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Post by severance on Jun 28, 2011 11:25:14 GMT
Delighted to see this thrust through the letterbox this morning, I knew it was imminent, just wasn't aware it was done and dusted. Contents: Fanatical Thoughts (editorial) - Justin Marriott Fanatical Mails - includes Stephen Sennitt, Bam!!, Andreas Decker, John Fennessy, Graham Andrews, Kev Demant, Andy Boot, Johnny Mains, Rob Matthews and Brian Ritt. The Action Man - Bill Pronzini's memories of Jay Flynn. McCurtin - David Whitehead highlights the fiction of Peter McCurtin. Here Be Daemons - Johnny Mains interviews the legendary Basil Copper. And Now the Screaming Starts - Johnny Mains interviews PBoH regular David Case. Ballard at Berkley - Graham Andrews debuts with a piece on J.G. Ballard (and Richard Powers) at Berkley Books. Yesterday's Lily - Jeff Jones 1944-2011 - Memories of the artistic great by Stuart Williams. Some of the letter writers are a bit dodgy, but the rest of the issue looks to be another blinder from Justin...
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Post by pulphack on Jun 28, 2011 12:00:02 GMT
well yes, mine arrived this morning as well, and was equally unexpected. you're right about the dodgy letter writers... speaking of which, i'm the opposiet when it comes to sci-fi. i always used to think i liked it when i was a kid until i realised that what i really liked was Moorcock and his chums. the new worlds/new wave defined sf for me by accident (though i did like john wyndham as well), and i have to say that i love Barefoot In The Head BECAUSE i can't understand a word of it after about halfway in... i suspect dropping a tab would help, but i prefer a cup of tea.
nice to see Graham Andrews aboard, as well - that two parter on US James Bond knock-offs got me buying Book Collector for the first time in years, and the Ballard piece was excellent. i agree about The Wind From Nowhere - it might have been knocked off quickly to enable the first anthology to be published, but it's a very good piece of work - perhaps JGB didn't like it because it isn't as avant-garde as the shorts - it reads like a bridge between the Wyndham stylists and the new wave.
so anyway, being laid up thanks to a dodgy takeaway, PF 19 coming through the door made me choose between this and Frank Swinnerton's A London Bookman, which is a collection of columns about books written between 1920-28. now much as i'm going to enjoy him sticking it to the loathesome Virginia Woolfe (her stuff is good, for sure, but her snobbish attitudes to writing not like hers and her chums is appalling) - which he does several times over the space of that eight years - the joys of Messrs Copper, Case and Flynn won me over.*
not to forget Peter McCurtin, either! much of that piece can be found on benbridges.com, mr Whitehead's website which has lots of stuff about his fellow western authors and is well worth a visit. like the admirable ramble house, DW is making good use of Lulu's POD resources, too, to get new work out and keep old work in print. this may be the way ahead for 'new' writing and publication.
anyway, mr Mains - inbetween hunting down Crossroads paperbacks just to keep me on the edge of my seat - has done a fine job in drawing reminisence and insight from Basil Copper and David Case. the former is a fine and generally underrated Brit author, while the latter was really only known to me for being the bloke wot wrote the story they based 'And Then The Screaming Starts' on (ah, Simon Williams in a silly cavaliers wig...). however, he sounds a fascinating chap and someone else whose work is worth a look.
but blimey, Bill Pronzini writing for PF! the man who gave us Gun In Cheek and Son Of Gun In Cheek, no less (and nearly drove me barmy over Harry Stephen Keeler)... a cracking piece on a pulp writer who we probably all vaguely know of having seen one of many editions of his books knocking about, but probably haven't read. amazing stories and anecdotes, and probably more fun than one of his books, but then again... the Bannerman cover featured made me double take as i think i must have read that when i was about ten or eleven (that bloody newsagent round the corner from my mum's and his stock of US ballast pb's again) - the cover is so familiar, though i can't remember a thing about it. i do vaguely remember it being the time of Robert Mitchum's 'Wrath Of God' movie - i've never seen that, but i remember the poster, and the Bannerman cover is similar in theme, which probably made me spend 35p (the average pb at that time, if i remember) on it! the thing that fascinated me most was the publisher who made his sex book writers travel to europe to live - blimey, if only that happened now... incidentally, were they the same people who employed Peter Leslie? that publisher was, if i recall, based in Paris for a while as well.
being about writers, this was a PF right up my street. i don't know if you can really say PF keeps getting 'better' as such - it has a uniform high standard, but these shifts of emphasis to highlight particular areas are a move that will keep the magazine fresh and surprising. and that can only be a good thing for its growth and development.
(* i remember Bill Baker once referring in one of his novels to the 'womens novellestish work of DH Lawrence', which is a bit unfair on women's novelletes of the period. the mid-twentieth century was appalling for 'literature' in the UK as art writers divorced themselves from communicating to a public and took to an elitist stance of 'only the clever few can get this' - which is all very well, but then they'd complain about not being read. it also meant that any really good things - such as Mrs Woolfe's use of interior stream of consciousness monologue - went a bit unnnoticed for years. mind, she used to write standing up at a lecturn believing the pain it gave her in the back was good for he art. quite...)
