper so poor that pulp debris in the form of wood chips was actually present on many of the pages – had their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. During those years, they were the most popular form of portable entertainment available. People lined up every month at the newspaper kiosks to get the new editions of their favorite magazines featuring over-the-top heroes like Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Spider, G-8 And His Battle Aces, and others.

The pulp format ran the gamut of genres. The magazines featured adventure, crime, private eyes, romance, mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. They even specialized with tales of boxing, aerial combat, and sea stories.

Those old pulp tales saw the rise of several authors that became literary lions: Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales started in them, Dashiell Hammett established private eye characters that would later become Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, Raymond Chandler cobbled his first Philip Marlowe novel The Big Sleep from stories he’d sold to Black Mask Magazine, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury got their starts in those pages.

There was nothing like the pulps. But after World War II, when guys came back from war after seeing how harsh the world could truly be, they didn’t want heroes that were squeaky clean. They wanted tales about things that showed the darkness they’d discovered. As the paperback originals (like Mickey Spillane’s novels about two-fisted P. I. Mike Hammer) started coming out, the pulps gradually died till only a handful of science fiction magazines were left.

I grew up reading the paperback reprints of Doc Savage and The Shadow. I loved those stories. Short, compact, tightly written, filled with death, disaster, mayhem, and action, they filled my mind with endless adventure. You just can’t find stuff like that any more.

However, a new publishing venture, Astonishing Adventures Magazine is trying to bring those halcyon days back to old fans as well as new aficionados of this brand of fiction. They’ve published their first magazine as a PDF that they’re giving away for free on their website (www.astonishingadventuresmagazine.blog-city.com) and it’s jam-packed with stories that usually aren’t more than 3500 words long.

The issue features an interview with writer Joe R. Lansdale, whose own novella, “Bubba Ho-Tep” inspired a cult classic film of the same name. And that story could have been spun from the same fabric as so many of the stories during the pulp era. Just to prove that the practitioners of this kind of writing is still out there.

Another interview features Michael Wm. Kaluta, the artist who brought The Shadow to life in the DC comics run of the 1970s that comics fans remember so well.

There are additional features involving a discussion of Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola’s new book, Baltimore and Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of The Shadow in the movie.

And then there are the stories. Some of them are good, and some of them are thin and violent and off-beat. But that was how it was in the pulps. The buyer picked up a magazine and turned the pages to see what the writers delivered.

And did I mention that this one is FREE!?

The editors, John Donald Carlucci and Timothy D. Gallagher, even roll out submissions guidelines for any would-be pulp writers lurking out there. Entertainment and the possibility of having a pulp story you’ve written accepted? Be still my beating heart. They also offer the caveat that they’re partial to stories featuring monkeys.

Hmmm…

This is the kind of thing I’ve been waiting my whole life to write. So I’m going to send them a story or two at some point. In the meantime, when was the last time someone gave you something for free?

Go to the website and get your free copy. Dig in to see what treasures of story or art that you find. And be sure to spread the news to anybody you think might like this kind of material. There’s just not enough of it left in the world.

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I’m a sucker for superheroes.  I always have been, and I always will be.  I grew up in the early 1960s and watched all the greats of what has become known as the Silver Age of comics come onto the scene.  I had the first issues of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man’s appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, the first issues of the Hulk and the Avengers.  I had ‘em all.

(And if I could have hung onto them, I could be putting my kids through college easily now.  Nah.  I’d have kept the comics.)

When Batman came on television in 1964, I was hooked.  I always swiped one of my mom’s towels and hung out in the backyard looking for evildoers.  I imagined them everywhere.

Now I’m glad I have an eight-year-old son who’s as fond of comics heroes as I am.  We’ve watched all the cartoon incarnations of Batman, Superman, and the Teen Titans.  We’re looking forward to the Legion of Superheroes.  Last year when Sky High came out in theaters, we were there the opening night.  Likewise for The Incredibles.

So when Shane Berryhill put out his new book, Chance Fortune and the Outlaws, the first in what is definitely going to be a series, I knew I had to get it and read it.  I did, and it was everything Sky High was, with the homage to all the comics greats I’d grown up with.

In Chance Fortune and the Outlaws, Josh Blevins had wanted to be a superhero all his life. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have superhero parents he could inherit his powers from, wasn’t the offspring of a god, hadn’t fallen into a vat of strange chemicals, hadn’t been born a mutant, hadn’t found a mystical object that gave him incredible powers, etc.

