Customer Reviews

The Shudder Pulps (Plume Z5190)

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While I've been a fan of pulp fiction for several years, particularly of the Weird Tales and Black Mask variety, I came to the Shudder Pulp genre, also known as Weird Menace genre, only after reading a story by Hugh Cave in the anthology Rivals of Weird Tales: 30 Great Fantasy and Horror Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps. I'm also a fan of extreme modern horror by writers like Edward Lee and writers within the Splatterpunk genre. When reading Cave's story I was amazed by what he got away with back in the mid 1930s. After reading other authors' stories I found the best of them to be a perfect melding of the Weird Tales atmosphere I loved matched w/ a riveting, though admittedly trashy, excitement at the outrageous scenes the Shudder Pulp authors came up with - each seeming to want to outdo the other, something movies like Blood Feast would usher in in the early 60's, with the gore flick. While shudder pulp stories hinge on evoking the supernatural only to explain it away in the end, there's something about the sensationalism that's highly entertaining. Really, it reminds me of a super-macabre Scooby Doo.

In The Shudder Pulps, Jones an excellent job introducing the genre's titles and authors. We learn their place within the nitch of pulps at large and then delve into the specifics that made them distinct. Popular Publications, publishers of Weird Tales, was the first major publisher of Weird Menace, beginning with Dime Mystery, circa 1933. When that title took off, two more were introduced: Horror Stories and Terror Tales. With these three, the genre found its blueprint. Over the next 7 years, many magazines gleefully bearing the garish, but guiltily intriguing, artwork, sprang up, some lasting only a single issue.

I must disagree with the previous reviewer: I found the numerous examples of text directly from the stories to be the perfect choice to illustrate a point the author wished to make. For instance, early on, shudder pulp authors used a language style called "purple prose" which was so fully loaded w/ flowery adverbs, it became something of a joke. To prove this, Jones provided 3 or 4 examples and while I found them great fun to read, they were definitely an example of overwrought fiction. Jones could've written til he was blue in the face about how flowery this writing style was, but in those 3 paragraphs drawn directly from the text, the reader not yet familiar with the shudder pulp genre would find his or herself right at home because here it was, right in front of them. I also found the numerous examples helpful because many of these stories are now hard to find and extremely expensive. Unlike Weird Tales, their is a stunning lack of anthologies geared toward the Shudder Pulps exclusively. This is yet another reason Jone's guide is so helpful. As the other reviewer noted, this genre has been woefully neglected.

Jones also provides snippets of interviews from writing journals of time. With these, the reader comes to know the authors personally.

In the late '30's, Weird Menace gave way to a sub-sub-genre known as the Defective Detective. This was a PI, or police detective, who had some grotesque disfigurement that he would have to work around or, in some cases use to his advantage, to solve a crime for his client. Jones covers these as well.

Not only was this book a great read, I've throughly enjoyed trying to track down some of the primary stories Jones listed. After some research, I've found that modern reprint houses like Adventure House and Girasol Collectibles are offering a story here, a story there, in reprint series such as High Adventure and in the case of Girasol, complete issue reprints.

One day, I would like to type "weird menace" or "shudder pulp" into Amazon's search engine and see a nice, thick, hardback anthology featuring nothing but the authors mentioned in Jone's Shudder Pulps awaiting preorder. Over the past year I've read several books concerning pulp history and criticism, and to me, this one still sets the gold standard.

Jones's book focuses on the subgenre of pulp known as the "weird menace" tale. Due to the sensational nature of these stories they were neglected. Jones was one of the few original critics in this area. His book covers different magazines, publishers, and authors. He also focuses on different conventions within the subgenre. One shortcoming of the book is that, at times, it seems to rely too much on quotes directly from the primary texts (pulps). On an entertainment level, Jones's exuberance easily translates through his writing. This book is hard to find, but worth it for fans and scholars of the "weird menace" tale.