It was a long time before reading could become an inexpensive form of entertainment for the masses, before movies, TV, and even affordable theater. However, after it did, it would reach across the long centuries to influence modern entertainment culture, perhaps as no other form of artistic human expression ever has. Pulp fiction tales and their writers would eventually beget radio shows, which subsequently would lead to television fare, and finally the movies of the modern era. The best example of this ‘literary path’ is the Star Trek series, which seemed to emerge whole cloth out of nothingness, but actually developed from pulp writers’ pens to radio dramas (like X Minus One) straight to TV, almost unchanged, and from there to modern cinema. First, humanity had to overcome some considerable obstacles before the common citizenry of any society could easily afford to purchase a book, much less actually read one. Presented in no particular order, societies had to conquer:
The gap between the highest and the lowest, from the prince to the uneducated laborer and whoever else desired access to reading materials.
They had to reduce their population numbers so that a larger swath of society could afford to make more than a mere subsistence wage, resulting in a degree of disposable cash and leisure time, which would eventually allow for such ‘non-productive’ past-times as reading.
They also had to reduce illiteracy across their societies, making an education a universal human right.
Finally, they had to create a way to mass-produce reading material cheaply and economically, and, through various stages of industrialization and mechanization, make it possible to provide that reading material at a price low enough for the common reading public to afford.
This entire process was slow in coming, with hundreds of generations living and dying without being able to practice the peculiarly human ability of reading and comprehending the printed word.
Eventually, agriculturally based societies would develop the ability to mass produce and store goods and provide it on a level that would allow for a bit more leisurely time at least among the educated, and those activities would include reading, albeit still technologically limited to being small in scale, and very expensive. Usually the material was hand-copied and lavishly illustrated, being of both secular and sacred materials, volumes much too expensive and precious for peasant farmers or indentured servants, but perhaps still available at higher institutions of learning such as early universities, and, of course, monasteries. At one point, and for a long time afterwards, the economies of creating books and reading them were still far beyond the reach of the public.
And yet, the preservation of those society’s cultural (or mythological) histories would indirectly contribute to an environment which would eventually foster reading as an activity that was used for more than just ‘formal’ religious or secular subjects. Reading as a pastime would eventually make its way into the hands of the public at large, no matter what their status.
In the meantime, many ancient cultures developed rich and fantastic mythologies, beliefs and histories as they grew, became powerful, and vanished, especially in the cradles of civilization along the Mediterranean Basin, India, Africa, China, and the islands of Japan, and all across Europe and Asia. Histories begat myths, which became fables, which then morphed into rich sources for fantastic tales and fables for children and adults alike, with each culture’s values and social mores perfectly mirrored, (albeit fantastically) in the tales that they told, passed on, and codified. In this way, a society’s reading fare becomes a microcosm of its cultural identity, which *could* be preserved and resurrected at will, long after those societies are gone or completely absorbed or transformed into something else.
Yet not all cultures had an equivalent of the type of fiction later found in penny dreadfuls or the pulps. For example, the ancient Romans had their poetry and tales of their borrowed gods, while Greeks had their great sagas (like the Trojan War) and their gods. The ancient Chinese had their fairy tales, fables, native philosophies, and several Middle Eastern cultures had their tales of lovers (such as Antar and Abla) their religion-based writings, and stories about djinns and other evil spirits and the mischief they caused. One of the most well known, if not best, examples of this type of literature would be the collection of fantastic stories known as ‘The Thousand & One Nights’.
While these societies worked out their various issues across many generations, their histories, beliefs, legends and politics were already creating a rich backlog of written and oral traditions, materials that would indirectly preserve every aspect of those cultures. This trend would eventually result in the volatile mix of toxic imperialism, sexism, and racism, in the classic pulp fiction era (1882 until perhaps the late 1950s or early 1960s), which, by no coincidence, roughly coincided with both the Victorian Era (1837–1900), and the American Civil War (1861–1865). The genre of classic pulp fiction, although it remained popular beyond the aforementioned historical periods, was shaped and codified during those eras. This form of literature arose during a time of intense racial prejudice, colonialism, and subjugation of peoples of color.