But what he had (like Batman, my personal favorite) was the heart and desire to become a hero. In the opening chapter in the book, Josh tracks down Captain Fearless, an old adventurer from the golden age of heroes, who hadn’t had any superpowers either and gets the good captain to train him.

Even with all that training, Josh’s heart is broken when he isn’t admitted into superhero school. Ultimately, with the aid of Captain Fearless, Josh changes his name to Chance Fortune and claims his superpower is BEING EXTRA LUCKY and gets into the school.

While in his classes, he meets Space Cadet and Shocker, then later gets teamed with Psy-Chick, Gothika, Iron Maiden and Private Justice (who have mutant technology powers, mental powers, magic powers, is a goddess, and can stretch like a rubberband).

But just getting through the day as an average person masquerading as someone with superpowers isn’t hard enough.  No.  His life has to become even more complicated.  Chance Fortune also runs afoul of Superion and the Invincibles, the school’s toughest team to beat.Josh – or, rather, Chance – has to figure out how to bring his team together and deal with school at the same time.  Things are made even more difficult because Iron Maiden is the daughter of a goddess and is assigned to team leader, a spot Chance is more suited for.

The book is an homage to every superhero in comics. The school buildings are named after giants in the field: (Stan) Lee, (Jack) Kirby, (Todd) McFarlane and others. Every archetypal superhero in the known comics world is revealed within the pages of fast-paced action and snappy dialogue.  Chance Fortune comes across as a real character and the technology backing the world is fun.

Comics fans will readily make comparisons to the X-Men’s Danger Room as the school tests the teams.  But it’s that familiarity that really brings the book home.  Creating the world in your head is a snap. Readers will no doubt be imagining what would happen if they had superpowers and got to go to the school.

The book is a quick, fun read for the younger crowd, and a trip down nostalgia lane for the older superhero wannabes out in the audience. For those who enjoyed the recent movie, Sky High, Chance Fortune and the Outlaws offers another opportunity to witness a budding superhero in action.  

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I discovered Robert A. Heinlein back in sixth grade.  It was 1969 (which makes me old, I guess).  Luckily for me, the book I found was Rocket Ship Galileo, which – coincidentally – was Heinlein’s first published novel.  That book, as well as most of the author’s, are dated these days, but I still pick them up and read them with that same sense of wonder that sent an eleven-year old reader looking for a bigger world than the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and even Tom Swift, Jr. offered.

Rocket Ship Galileo offered machine-gun toting Nazis on the moon.  That threat had still loomed in the world when Heinlein authored the book, and it wasn’t too far gone from what I remembered. I went on to enjoy Citizen of the Galaxy, Starship Troopers (made into a movie with computer programming that Heinlein would perhaps have never conceived), Between Planets, Red Planet, and a couple dozen others.  I was in heaven.  Heinlein was writing the world I thought I’d be living in by now.

Lately I came across a Heinlein book I hadn’t read:  The Door Into Summer.  I settled in for a treat, a return to a boyhood I remember fondly.  In the book, Dan Davis is an engineer in the futuristic world of 1970 (Heinlein actually wrote this novel in 1957, so he was writing near-future fiction).  After designing a whole line-up of automatons that clean up around the house, Dan goes into business with a friend of his and establishes a company called Hired Girl.  His next big project is Flexible Frank, an automaton that can do all the things humans do.

Unfortunately, Dan and his business partner have a falling-out over a conniving woman named Belle who manages to take lock, stock and barrel everything that’s not tied down.  After an angry confrontation, Dan is injected with a zombie drug and taken down to be put into Cold Sleep, a cryogenic chamber and awakens 30 years later in the year of 2000.

After waking up, Dan finds he loves the world of the future but misses his friends, in particular his cat, Pete, and almost-niece Frederika.  The future holds marvels Dan has never dreamed of, but it also holds a really strange past for him, one that he doesn’t remember and feels certain he never lived through — until he finds out that time travel exists.

According to documents he researches, he evidently invented several other automatons back in 1970.  The problem is that, although Dan had been dreaming them up, he’d never put them to paper.  The patents on the devices are in his name.  He can’t believe what he’s reading and can’t figure out what’s going on – until he finds out that time travel had also been invented by 2000. Armed with his new knowledge, Dan lays siege to the past, going back in an effort to preserve his own life and protect his friends.  And to take care of his cat, Pete.

