I didn't get everything; it's not all available. But I did get quite a bit, so it's great. Lots of reading material; I'll never have to go to the library again. Besides, they don't have the cool stuff like Merritt, Dunsany, Howard, and Lovecraft. Well, they might have some Lovecraft, and they do have a couple of Burroughs books, but for the most part, the well is very, very dry. And so are the books they have available.
I've talked about the pulps before, because the pulps are great. Anyone who's been reading my Amazing Stories reviews can see that even when the genre was young, there was a lot of creativity and wonder in those stories. All those clichés that we have today? That's where they got started. And they inspired so much of today's pop culture. Unfortunately, most people don't even know about them, and they don't know the roots of the genres they love.
Here's a simple example: E.E. "Doc" Smith, the writer of Skylark in Space, Lensmen, and Triplanetary. You may not know his writing, but you sure as heck know his influences. FTL travel? Skylark. Green Lantern Corps? Lensmen. Planet-killing Death Star weapons? He did it first. Powered armor? Heinlein got the idea from Smith. Lucas was pulling from Smith's writings when he penned that story about a galaxy far, far away. Sure, he was using other ideas, like Japanese cinema and the serial movies he saw as a kid, but regardless, he was influenced either by Smith directly, or by artists who themselves were influenced by Smith.
The thing about the pulps that trumps everything today's pop culture can dish out is this: Imagination. Not only the imagination of the writers, but the imagination of the reader. No matter how brilliant or immersive a video game or a movie gets, it's not the same, because you're watching someone else's imagination at work. When you read, though, you're visualizing the story yourself, and whatever your imagining is certainly going to be much cooler than anything Lucas or Spielberg ever dreamed up, because it's coming from your subconscious.
Check out this excerpt from Skylark Three, the sequel to Skylark of Space. It was first published in the January 1930 issue of Amazing Stories, due to the popularity of the first story, two years earlier:
As the first shell struck the mark, Seaton concentrated every force at his command upon the designated point. The air in the Skylark crackled and hissed and intense violet flames leaped from the bars as they were driven almost to the point of disruption. From the forward end of the strange craft there erupted prominence after prominence of searing, unbearable flame as the terrific charges of explosive copper struck the mark and exploded, liberating instantaneously their millions upon millions of kilowatt-hours of intra-atomic energy. Each prominence enveloped all three of the fighting vessels and extended for hundreds of miles out into space—but still the enemy warship continued to hurl forth solid and vibratory destruction.
A brilliant orange light flared upon the panel, and Seaton gasped as he swung his visiplate upon his defenses, which he had supposed impregnable. His outer screen was already down, although its mighty copper generator was exerting its utmost power. Black areas had already appeared and were spreading rapidly, where there should have been only incandescent radiance; and the inner screen was even now radiating far into the ultra-violet and was certainly doomed. Knowing as he did the stupendous power driving those screens, he knew that there were superhuman and inconceivable forces being directed against them, and his right hand flashed to the switch controlling the zone of force. Fast as he was, much happened in the mere moment that passed before his flying hand could close the switch. In the last infinitesimal instant of time before the zone closed in, a gaping black hole appeared in the incandescence of the inner screen, and a small portion of a ray of energy so stupendous as to be palpable, struck, like a tangible projectile, the exposed flank of the Skylark. Instantly the refractory arenak turned an intense, dazzling white and more than a foot of the forty-eight-inch skin of the vessel melted away, like snow before an oxy-acetylene flame: melting and flying away in molten globes and sparkling gases—the refrigerating coils lining the hull were of no avail against the concentrated energy of that titanic thrust. As Seaton shut off his power, intense darkness and utter silence closed in, and he snapped on the lights.
I mean, come on! That's Star Trek's deflector shields right there, in 1930! It's intense stuff, isn't it? And yet, we're told that this was a wasted era of dross and dregs in science fiction, saved only by the arrival of John Campbell and his intrepid Men of Science. But the sheer level of imagination, wonder and adventure of stories like Skylark Three and its contemporaries outshines so much that we see and read today.
For those who are into Traveller, consider whether you would want to play in a game set in a galaxy like Skylark, or one set in Foundation. For me, there's no comparison; the former is far more exciting and adventurous. And best of all, a lot of this stuff is public domain, depending on where you are. In the USA, it's not; you'll have to wait six years. But in Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world, these are public domain works right now, and you can get them on the Internet Archive for a grand total cost of NOTHING. And if they don't have what you want, check out the archives at Luminist.org for what you can't get there. The PDFs aren't OCR, but they're still perfectly readable. And the covers are actually better quality, too.
Now, I'm not saying that my work is on that level; not yet, certainly. But if you want to read something modern that is directly inspired by the pulps, check out my first fantasy novel, Arrival, available at Amazon in both e-book and paperback.
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