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Post by pulphack on May 25, 2021 15:19:51 GMT
Hello Darrell... I suspect that MES is still partially alive and stalking the nether reaches of Manchester. I recall you telling me years ago that his doctor had given him a year unless he gave up drinking - and that was before the millennium. He is of the stuff that does not die, just... transmutes...
On another note, friend-of-a-friend Darren left the Nightingales to join the Fall, wary at the pitfalls of being asked to join your favourite band. He lasted a while, and loved it, yet found the amp-fiddling antics of MES a cause for anxiety. Apparently, after what I heard was a broken leg (but may have been something else, legends being what they were), MES did at least one gig from the dressing room via a radio mic (or very long lead) as getting on stage was a step too far that night.
My God, I miss the old bugger...
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Post by pulphack on May 25, 2021 15:13:20 GMT
Mr Croft-Cooke had a lengthy career as Leo Bruce, writing a string of detective novels about Carolus Deene, a slightly aesthetic Don, and prior to that Sgt Beef, a stolid a copper as his name suggests. One of his first Beef novels (if not the first, some to thin of it) takes the piss splendidly out of Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, and Father Brown as three thinly disguised amateur sleuths cock up an investigation which the plodding and determined Beef solves with relative calm. Bloody iconoclast.
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Post by pulphack on May 20, 2021 6:58:21 GMT
Two things of note... much of Tod's ouevre came from that penny dreadful tradition - The Ticket Of Leave Man features Hawkshaw the Detective, who was a staple of such fare (though he's reduced to a bit-part with Tod in charge). Slaughter was a colossus, and sadly we shall never see such again. There is still a space for such people, I would hope. Tod is God, as they might once have said, if we was a footballer...
Which clumsily brings me to Man About The House - it would be Robin who was a Southampton supporter as he came from there, and indeed it was possibly this episode (God knows I haven't seen it for forty years or more I think) where Chrissie met his brother, who she eventually married. He was played by Norman Eshley, who then went on to be Geoffrey Fourmile, neighbour and scourge of George And Mildred, who obviously didn't notice it was Robin's brother disguising himself with a pair of specs...
I need to get out more.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 12, 2021 6:59:29 GMT
Dr S and James are quite right here - in the UK there were a large number of fiction magazines, and as with the birth of the single volume novel and the paperback a lot of it can be put down to the railways and WH Smith. Their demand for this kind of publication birthed so many; the public bought them as the were well-displayed; and so it goes around and grows. Mass literacy and the birth of the 'clerk' classes also encouraged this - the kind of families who had slightly more disposable income so well described in 'Diary Of A Nobody' and 'Three Men In A Boat'. They wanted fiction that was light and disposable, both intellectually and physically, and so the magazine with its monthly novelty of the new came to prominence. The juvenile market was also a proving ground for writers and readers - Harmsworth and DC Thomson weren't going to go broke on it, were they?
As regards the fact that horror, weird fiction and ghost stories were not delineated into genre magazines - well, it must be born in mind that even crime and detetcive fiction didn't really come into its own as a genre until post-WWI, which is why the 'Golden Age' came to exist as such - the first defined flowering of the form. The same can be said for romance, as 'romance' was a term generally used prior to that for sweeping stories that took you to other places, rather than purely love stories.
In the USA it seems to me that they codified genre earlier because they were quicker off the mark in terms of marketing to maximise their space on the news stands. That kind of codification didn't seep into UK publishing until the US influence hit the public via Hollywood. For, as DR S points out, radio started the slow demise of magazines as it was an alternative. So, too, was cinema: pre WWI it wasn't technically advanced enough to be a competitor, more a compliment to going home and reading. Longer films and sound changed that. Radio was very talk-oriented in its early days, and the music was only grudgingly populist. Again, different to the US.
The genre or type of story has always existed - but mass readership and then other mass media seemed to dictate that the more rigid codification was necessary to reach out through the sea of sheer bulk and alert its intended audience it was there. The prominence of genre as a signifier was really about economics more than art. But isn't that usually the way?
