Customer Reviews

Retro Pulp Tales

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Edited by Joe Lansdale, an authority on the subject, some of the most respected writers in the field weigh in with stories that pay tribute to the "pulps." 12 stories in all, written by: James Reasoner (a tribute to the aviation pulps), Chet Williamson (one of my three favorites, a mystery that unfolds as clips from personal ads in the backs of pulp magazines with a great ending), F. Paul Wilson (a Yellow Peril story), Alex Irvine (a Detroit gangland/police/pool hall story), Melissa Mia Hall (a tribute to the "Gidget" surfer stories), Tim Lebbon (a story about a giant), Bill Crider (an interesting and humorous alien abduction story. Crider writes westerns but used to write horror novels as Jack MacLane.), Al Sarrantonio (another of my three favorites, a summer story in the tradition of Bradbury but with a perfect Sarrantonio twist at the end), Stephen Gallagher (a story of a soldier haunted by ghosts from his past), Kim Newman (a story that ties with her Anno Dracula books and also her Seven Stars collection), Gary Phillips (an excellent war story in the Haunt of Fear or Weird Tales tradition), and Norman Partridge (the other of my three favorites, a very tight and suspenseful story of a group of people at odds with one another in the desert. This one was likely the best story in the collection.)

Each story has an introduction by the author detailing the type of pulps he/she liked and what inspired their story. Each story is new to this edition, no reprints here. Joe Lansdale gives an introduction at the beginning of the book but did not contribute a story. Some of the introductions are better than the stories they support. Overall, this is a very entertaining and very strong collection (a delightful romp through the very missed days of pulp magazines) and well worth the read.

Rarely do such proclamatory nomenclatures hold good, esp. for anthologies, where the frequency of each author is bound to be different and thus it is more difficult to produce a rich harmonique. This collection features stories which make us understand what used to be the pulpy days, and long for them. Highly recommended.