It was born out of the demands of newly industrialized nations that sought cheap commodities and raw materials to fuel their capitalist economies. During these historical periods, any nation or peoples who were not British or American were subject to a myriad of indignities, including slavery and exploitation of non-Europeans, bigotry and misogyny against women, and the merciless subjugation of their own children who were exploited as cheap or free labor. The victims of this system included orphans and children from families with debts they could not repay, such as in the many similarly themed tales of Charles Dickens. These predatory behaviors were all hallmarks of those historical periods, as their societies either struggled with those issues or shamelessly engaged in them.
‘Modern’ pulp fiction was, of course, part of an evolutionary process of the development of popular reading material for entertainment only, as opposed to scholarly or religion-based. One could easily identify penny dreadfuls as one of the very first iterations of what would eventually develop into pulp fiction. ‘Dreadfuls’ were affordable, typically priced at a penny or halfpenny, and produced inexpensively on low-quality, pulpy paper similar to later pulp fiction. The content and style of writing were often sensationalistic and tacky. Similar to tabloid newspapers and pulp fiction, publishers of penny dreadfuls also used sensational artwork and attention-grabbing titles to entice readers with tales of terror, scandal, crime, or infamous personalities. During the time of industrialization, the ability to create and distribute penny dreadfuls in large quantities became possible.
These books quickly gained popularity with a new audience who had extra income and leisure time and were looking for cheap and sensational entertainment that they could easily carry around with them. Another byproduct of the age, capitalism, made it possible for the product to become widespread across the period’s vast English-speaking societies. During the era of penny dreadfuls, the lion’s share of the reading public, similar to later pulp fiction, comprised white native British males who were mostly lower middle-class and had specific spending and reading preferences.
Therefore, these exciting stories were made to suit the interests of this group of mostly men who enjoyed reading them. Adventures were based on the existing social issues of the time, and the then current narrative outlook on a world in which Britannia ruled the waves. ‘The sun never set on the British Empire’, nor its firmly held idea that anyone who wasn’t native British (or white, or male) was seen as a less than human; barbaric heathens in need of religious conversion and outright conquering (or ‘colonizing’) to save their damned non-English souls.
During the times of the slave trade and colonization, racism was rampant in both the United States and the United Kingdom. This led to the exploitation of non-European nations, which created a culture of exclusionary dogma. The sensationalistic stories perpetuated by this culture of dehumanization found its way into penny dreadfuls and other cheap forms of literature. These toxic ideologies eventually led to institutionalized discrimination and bigotry during the classic pulp era.
However, it should be noted that not all literature from this era could be categorized as cheap, sensationalistic, racist, or sexist pulp fiction. Many exceptional authors of the time, though they may have been serialized, never appeared in pulp magazines. Some authors even published their own works, distancing themselves from the less than ideal reputation of the pulps. For example, writers such as Charles Dickens, The Bronte Sisters, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, William Blake, John Keats and Samuel Clemens, who were well-known as Mark Twain, just to name a few. (Still, and not surprisingly, it should be noted that Arthur Conan Doyle was not knighted for creating Sherlock Holmes, but for writing a pamphlet that justified British atrocities during the most ‘Victorian’ conflict of that era, the Boer War.)
Some wrote about women’s issues and their place in the highly stratified society of the Victorians (the Bronte Sisters). Others wrote about extreme poverty, the condition of the poor and debtors prison and children’s issues (most famously by Charles Dickens). Some writers of the era were political commentators, who used sarcasm to criticize the existing norms, such as H. L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce. Other writers, like Mark Twain, wrote about race, politics, religion, and more ‘forward thinking’ thoughts on those issues. On the other hand, there were also writers of the era who engaged with the then popular topics of the spirit world and religion in their work and personal lives, such as William Blake and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Most of these authors were not pulp writers directly, although one can assume that their works may have appeared as reprints in those pages, with or without their permission. It is worth mentioning that the primary distinction between the serialized pulp fiction of the time and the serialized works of established authors of the era, such as Dickens, was not solely based on content. Although the content was a contributing factor, the difference lay in the material on which the literature was printed (inexpensive pulp), the intended audience, and the sensational, often macabre or paranormal nature of the subject matter that earned it its label and reputation. The era’s fascination with the spirit world, séances, ghosts, and communicating with the departed most definitely would have made its way into the pages of penny dreadfuls because of its sensationalistic nature.