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Post by dem bones on Jun 28, 2011 12:06:18 GMT
oh bollocks, Sev! i just spent like an hour typing out pretty much the same thing! well, that's this evening's reading matter sorted - and i've still not finished having my say about #18! so just-through-the-letter-box that i've barely had time to do anything other than TYPE OUT A LIST OF CONTENTS and SCAN THE COVER, it's another jam-packed 64 pages, plenty of them in glorious colour, the LOOK every bit as powerful as #18 which, i'm sure, many would agree is among the best ever PF's. As Sev hints, there's a very strong Vault contingent - including some of the dead ropey ones - among the fanatic mailers (every issue without fail it's the first thing i read) and i just KNOW everyone's wants list will be bent entirely out of shape by the time they've got through a few paragraphs of the thing. Back with my much sought after deep thoughts on it all later. Thanks Justin!
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Post by severance on Jun 28, 2011 12:09:58 GMT
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Post by noose on Jun 28, 2011 12:13:48 GMT
I'm sitting here in Mains Mausoleum with a jippy belly, when the latest issue of PF plopped face down on the mat. How did I know it was Justin? Only one man can use parcel tape to hold down an envelope flap so succinctly!
This came as a complete, but brilliant, surprise and am utterly thrilled with the way both interviews came out. Loved the Ballard article - even though I know next to nothing about him - he once told me to fuck off you know...
Will most definitely go out and buy at least two Jay Flynn books, he sounds like the kind of guy you would love to spend an afternoon in the pub with!
I'm obviously biased, but this is by far one of the best issues of PF ever - more covers, has an improved on feel from the last issue - just all round brilliance from The Fanatic. Give the man a Knighthood for services to paperbacks, I say...
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Post by rolnikov on Jun 28, 2011 20:45:49 GMT
Another smashing issue.
For some reason I'm always chuffed to see editions that I own in there - this time it was just the two Ballards at the bottom of p.52.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 30, 2011 22:08:51 GMT
Bill Pronzini's article on Jay Flynn is, for me, what Paperback Fanatic is all about. Here's an author i'd never heard of, writing in a genre i don't read, why would i be the least interested in ten pages celebrating his career? So I was hooked from the first line, just as i knew i would be (think of the response to Andreas's article on Dr. Morton and his friends in #18: how many of us can read German, let alone get our hands on that stuff, but it sure seems to have gone down well with the readers). A paragraph that begins "Worst of the lot were the Joe Riggs books. Trouble Is My Business ... about a psycho who chopped off his victims' heads with a bowie knife ..." is so guaranteed to spark a stampede to land a copy, you wonder why publishers so insist on quoting only favourable reviews in their press releases. Stating the bleeding obvious, but Mr. Pronzini is surely an ideal candidate for full PF retrospective/ interview treatment. Of the John Mains interviews, the David Case is my pick of the two if for no other reason than he was once something of a mystery figure, having all but completely dropped off the horror radar after his Pan Horror years until Stephen Jones and David Sutton persuaded him to contribute a new story, Twins, to what would be a classic issue of Fantasy Tales (#16, Summer 1986). FT was where i first learned that Mr. Case was alive, well and knocking out "modern pulp Westerns and soft porn novels under a variety of pseudonyms", so it was of interest to hear more about the 'lost years', Mr. Case finally making some decent money after dealing with Herbert Van Skinflint for years. And we now have Mr. Case's verdict on the acting skills of the legendary Amicus rubber hand. That's got to count for something. Slighly disappointed that the Basil Copper interview focused so much on Van Thal when Copper only wrote three stories for him. As the author is quick to acknowledge, Peter Haining had a far more significant long term influence on his career and August Derleth did his bit. i'd argue that, ironically, it was Haining who published his most Pan Horror-like story, The Academy Of Pain. it's sad that Basil finds attending conventions something of an ordeal these days, but if it's of any consolation, a half dozen of our most terrifying reprobates, the broken limb gang, had a very enjoyable night at the well attended 'A Life In Books' launch in Fleet Street a few years back. more to follow ... David Case .... the latter was really only known to me for being the bloke wot wrote the story they based 'And Then The Screaming Starts' on (ah, Simon Williams in a silly cavaliers wig...). however, he sounds a fascinating chap and someone else whose work is worth a look. That he is, pulps. if i read a better horror novella than Pelican Cay this year, then i'll consider myself blessed. never thought i'd type these words but i think i even prefer it to Fengriffen!