As always, a Heinlein story — especially from the early years — goes down smooth.  Never a missed note.  I felt like Dan was one of those guys I’ve known all my life or would have no problem meeting.  The discussion of the possibilities of time travel had come up in several stories during the 1950s, but Heinlein’s unraveling of the special problems inherent in being able to do such a thing are fresh and presented in a way everyone can understand.

I liked Dan’s cat, Pete, and was actually upset when I figured out the cat was dead in the past.  The Heinlein philosophy is present on every page, including a scene set on a nude resort (something that Heinlein really put into his fiction in his later years).

One thing that kept jarring me throughout the novel was the fact that Dan was going to build a voice-activated typewriter.  In the year 2000.  But that’s forgiveable.  No one knew how big a change the PC was going to make.  (Take a look at these reviews and the format they’re coming to you on!)  Even though Heinlein was off on his future history and didn’t know how much personal computers were going to change things, his forward thinking in social and economic areas were and are cutting edge.  He also stayed true to the science. The Door Into Summer is a fantastic read for old-time SF readers, but may draw the younger set in as well.  Heinlein stays true to the world as he knew it, and puts us face-to-face with the hero, turning Dan into an old friend almost at once.  That was one of the best things about Heinlein’s early work.

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Science fiction-fantasy is a particular genre that’s hard to pull off.  Both stand alone as genres, so mixing the two is awfully hard to do.  If the delicate balance is upset, nothing works. A few writers – Roger Zelazny (his Amber series), Marion Zimmer Bradley (her Darkover books especially), and Andre Norton (any where she mixed the two genres, but especially her Witch World novels) – pulled off the blending with spectacular success that will stand the test of time and probably go on to become literature others will study.  In some universities, that’s already happened.

A relatively brand-new newcomer – at least to novel writing because he’s written several short stories, Kelly McCullough has delivered a grand debut in WebMage.  The novel effortlessly blends science and magic, especially in the form of his webgoblin, Melchior, who is equal parts sorcery and programming.  Imagine, if you will, a notebook computer that can turn itself into a bipedal creature and keep up with you wherever you go.  Not only that, it can be your best friend, know your every need, and can think when you can’t.  The sarcastic personality is just a small price to pay.

WebMage is Kelly McCullough’s first novel.  His second, also featuring Ravirn and company, comes out next year.  Several of his short stories have been published, and he was one of the Writers of the Future.

The main character, Rivirn is a cutting-edge sorcerer/computer hacker who combines both skills to stay alive after he inadvertently becomes locked in conflict with one of his great-to-the-nth-degree-aunts, Atropos, one of the three Fates from Greek mythology.

As it turns out, all the Greek gods, goddesses and demigods truly exist out in the world. Ravirn is part of the family and possesses both magical ability and incredible strength and healing that set him far beyond anything human.The problem is, although potentially immortal, he can still be killed.

That’s a fact that Atropos plans on using against him after he declines her offer to code a program called Puppeteer, designed to steal away all free will in the world.  Taking away free will, Atropos believes, will lessen chaos in the world. Rivirn signs his own death warrant when he decides to stop his aunt from unleashing the program.

She knows the instant that he turns her down that he’s going to tell his grandmother and other great-aunt.  So Atropos binds Rivirn with a spell. Blocked by the Cassandra spell (no one will believe anything he says, especially against Atropos), Ravirn tries desperately to locate and shut down the magical program known as Puppeteer.  Aided by the few friends he has (including a laptop/demon he created/programmed named Melchior), Ravirn speeds through shadowy side-worlds both magical and cybernetic in nature — usually with fierce foes nipping at his heels.

The action kept me reading way past my bedtime.  Every time I thought I had Rivirn safely tucked away for the night, something else would happen and I’d end up reading a few more pages.  I finished the book before I’d known it, completely pulled into the story. Gripping and imaginative, rooted carefully in the real world, WebMage is an exciting chase novel filled with techno jargon the cyber-crowd will enjoy as well as Greek mythology for the fantasy enthusiasts.  The first-person narrative rings especially true and drives the tale. Dialogue between Ravirn and Melchior is sharp and cutting, and sounds like two old friends who constantly pick at each other.  The add-on features to the real world are consistent (always a plus in fantasy) and well thought-out.  Thankfully a second book is already on the way and will be out sometime next year.Intentional or not, WebMage reminded me most of Roger Zelazny’s Princes of Amber books about Corwin.  I loved those books when I was growing up, and it’s nice to find someone who can deliver that same sort of magic and characterization.  I think McCullough and Raven (as the character becomes known) are in for a nice long run.  After all, he’s got a really big, really powerful immortal family, and vengeance lasts forever.