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Post by pulphack on Mar 9, 2021 10:51:14 GMT
Simply put, library publishing worked like this. Back in the day, with the amount of circulating libraries run by the likes of Smiths and Boots in the UK, and their equivalents in Australia, as well as public libraries who wanted to have popular fiction to ensure they had some footfall other than students or researchers, there was a market that had the finance and the public pull to ensure that if you put out a hardback that was in a popular fiction category then you could ensure a certain sale that would enable you to plan a print run that would make a profit. It might not be large, but the turnover would be consistent. It was a business model that worked for the likes of Hale and Herbert Jenkins, and enabled them to take a punt on other material (fiction and non-fiction) that may be a gamble in terms of sales. Selling these books directly to libararies also meant that you didn't have to worry about things like shelf space and sales reps for shops, and there was no sale or return - cash changed hands, job done. It meant, of course, that generally there was only the one print run of a title as the turnover also demanded a stream of new titles. That's probably why a lot of the sought after titles from library houses are so rare and expensive (particularly pre-1940: the war, salvage, etc). For writers it meant a small but regular income if they could keep churning it out - this is why the likes of Gerald Verner aka Donald Stuart were so prolific, and why writers of Dixon Hawke, Sexton Blake etc changed the character names and republished for a different market. Cheap paperbacks put a hole in this, along with TV and burgeoning mass entertainment forms, so by the time Kimber was doing it, they were a dying breed and just clinging on. I remember a lot of books like that in the library in the 1970's, and paperbacks in plastic covers replacing them in the 1980's as they were cheaper to buy in. In terms of sales to book shops, there may have been limited selling, but it was a waste of resource and energy to direct sales there when the libraries could guarantee a run. Kimber titles turning up in remainder shops was a sure indication of the death of the library publisher, as it meant that even their limited print runs were no longer reaching the target market.
I know this is all about money and not about the content of the books, but then everything from the novel becoming single volume to paperbacks and beyond is driven not by the content but the by the actual engine of dissemination.
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Post by pulphack on Mar 9, 2021 10:37:49 GMT
A tuatara is a lizard native to New Zealand, and as Dancing Tuatara is part of Ramble House, then it's Fender Tucker's sense of humour at work, I'd wager. They POD through Lulu,who I've always found very good quality. As for the illustrations, well they have a house style for covers and it's about that for the interior type face, etc, so never expect anything other than good, readable type and editing. Isn't that enough? The amount of incredibly old material otherwise unavailable apart from stupid prices that he makes easily available - well, anything else seems like carping. (A tuatara is a lizard, of course, not a fish)
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Post by pulphack on Mar 1, 2021 7:51:31 GMT
I know I'm only having the conversation with myself now, but it occurred to me that there as something I forgot to add regarding the Fontana paperbacks that Crom mentioned, and which probably had a lot to do with why Maclean/Bagley/Innes were at the top of that tree for so long. When I was about 8-12 and used to spend my pocket money on paperbacks, I would haunt Woolies wherever I was, and any department store that sold books, and the two things that are consistent memories are that all the Pan paperbacks that were regulars were tv and film tie-ins, and theere were always Fontanas of the aforementioned three writers, as well as Helen MacInnes, who also got on shelves consistently. Older and knowing more about the business now, I would speculate that this was about the Collins sales people wanting to keep pushing certain writers and also having the sales force to get those books restocked even if they were not current releases. You have a limited shop window and people will buy the same stuff - this may be why people like Lyall and Garve did not have the longevity and profile they warranted in paperback, as they would have been sacrificed to Pan's quicker turn-over tv and film tie-in business model. It doesn't apply as much in the internet age, but back in the day it was the limited shelf space and the forcefulness of the sales tram that could really make a career. Not that it affected Fleming, of course - who was paperbacked by Pan and who in the early seventies I remember seeing only when they repackaged the line (including a very nice box set)and in second hand 60's editions that my uncle had (he used to trade paperbacks through his work as the post office). It's sobering to look back and realise how much your taste can be shaped by factors that you dont realise and are beyond your control.
I realise that I have been thinking about this a bit too much...
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Post by pulphack on Feb 26, 2021 18:55:30 GMT
Ah now if it was library experience I'd say Douglas Reeman was more popular than any of them in my local in the 70s. I have to say I would always go for Len Deighton or Clifford or Lyall over the big three, but their absolute presence is what makes me still think of them as such even though they wouldn't be my first choice.
Of course I also think the fact they were hardbacked and paperbacked by the same publisher helped immensely. Those who had the time lag involved in setting up separate paperback deals inevitably suffered against an integrated publishing schedule.
It's rarely about quality alone after all.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 26, 2021 16:41:59 GMT
Hate doing this on phone as lost sentence there explaining that the CBC and its newsletters were a window to the times when I was growing up reading them in the 70s
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Post by pulphack on Feb 26, 2021 16:40:02 GMT
Well of course it's not fair but when did that ever come into it? To me MacLean Innes and Bagley are the big three. I based this impression on the companion book club hierarchy of thriller writers which I think reflected the sales and tastes of the time. Bagley wrote less and was more consistent. Innes had a longer career and a wider scope.