The difference between the fare featured in penny dreadfuls and more respectable literature of the time can easily be summarized by comparing two characters, Spring-Heeled Jack (1837), and Oliver Twist (1838), both which would have been avidly read during the same time period during the Victorian Era. Both were serialized, both were very well received, lurid in the details of the stories they told, and held their respective audiences captive. The former, Spring-Heeled Jack, was a collection of stories about a supernatural character from English folklore that purportedly terrorized London and Scotland during the reign of Queen Victoria. The stories were nothing more than urban myth, cheaply printed on the coarsest (‘pulp’) paper, highly sensationalized, and sold for one penny and often re-sold or re-circulated after the initial purchase, sometimes for as little as half a penny. Spring-heeled Jack can best be described as a ‘leaping, vampire-like Jack-the-Ripper character that would spring out suddenly, sometimes leaping great distances, and catching his victims by surprise.
Oliver Twist, on the other hand, was written by Charles Dickens, who is well known as perhaps the greatest English writers since Shakespeare. Perhaps during Dickens’ lifetime, his portrayal of poverty, debt, and the abuse of child laborers was just as shocking and sensationalistic as any story about Spring-Heeled Jack, if not more so, yet with a ‘nobler’ purpose. Other, more subtle differences disassociated the two types of literature. Charles Dickens’ novels were typically published in 32-page installments by reputable publishing houses and were priced at about one shilling per installment. They were primarily aimed at a different segment of the reading public compared to the penny dreadfuls. However, it should be noted that readers of penny dreadfuls might have also picked up a Dickens story while perusing reading materials.
Penny and halfpenny dreadfuls aimed pretty low for their target audience, and were typically not handled by the respected printing houses, while authors like Dickens and his intellectual contemporaries usually aimed higher. It is that lower end of the literary spectrum that in time would come to reflect and even revel in the worst aspects of the Victorian Era’s imperialist views on the social ills of the day, instead of denouncing them, as Dickens had.
That period also created for its citizens a mindset and a cultural zeitgeist of privileged elitism. The notion of a divine right and the widespread utilization of military might to exploit the natural resources of other nations fueled the belief in the enduring dominance of the British Empire, its related territories, subservient client states, and the overall Commonwealth. However, the eventual decline of the Empire served as a poignant reminder of the precariousness of such power dynamics. By the time of Victoria’s passing, the age and the empire named for her had already become the doddering, stumbling ‘Dowager Empress’ of the new Industrial powers, including and especially the United States.
Yet the culture of the Victorian Era had engulfed the world, at least its most powerful nations. It’s ‘cultural zeitgeist’; the empire’s subconscious notion of its own divine right to occupy a position at the apex of nations, and the willingness to use that position to pillage the rest of the world of its peoples, their labor, their natural and historic resources, their women, and children, all in the name of queen and country. This mentality eventually permeated the culture of the British Empire and even found expression in its artistic creations, including the written word. The “Victorian Zeitgeist” had a significant impact across the Western world, spurring a competition among these powers to quickly conquer, exploit, and profit from the underdeveloped and “undiscovered” nations of the so-called “Third World”.
In the process of that race to impose their will on the world, the 19th century saw an unprecedented period of warfare, expansion and colonialism in India, Africa, China, Japan, and all the nations in between, in the name of Western greed, land-grabbing and forced trading, as in Admiral Perry’s invasion of Japan with his infamous ‘black ships’. This land grab was among not only the European cousin-nations but also the U.S. and its foreign interests in Mexico, Cuba, South and Central America. The inhabitants of these nations were frequently regarded as immoral, uncivilized, and requiring “rescue” from their own customs and convictions. They also suffered the loss of their natural resources, workforce, women, and occasionally, their children because of the exploitative practices of the foreign powers. During the Victorian era, many nations that were previously revered as the birthplaces of civilization became targets of wholesale exploitation and sexual violence. They were now classified as “recently revealed countries” that could be capitalized on for their resources.
Of course, this European view of the world seeped into all areas of everyday life, politics, (then) current thought, and the arts, including literature, and perhaps particularly so in hundreds and hundreds of pages of cheap, easily accessible, sensationalistic editions of pulp literature, on both sides of the Atlantic. The Victorian era gained its name because of the pervasive influence of its culture, which persisted even during America’s tumultuous Civil War. Its influence was widespread across Western society, spanning a variety of domains such as fashion, architecture, music, politics, and literature.
