==== ====
From your favorite fictional character, Eric Malteca, at www.grosslyoverwritten.com
www.grosslyoverwritten.com
==== ====
Today's generation of readers may not realize that some of there favorite rollicking, sinister, dark,
courageous or heroic classic stories were written during the pulp fiction era of the early 1900s up
to the 1950s.
The pulps literally got its name from the cheap wood pulp paper they were printed on to keep
costs down so that people in the depressed economy from the World War II could afford cheap
entertainment. It was hugely successful and had a good fifty year run of some of the best stories
we've had to date.
What is interesting about reading some of these great old classics is that you can fully visualize
and experience the culture as it was back then. Before cars we had horse drawn carriages,
language of today is quite different from fifty to one hundred years ago and the role of men and
women have changed greatly over this time period.
When you read a pulp fiction story you often have the scenario of black and white, such as good
against evil, the black hat being the bad guy and the white hat the good guy. It was a no holds bar
style of writing that was a new experience for the average reader. It was also a time when new
genres of writing appeared which electrified readers and caused somewhat of an addiction to
particular characters and stories. Hard boiled detective stories hit the magazine stands as well as
macabre pulps, fantasy and science fiction, weird menace, spicy pulps, horror and dark fantasy,
westerns, mystery and romance and many other sub-genres. It was also the birth of the super
hero which we seem to have an obsession with. Many of the super heroes we see in movies are
based on characters created by pulp fiction writers such as super man, batman, the invisible man
etc. Today's novels tend to lean more to small nuances that thread through a story as apposed to
the pulps hard knocking fast talking pulps.
Many of pulp fictions heroic characters were flawed with criminal intent and immoral behavior but
despite that, we find ourselves drawn into their endearing qualities and route for their eventual
success. Case in point: the Sherlock Holmes character (from the early books and movies) was a
cocaine addict and had no qualms about lying to police if he felt it would bring him closer to solving
a case he was working on but despite his eccentricities, we still cheer when he gets his man!
Authors with an especially active imagination, still write for the most part from observation and
experience, especially writers who were world travelers who also studied the myths and cultures of
different parts of the globe. Some of the greats got their start in writing pulp fiction stories such as
Edgar Rice Burroughs with his "Tarzan Series", Isaac Asimov's "Foundation Series", Zane Grey's
"Max Brand" & "The Lone Ranger", Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" and L. Ron
Hubbard's "The Carnival of death". The Carnival of Death is an interesting example of a pulp story
because it brought to readers a fantasy story with a touch of the mysterious voodoo head hunter
tales that few were familiar with and was the kind of story that riveted the reader to their seats.
Pulp fiction saturated the public with such explosive new material that it was a renaissance of sorts
in its own right and belongs in the history books as an era of greatest fiction books of all genres
that to this day still has an influence in today's pop culture!
Lawrence Hail is a huge fan of pulp fiction stories and loves to experience them in all formats from
print to audiobooks to video and movie. Click here for a list of audiobooks at:
http://www.goldenagestories.com/audiobooks
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lawrence_Hail
==== ====
From your favorite fictional character, Eric Malteca, at www.grosslyoverwritten.com
www.grosslyoverwritten.com
==== ====