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Post by noose on Jun 30, 2011 22:16:24 GMT
The Basil Copper interview was my very first face to face interviews - and was done a few years ago, mainly to get information for The Back From The Dead anthology. It has had bits of phonecalls and other meetings added onto it the bulk of the interview, so as such - leans heavily on safe ground and Basil couldn't remember much on other subjects.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 4, 2011 12:25:28 GMT
some more thoughts on it all (just 'McCurtin' and the Jeff Jones tribute to go). i can see why Justin is delighted to have Graham Andrews aboard. Ballad At Berkley is as exhaustive an article as i can remember in the magazine. At risk of squandering my hard won 'man who detests SF' rep, many moons ago i read - and loved - High Rise, Concrete Island and Crash but for some reason never followed up on my initial burst of enthusiasm. Mr. Andrews has convinced me it's time to hunt down a copy of The Atrocity Exhibition and see how we go from there. was delighted to see Richard powers brought into play. i'm a great admire of his cover artwork for the Ballantine 'Chamber of Horrors' series (maybe worthy an article in themselves?). probably mentioned this before, but another artist i should love to see showcased in Fanatic is John Newton Howitt, the man responsible for the best of the supremely lurid shudder pulp covers. There's enough about him on-line to stitch together a generic hack job, but ideally i'd prefer it came from someone like Robert Weinberg of who has a genuine admiration for Howitt's work. So if ever PF introduces a 'Justin Will Fix it!' department ....
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Post by pulphack on Jul 6, 2011 18:55:12 GMT
incidentally, having just picked up the headpress guide to counter culture (or... we'll just parcel up some old reviews and flog it as a book... having said that, i do love it!), i have to ask...
justin, does the name justin bomba mean anything to you? and some zines about films, books (well!) and other zines?
i think we should be told!
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Post by dem bones on Jul 6, 2011 21:32:30 GMT
ah, well i can help you there pulps, if mr. bomba gives me the nod. scandalous! one issue even sees fit to depict a kinky nun on the cover ....
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Post by noose on Jul 6, 2011 21:35:19 GMT
And there was me thinking that nothing could beat the NOTW scandal...
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Post by justin on Jul 7, 2011 8:39:38 GMT
Bloody hell... my shady pass catches up with me!
Yes I was Justin Bomba, publisher, editor and writer of Bomba Movies. Very cheap and crude 'zine dedicated to trashy movies- intentionally low-brow and chaotic in response to the god-awful glossy horror film 'zines of the time which thought colour reproduction and interminable plot summaries were the way forward. Given away as a freebie via a mate who acted as a distributor of horror 'zines.
Who was once visited by the police wanting my name and address because they claimed the zine was a catalogue for snuff movies! Ludicrous now, but back then people were being raided at dawn for owning pirate tapes of films you can buy in double-disc director's cuts in HMV now. And people in mainstream day jobs such as mine were losing them because of the publicity that followed such dawn raids. So an awful lot of tapes were destroyed that day (none of theme for sale and certainly none of them snuff movies) and I did wake up at about 5am every day with a paranoid sweat.
An all-review zine, early issues were mainly focused on Italian zombie trash and marginal porn (sometimes both in the example of Joe D'Amato's Zombie Holocaust) with later ones themed on Blaxploitation and Mexican wrestling movies. A lot of the writing is pretty embarrassing now, but I was young(er) and dumb(er) back then.
Discovery of the Creation omnibus of Angels From Hell was the catalyst for ending Bomba Movies and starting Paperback Dungeon (via Weird Zines, which was a zine all about weird zines.) Small press ink runs through my veins!
I recollect sending some copies through to Dem, so he has my blessing to share them if he sees fit. The kinky nun imagery may well find favour on this board!
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Post by andydecker on Jul 7, 2011 9:09:45 GMT
Bomba Movies sounds terrific Bomba Movies presents Cemetary Nun 2 Her Habit was the Gateway to Hell
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Post by dem bones on Jul 7, 2011 18:48:57 GMT
a look back to those dark days when Bomba ruled the earth it is then. just gimme a day to translate my notes into something approaching the English language and we'll all be rosy. Given away as a freebie via a mate who acted as a distributor of horror 'zines. Who was once visited by the police wanting my name and address because they claimed the zine was a catalogue for snuff movies! Ludicrous now, but back then people were being raided at dawn for owning pirate tapes of films you can buy in double-disc director's cuts in HMV now. And people in mainstream day jobs such as mine were losing them because of the publicity that followed such dawn raids. So an awful lot of tapes were destroyed that day (none of theme for sale and certainly none of them snuff movies) and I did wake up at about 5am every day with a paranoid sweat. i seem to recall this also happened to the editor of the frightfully respectable literary journal Aklo. The way i heard it, the police must have been acting on a tip off as they turned up at the home of one of the editors, picked up a copy of the debut, turned directly to a John Coulthart illustration depicting Cthulhu and snarled something to the effect of "and what if this got into the hands of children?" well, they'd have to be very dirty minded kids to make anything of it, but pause to wonder who, among what was surely a very small readership, would find a picture in an obscure magazine devoted to the writings of Arthur Machen and his contemporaries a matter worthy of reporting to the authorities? Worse, far worse, was the treatment endured by John Gullidge, editor of Samhain in 1994. You can read Paul Barnett's account of Mr. Gullige's persecution by his local rag im Dave Langford's massive Ansible archive. (it's the first item on the page, Freedom Of The Press)
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