America was not an innocent bystander, but a willing participant in the crimes of the era, including colonialism, expansionism, and the manipulation of other nations’ governments and policies to serve its own expansionist ends, as seen in the meddling in Mexico, Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines. Besides the myriad crimes against dark-skinned humanity before, during, and after the Civil War, American policies upheld the Victorian belief of ‘right of destiny’ to use whatever means necessary to extend its territories, wealth, and power. The pervasive influence of nationalistic racism on both sides of the Atlantic permeated popular literature, becoming the very foundation of the “Victorian narrative” an ideal that served as the bedrock of all pulp fiction during that era, and which continues to inspire contemporary works even today.
This is where the foundation of pulp fiction was laid, shaped by the stories of daring exploits and adventures often inspired by the real-life experiences of notable 19th-century explorers, including Sir Ernest Shackleton, Richard F. Burton, Admiral Robert Peary, and journalist Henry Morton Stanley, renowned for his expedition into ‘darkest Africa’ to find the missing missionary David Livingstone. However, amidst these tales of rugged masculinity, there is a unique figure in the person of Nellie Bly, a female journalist who bravely ventured into the unknown and broke gender barriers.
The Ten Commandments of Pulp Fiction
Most fiction of the pulp era falls into a few broad sub-genres and is composed of the same handful of plots, themes, memes, and story lines. These ingredients reflect the political, economical, and empiric views and practices of the day, as well as the general mindset of the populace, as defined by overriding cultural and worldviews of the time. The significance of the ‘Victorian narrative’ in the genre of pulp fiction is such that it has endured to the present day, providing a reliable blueprint for crafting such stories, and to some extent, other forms of fiction as well. The aforementioned narrative has developed into an almost foolproof formula for constructing pulp fiction stories from their fundamental components. Adhering to the guideline of Victorian policies enacted on the world stage during the height of the era, the following summary can accurately describe literally dozens of well-known pulp fiction tales:
An outsider, typically a white European male, travels to a foreign land inhabited by an exotic, yet childlike and dependent race, which supposedly requires his guidance.
Initially ostracized, the protagonist gradually assimilates into the alien society.
Despite being a newcomer, he swiftly gains proficiency in their language, culture, and even fighting techniques. He gains the trust of their fiercest warrior, triumphs over their worst enemy, and rises to a leadership position, even above the natives.
Sometimes, he manipulates two different factions of the alien race against each other in order to establish his authority and select the winners and losers.
The natives realize they cannot govern themselves or survive without the protagonist, who threatens to leave, take their most attractive female as a prize, or both, since she naturally chooses him as a mate over all other men in the tribe.
The protagonist seduces the aforementioned nubile female, who spurns her own kinsman to follow him. She either accompanies him or helps to elevate him to a position of power over her people.
The once-outcast protagonist, now a leader of the tribe, instructs the natives on the supposed errors of their ways in warfare, religion, customs, politics, and other beliefs, only after mastering those skills better than the locals.
Having fully assimilated into the culture, the ‘hero’ sometimes returns to his homeland, where he views his own people as savage, backward, and corrupted, and sees himself as morally superior. He may long to return to his adopted people.
Occasionally, his evil compatriots follow him back and launch an aggressive attack against his newfound peoples, only suffer defeat at the hands of the protagonist and his newfound allies.
Sometimes the protagonist returns to his own country with great wealth obtained through plundering the locals of all their gold and wealth. He is regarded as a wise eccentric who holds ancient secrets, which he may use to combat crime in his own society, sometimes with a fedora, and sometimes with a mask and stylish tights.
The hero must confront and battle an ‘Eldritch Horror’ so terrifying it is beyond his comprehension, presumably because such Otherworldly Entities are not Victorian/European.
Each variation of ‘the narrative’ mentioned above could be an accurate representation of Victorian-era perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic. These views encompassed colonialist and capitalist policies, as well as racist ideologies, which could apply to Western European and American policies throughout the history of European dominance in the world.
