Pulp Fiction inspired stories in radio and in motion pictures, and sometimes vice versa.

It also influenced the new medium of comic books, where detective stories were all the rage,

at least until superheroes came along.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music Episode Episode 331, Caped Crusaders

Last week we talked about pulp fiction magazines and the kinds of stories they published,

with a particular eye on the development of science

fiction as a distinct branch of literature. Pulp fiction embraced many genres, but science fiction

is the only case of a new genre of story having been first identified and cultivated in Pulp

magazines.

I want to talk more about pulp magazines today and take a different tack.

To begin with, I want to take a step backward and note that pulp magazines did not originate the business model of cheap, popular, sensational fiction.

The first instance of such a thing appeared in Victorian Britain,

with the emergence of the so-called Penny Dreadfuls.

I mentioned these briefly last week.

These were serialized novels sold in installments for a penny apiece.

Penny dreadfuls most often told either crime stories or stories about the supernatural,

what we today would call horror.

There were also more general adventure stories.

Tween and teenage boys represented a major share of the market for these penny dreadfuls.

The name seems to have had a double meaning.

They were dreadful in the sense that they frequently told stories that were scary or gruesome,

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