Paperback Fanatic #13

[dem bones]

Justin Marriott (ed.) - Paperback Fanatic #13 (Feb. 2010)

includes;

Fanatical Thoughts - includes important news on the future of PF

Fanatical Mail - lots of it: includes Sennett Sez, two pages of additions and corrections to the Panther bibliography.

Wolf Kruger Speaks! - John Mains' exclusive interview with Shaun Hutson about his pseudonyms.

The Last Temptation of Roger Elwood. A look back at the controversial Sf editor - concentrating on the short-lived Laser books' output.

Early Pinnacles. The first hundred.

Confessions of an Advertising Executive - The story behind the saucy Confessions novels

New format, 48 pages A5 inc 8 pages of colour

order fromPaperback Fanatic

just crawled from the sick bay to post this briefest stub for the time being and let you know #13 is available now, new, A5 format but - relief - it's not affected the quality of the several cover scans and we've still plenty of color. the important news referred to is that, as of #14 it is going subscription only. proper non-review later on - the Confessions piece and reappraisal of the much-maligned Elwood are particular favourites, and, as has been mentioned before, Fanantical Mail is some kind of pulp-junkies equivalent of Notes & Queries. The Early Pinnacles item is illustrated with the most jaw-dropping ..... well, something tells me that the name 'Parley J. Cooper' is shortly to become a popular google search is all ....

more later ....

[Craig Herbertson]

That'll be Fahrenheit 451 on the cover if I'm not mistaken. What a brilliant looking mag.

Please, please reprint the Burroughs one sometime. Not a day goes by without me cursing my lazy ineptitude there.

[allthingshorror]

My god The Feminists looks superb...

The new format suits the PF much more, and while there may not be as much content in the smaller issue - its clear to see from the Elwood, Pinnacles and Confessions articles that the same care and passion had not waned.

Received this with Men of Violence 2 - my poor bank balance can;t handle the amount of books I want to but because of these cursed mags.

Spot on Justin, and it's a continued honour to be asked to do stuff for The PF!

[dem bones]

some response to Fanatical Mail because, after a quick ogle at the cover galleries, it's still the first thing i read, and i particularly look forward to Michel Parry's contributions. going way back to Pulpmania he's been drip-feeding us the dirt on Agro and his ill-fated movies Bikers Versus London and Hex, and his letters are always very enlightening. for example, i'd no idea that there were once plans to film Night Of The Warlock! As to the identity of 'Raymond (or should that be 'Elizabeth'?) Giles', thanks to Steve, we've what looks like a good lead here. With regard to Holger's suggestion, i think shifting the checklists online as part of the PF site is a sound idea. it would certainly make them easier to update/ correct, although i'd hate for them to disappear from the magazine.

As to the articles and interview, they're all very readable and informative and, as mentioned, it's refreshing to read some praise for Roger Elwood (have you noticed how prolific anthologists come in for so much stick? fair enough, Elwood wasn't exactly August Derleth, but i seem to remember even he got it in the neck before his corpse was cold). The Christopher Wood retrospective is my pick of the issue, not because i'm a rabid fan of the Confessions ... (i've only ever finished three) but simply because it's a lovely piece of writing.

[pulphack]

in some ways i like this format more - it's what makes 'men of violence' special, too. not a wasted word - loved the chris wood and shaun hutson pieces, and the first hundred pinnacles was great - let's hope the blanks can be filled. my god but they worked pendleton at the beginning though!

stand out for me i guess was the roger elwood and laser piece - partly because so much of my working life for the last decade has revolved around harlequin, and partly because i love the fact he fucked off the fanboys. harlan ellison is a great, great, writer, but seems torn between hating the fact he's stuck ina genre and revelling in his status within it - and takes himself terribly seriously, which i learned long ago is a great crime. if he hated ellwood that much, the guy must have been alright...

one thing - i know you love the print medium, but i do think that was a great suggestion about making past issues available as pdfs - well said, mr drage. it keeps stuff there and available until circumstances can get them onto paper again.

looking forward to that nick austin interview, too...

[pulphack]

by the way, almost forgot - WDL and Triphammer!

WDL were World Distributors Limited, who had been around since the fifties as a paperback publisher and publisher of childrens annuals, mostly of licensed properties. In the sixties they had Consul Books, who had such classics as Ross Richards' great train robbery 'faction' and also the first Avengers novel, written by Douglas Ennefer.

