Old books, movies and music. Keeping Twitter busy since 2014.
A library of the mind
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Hello, and welcome to the pulp library, a bibliothèque of bemusement! You can find my previous threads here: threadreaderapp.com/user/Pul…
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A History of Secret Societies, by Akron Daraul (aka Idries Shah). Pocket Books, 1969.
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Modern Romance: Queen Of The Rapping Scene (1982). These are the deep cuts I know you like!
German Expressionist salsa enthusiasts Modern Romance teamed up with Bev Sage from the Techno Twins in '82, to bring us the new sound of rapping with accordions. But this beguiling BoHo brouhaha proved too darned radical for British and Dutch audiences, reaching only No 37 and No 25 in their respective national charts.
Now I have a soft spot for Modern Romance. Unlike Ultravox they seemed to be enjoying themselves and they didn't tuck their jumpers into their trousers like Depeche Mode or Haircut 100. Local nightclubs would always throw on a track of theirs in the early '80s for people who liked the idea of dancing but weren't very good at it. For that they should be saluted.
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Two novels by Leonard Cohen: Beautiful Losers (Jonathan Cape 2nd edition 1970) and Their Favourite Game (Avon Books 3rd edition 1969). These are the only novels Cohen wrote in his career.
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Strange Paradise, by Dorothy Daniels. Paperback Library 1969.
Strange Paradise was Canada's answer to Dark Shadows, a kind of gothic soap opera set first in the Caribbean and then in America. Voodoo and family curses were the dominant theme, but ratings in Canada and the US were never strong and the serial ended in 1970.
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Who would win in a fight between a whale and a giant squid? Fate Magazine, August 1958.
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Penguin, like many publishers, began using photography on some fiction covers in the mid-'60s, and by the 1970s it had become a common practice. Some had artistic effects added, others were portrait photography.
There's a number of reasons behind the move. There are cost and speed considerations. Photo covers might stand out more on book displays next to illustrated covers. People like looking at faces, it draws the eye in.
And It's also a way to reach new readers, who may enjoy magazines rather than books and is wary of spending more money on a paperback when they just want a casual read. Good photography can bridge that gap: it's a signal that high end literature is accessible, is enjoyable and is worth buying.
Nowadays books rely on stock photography and big typefaces, partly because we buy online and the reader only sees a thumbnail of the image. But good photography is still a signal of intended quality. The publisher is taking care and effort to reach the reader and engage them with the mood and quality of the novel.
It does need some care. You are suggesting the person on the cover represents the protagonist so you have to make good on that promise. But done well I think it still works.
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The Cingulum, by John Maddox Roberts. TOR Books, 1985.
I hope you like cat women and space whales, because this book's got 'em.
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Three books by futurologist Alan Toffler: Future Shock (1970), The Third Wave (1980) and Power Shift (1990).
Toffler isn't discussed much nowadays, but his ideas of post-industrial knowledge economies, information overload, prosumers and techno rebels became common currency amongst a number of thinkers over the years, from Silicon Valley to 1990s China.
They're still part of our mental model of the early 21st Century, though the effects of his predicted changes on us may be less than he expected. It's fair to say he gave us a common language to discuss a range of changes, though whether they were sharp predictions or simply popular descriptions is a different question.
Pulp is full of predictions about the future, and its role in shaping our thinking is sometimes underplayed. But it's interesting to look at Toffler, or McLuhan, or Baudrillard or anyone else who prognosticates to see if some paperback author from the '20s or the '50s beat them to the punch.
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The slimline Sony Walkman WM-20 from 1983. Still the prettiest Walkman they ever made.
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Artificial Intelligence On The Commodore 64: Make Your Micro Think, by Keith and Steven Brain. Sunshine Books, 1984. Covers natural language, fuzzy matching and pattern recognition.
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