The following list comprises renowned authors and their literary works that effectively adhered to one or more of the aforementioned outlines. These stories and authors continue to captivate audiences today through various mediums, such as movies, TV shows, and comic books. Popular examples include the Star Trek franchise, Dances with Wolves, the Indiana Jones movies, various adaptations of Batman, and the notably blatant and infamous Avatar, possibly the most clichéd of the lot.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan of the Apes, A Princess of Mars)
Robert E. Howard (Conan The Barbarian),
Isaac Asimov (The Foundation Series, I Robot)
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles)
Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe novels)
Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, a.k.a. Total Recall)
Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man)
L. Ron Hubbard (Battlefield Earth)
Harold Lamb (Asian/Middle Eastern Historical Fiction)
H. P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu Mythos)
Clark Ashton Smith (Strange Tales, Astounding Stories)
Jack Vance (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fantasy)
Keith Laumer (Science Fiction, including his Bolo Series)
Walter B. Gibson (The Shadow)
Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers, Stranger In a Strange Land)
Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser)
Robert W. Chambers (The King In Yellow)
L. E. B.’s biography is pure fantasy, just as each of his intros to the stories are also part of a fabricated non-reality. While such a person could have existed, he, in actuality, did not, simply because there were no well-known published authors of color of this specific type of heroic/horror fiction during the classic pulp era, which ended in the late 1950s. While there were certainly authors of color of other types of popular fiction, such as gritty crime dramas, stories based on and within the word of the black struggle, there were precious few, if any stories or authors that fit specifically into the genre that would produce a Conan, a Tarzan, or a Princess of Mars. Such flights of fancy were the domain and the privilege of individuals who did not have to suffer of the burdens of discrimination, degradation, or the daily struggle for the simple freedoms that would allow one to divert one’s efforts away from that struggle and towards the world of fantasy. The horrors of day-to-day existence were quite terrifying enough, and so that is what most black authors of the era concentrated on and wrote about.
Unsurprisingly, the number of female writers in the pulp fiction industry was considerably low. However, women played a role in other areas of pulp production, women such as editors (e.g., Daisy Bacon and Dorothy McIlwraith) and illustrators (e.g., Gloria Stoll Karn and Margaret Brundage). Simply put, there were few opportunities for women to write their own stories for the pulps, unless they were well connected, or married to a published male pulp fiction writer. It is noteworthy that a few strong female characters were present in the pulp fiction novels, who defied the traditional portrayal of women as weak, devious, or over-sexualized vixens.
These characters include Madame Madcap, created by Johnston McCulley, Carrie Cashin by Theodore Tinsley, Koyala by John Charles Beecham, and Pat Savage, cousin of the more famous Doc Savage. Among the female authors who contributed to the genre, Catherine Lucille Moore, whose was wife of Henry Kuttner, is particularly well known. Another noteworthy author was Mary Elizabeth Counselman, who wrote for Weird Tales magazine, and an honorable mention must go to D. C. Fontana of Star Trek fame, who wrote pulp-style fiction stories for that series, as well as Logan’s Run, and The Fantastic Journey, along with several other well-known movies and TV shows.
There did not seem to be much room in the genre for African American authors or women. This does not include the writers of ‘modern’ pulp fiction of the 70s, such as Donald Goines, creator of many hard-edged urban stories centered on urban African American fiction of that decade.
It is entirely possible that a writer with a name like ‘Louis Ellenwood Barlowe’ existed, and who was interested in writing African American-based pulp fiction of the action and adventure sub-genre. However, it is likely that such an author would have faced significant barriers to publishing and finding an audience. Despite the potential talent and desire of such a writer or writers, the publishing industry and readership at the time were not readily open to works by African American authors. Persons of color simply may not have had the inclination to spend their time or money on such literature, when their real lives were ‘adventurous’ enough.
It would have been a bold move for any publishing house to release such literature during a time a pervasive racial hierarchy existed that limited the marketability of such content to a broad audience. The barriers for a writer like Louis Ellenwood Barlowe to enter the field and find a publisher and readership would have been formidable indeed. While there were certainly black authors aplenty during this long period, almost none of them would have been making a decent living publishing ‘black’ pulp fiction of this type.
The pulp fiction genre, similar to the movies and TV shows it influenced portrayed non-European characters as villainous, indolent, shiftless, backward, heathenish, or child-like. This stereotypical perception was perpetuated by the same media that inspired it, a reflection of the difficult times that existed. However, how much more colorful, exciting, adventurous, and exotic would the stories have been if they had incorporated perspectives beyond the European one?
Encompassing additional cultures, histories, traditions, myths, and folklore in a more favorable light would have created a diverse and intricate tapestry that could still feature villainy, heroism, and intrigue without relying solely on a European savior and portraying everyone else as evil, childlike, or savage. Regrettably, the arts and literature of any period typically reflect only the perspectives of those creating them, just as history is commonly written by the victors or the dominant class.