Ennefer was a Manchester Evening News journo (I believe) who penned several of the annuals (I saw a really poor Bilko one he penned a few years back). He had several thrillers published by Triphammer.

Five Star, I think, were another subsiduary company, possibly partly owned not wholly by WDL. Certainly, this is where the Press Ed connection comes, as many Baker helmed titles were Consul published, such as early Quintain and Danger Man titles (Richards was a Press Ed writer). I'm not sure (but Steve Holland knows, I bet) that the initial connection was that WDL did Foreign Legion pulps in the fifties, some of which were by 'John Robb', a pen name of George Mann, Bill Baker's right hand.

Incidentally, I like Canon... I also liked Jake And The Fat Man, William Conrad's eighties series. He had a face made for radio, and was a successful radio writer and actor as well as a director of some seriously good B noirs in the fifties. None of which accounts for his Canon years habit of always interviewing suspects in diners. Hmm...

WDL were still doing annuals into the late eighites, and it was all still in-house writers, as I disovered when I tried to get work from them in my early days.

[dem bones]

"in the mid-seventies they chucked out about a dozen US reprints under the TripHammer byline, including tie-ins to the Cannon TV series, whose photo-covers of a fat, balding cop I've chosen not to reproduce in favour of the more pleasing on the eye femme fatale gazing out from the likes of Triple Cross ..." - Justin Marriott, PF 13

You're joking! had fun reading this one not so long back: The Stewardess Strangler

And here's a World Distribution vintage 'when insects attack!' effort from 1959: Richard Marsh's Victorian shocker The Beetle.

Now;

"Men are a subjugate species; they have their uses, but not many of them, and are expected to be self-effacing and subservient at all times. Jackbooted butch dyke security troops are everywhere. Heterosexual sex is prohibited except by special permit." - from John Grant's review of The Feminists on Infinity Plus

The astonishing cover artwork and blurb had me scuttling around for more info on the author and and whoever 'Parley J. Cooper' was, he/ she was prolific in the Gothic Suspense/ Romance/ field, following The Feminists with The Inheritance - "Dark Forces From the Past Return to Overwhelm Young, Unsuspecting Kathryn Laurant When She Discovers the Inheritance. A Queen-Size Gothic .... large easy-to-read type" (Popular Library, 1972). The Devil Child (Pocket, 1972) looks like it's more of the same, likewise The Shuddering Fair One ("She Was Alone in the World - and Marked for Murder!"), (Pocket, 1974) featuring classic girl-in-nice-flowing-dress-running-away-from-sinister-mansion artwork), Moonblood (Pocket, 1975), etc. The later Wreck and The Studio are possibly anomalies, and both were published in the UK by Magnum. Don't worry, the next bit's quite interesting!

i think i'd best get in my apology at the start because i found much of the information that follows on Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy & Utopia where it's unlikely that Laura Quilter's draft in progress A Short History of the Backlash against Feminism in SF/F was intended to double as a handy checklist of lurid, Women-On-Top paperbacks. Disappointingly, as yet there's no review of The Feminists, but titles which come in for stick include "John Norman's dreadful Gor series", Edmund Cooper's Gender Genocide - "Kill the male misfits!" - (Ace 1972, Coronet 1974) and Thomas Berger's Regiment of Women (Popular Library 1973) which sounds like Ronnie Barker's The Worm That Turned with dildos (and, hopefully, some laughs). Ms. Quilter is particularly scathing of the latter - "'the monstrous regiment of women .... have taken over all the positions of authority; men are required to wear ridiculous bits of clothing, take demeaning jobs (such as "secretary"), and suffer sexual harassment. Regiment could have made some useful insights were they not undercut by the silly comments ...". Not that anyone here would want to buy it but Panther published a UK edition in 1975.

[andydecker]

Another good issue.

I never knew that the writer of those confession books - which I only read about - was the writer of the James Bond movies and the misguided Destroyer movie I never made the connection. Maybe because I can´t stand those two Bonds, which are much to comic book for me.

The interview with Hutson was a good one. I knew about his war books and westerns, but that he also writes children´s books After I saw that I am more willing to believe that he really did those historicals.