Google on Paper

by

Scott. D. Parker

I had a great first day at Houston’s Comicpalooza yesterday. It was the first of four days of fantastic vendors, awesome guests (Stan Lee! In person!), and great folks in costume.

One of the things high on my search list was an original copy of a Doc Savage pulp magazine. Here’s the cover. Ironic that I look for a Doc Savage mag and end up, because of cost, with a cover featuring Monk Mayfair. 

I went ahead and splurged for another one, Popular Western, February 1950, that featured a Louis L’amour story.

The surprising find was THE HERO PULP INDEX by Robert Weinberg and Lohr McKinstry, 1971. This is a short, 48-page book, all in typical courier font, listing all the heroes from the pulp era which, in 1971, was forty years ago. Here’s the TOC and first page to give you a taste.

In a world in which just about any answer is seconds away, minutes at most, to think that all the folks who made this book took months and years to compile and create. Granted, much of the content we find on the internet took time to compile, the delivery method--web browser--is so convenient. Imagine the pulp fans from 1971 and the difficulty in finding a book like the Index.

Sometimes it just boggles the mind how much pure information we have access to in  2014. That’s the main reason why I bought this little book: to remind myself how utterly good we have it.