Pulp Nova — Hardcopy Edition

The old pulps, revived with a modern outlook and a sharper edge.

Pulp fiction helped shape modern horror, fantasy, science fiction, crime fiction, adventure stories and the masked vigilante.

It was cheap, lurid and sensational. It was also energetic, inventive, anti-authoritarian and willing to try ideas that more respectable fiction would not touch.

Pulp Nova returns to that tradition.

This collection takes familiar pulp genres and archetypes and approaches them with a more modern, self-aware sensibility—retaining their pace, imagination and unapologetic entertainment value without pretending that nothing has changed since the era of the original pulp magazines.

Twelve Stories Across the Pulp Spectrum

The collection includes twelve stories spanning horror, crime, fantasy, adventure and science fiction:

• Cichol’s Children — Mythos and weird fiction.

• Stain — Detective fiction.

• Shanks — Western.

• The Black Rat — Masked vigilante.

• The Dastard — Sword and sorcery.

• Wild — Jungle adventure.

• Rink Rash — Exploitation, post-apocalypse and sport.

• Mimsy Burogrove — Psychedelic detective fiction.

• Doc Osmium — Action and adventure.

• Tessa Coyle — Science-fiction detective story.

• Ace Slamm — Science fiction.

• One Man McCann — War and science fiction.

Rather than remaining within one setting or period, the stories range across contemporary worlds, alternative histories, imagined futures and new interpretations of classic pulp territory.

Neo-Pulp Rather Than Nostalgia

Pulp Nova is not an attempt to preserve the original pulps beneath glass.

It draws upon their genres, boldness and enthusiasm while recognising the distance between their era and our own. Familiar forms are revisited from a modern perspective, with a degree of self-awareness absent from many of their inspirations.

The result is a broad collection for readers who enjoy pulp storytelling but do not want to read the same characters, attitudes and assumptions reproduced without examination.

You will find:

• Weird horror and Mythos fiction.

• Detectives both hard-boiled and psychedelic.

• Western and jungle adventure.

• Masked vigilantism.

• Sword-and-sorcery action.

• Post-apocalyptic sport.

• Science-fiction crime.

• Space adventure.

• Futuristic warfare.

The genres change from story to story, but the collection remains rooted in the experimental and unruly spirit of pulp fiction.

From Ancient Horror to Future War

One story may take you into the territory of strange ancestry and old horrors.

Another may follow a masked crime-fighter, a sword-and-sorcery rogue or an investigator operating within an altered future.

The collection moves from Earth to space, from the past to the post-apocalypse and from traditional pulp forms to stranger combinations such as psychedelic detection and radioactive sport.

It is intended to provide variety rather than twelve slight variations upon the same adventure.

A Physical Collection for Pulp Readers

This hardcopy edition collects the complete Pulp Nova anthology in a single paperback volume.

It is suited to readers of:

• Classic and modern pulp fiction.

• Short-story anthologies.

• Weird tales.

• Crime and detective fiction.

• Sword and sorcery.

• Post-apocalyptic fiction.

• Retro and speculative science fiction.

• Genre fiction that prefers enthusiasm and experimentation to excessive respectability.

Open the book anywhere and enter another branch of the pulp tradition.

Even if weasels ripped your flesh.

This listing is for the physical hardcopy edition of Pulp Nova by James “Grim” Desborough. It is a 336-page English-language paperback, first published in 2013. ISBN: 978-1-291-67254-1.