Heart of the Machine

I went back and did some re-reading recently. I remembered exactly why I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs for example. re-read some Howard after reading "Blood & Thunder" to remember why I loved it as well.

The pulps always had something for me, I remember reading the Gibson ‘The Shadow’ novels as a kid (my dad had collected them as well as Burroughs’ 1st edition Ace paperbacks, I still have all of them). The pulp area felt both harrowing and harmless. You KNEW the hero would win after all, but oh, the peril.

In my mind and in my heart I still hold a place for that terror, that wasn’t so terrifying. The damsel in distress, the crudely formed and often kind of racially stereotyped villans (No racist here, but those green grazongians were jerks). It was an easier and sure, sure, more simple minded time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love gritty, in your face fiction. Back in the day I was a serious devotee of the splatterpunk and cyberpunk writing movements. But in my heart were Lovecraft, Gibson, Howard and early Robert Bloch.

I love the fact now that NOBODY dismisses the early pulp writers. There was a time in the early 80’s and before that they were regarded as the hacks which, ok maybe a little, they were. But they pioneered ideas. They went places that few before had thought about and took those places and their residents kicking, yelling and bleeding and showed them to people who probably hadn’t even looked in that direction before.

I know they changed my dad’s world, and through him, they changed mine.

Thanks guys.