If it was about personal taste I'd throw in a vote for Francis Clifford who gets overlooked. I like Lyall but Victor Canning is a better writer though I just like Lyall more. That's where it gets cloudy and although it means lesser selling writers get overlooked, the fact is that the sales of the big three and their profile (helped by how their publishers got behind them) mean that they are the first names readers of a certain age or those looking at the pressing the times would go to.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 9, 2021 9:22:25 GMT
Not here you ain't Steve. That's why we love you. You're in good company...
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Post by pulphack on Jan 26, 2021 6:25:07 GMT
Congratulation, Johnny. It's deserved a book for years. A shame that John didn't do one at the time to go with his original work, but that's business - it would have sat well next to books like 'The Weekend Girls' (a Burke favourite that went west in a clear out years ago, sadly). But as someone who has done more than anyone I can think of really to keep that post-war British strand of horror fiction alive, it's fitting you get to put that missing novelisation right.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 6, 2021 17:20:07 GMT
That's it Dr - Freeman Wills Croft is the man! His stories are incredibly introcate puzzles based on railway timetables, road routes and car speeds as well as how swiftly a man can cross country on foot, dig a grave, then be back in time for dinner, bathed and in evening dress.
That makes it sound like I'm mocking - I love them, actually, but they really are carefully worked out puzzles. Julian Symons shunned that sort of crime fiction as 'humdrum' but in fact they are about absorbing yourself in the intricacies of the mystery web, and the characterisation has to be secondary. Form and function, and all that...
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Post by pulphack on Dec 31, 2020 16:19:09 GMT
Afternoon all... no excuses, just haven't been on line much and nothing really to post of any relevance. What a very odd year it's been, good to see everyone about here still around, though many of those we love - personally and artistically - have moved on.
Just wanted to say that even having nowt to say have enjoyed much of what has been posted here - and I'm looking at you, Steve, in particular for your wit and interests in the 'old ways' (even of many of them have been reimagined from bits and pieces by the Victorians and later). 'True' ghost books are always interesting in a number of ways.
So a happy new year to all and hope it improves for us all... and for everyone, really...
We're entering the Aquarian Age, apparently (though I've been reading for years that we entered it several times in the last century and a bit, so make of it what you will), and that's supposed to herald seismic change.
Oh joy...
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Post by pulphack on Oct 31, 2020 6:35:22 GMT
I don't know about a scooby doo ending as I haven't read that one, but perhaps not. Victor Drago was supposed to be Sexton Blake - at that time Fleetway/Amalgamated/IPC etc were undergoing yet another change of ownership and there were some doubts as to whether Blake was in or out of copyright, and who in fact owned the character at that point. In truth, although DC claim Blake as part of their ownership, it's still a bit of a grey area: they had 'The Sexton Blake Library' registered as a trademark but none of the characters and the old texts are - if you want to argue the point - out of copyright as the time for ownership of company created IP is less than that of an individual writer, and needs to be renewed. I know of at least one rights owner who was disputing this to get back the work written by a writer whose estate had come to him (he was an IP lawyer by trade). Dave Abbott at IPC/DC in the UK has fudged the issue splendidly and got Obverse, Snow and Wordsworth to credit/pay/license for things they may not actually have had to pay for... so by default he has established a dubious ownership. Anyway...
This may have been the reason why 'Victor Drago' came into being. Back in the day, our old chum Jack Adrian aka Chris Lowder was working at IPC writing comic scripts (remember, this is the man who wrote the first ever Judge Dredd strip for the 2000AD dummy) and he managed to persuade his editor that a Blake revival was overdue (also remember that his first ever published work was a Blake novel in the fifth series that he was conned over by Bill Baker and which came out as a Desmond Reid with nary a comma changed). The first Drago strip was beautifully drawn and scripted - a series that really captured the golden age Blake, Tinker and Pedro, with references to all manner of past adventures. I suspect it was JA's attempt to really bring the character back, doomed by the 'so who does own the IP?' and 'did we lose that in the last buy out?' arguments that saw the wholesale name changes. Still a great strip, though. Subsequent Dragos were not down to JA (at least, most of them weren't) and the quality did dip, but the ones I've come across are still amongst the best of that period in the dying Brit comics trade (unless you were 2000AD)).
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