Pulpfest 2026 report

Two weeks ago I attended Pulpfest 2026, again held at the Doubletree in Mars, Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh. This year I decided to make the 1200 mile return journey in my MINI Roadster, rather than fly. It’s just so much easier to have your own car with you if you end up buying a load of stuff.

The theme of the con and the various evening discussion panels was “Amazing”, as this year marks the 100th anniversary of Hugo Gernsback’s magazine Amazing Stories. A good time was had by all, with sub-cons also running in parallel celebrating Edgar Rice Burroughs, Philip Jose Farmer, Doc Savage and The Shadow.

Michael R. Brown over at ThePulp.net has written a con report, so head over there for more details found here.  

As the theme of this year’s con was the 100th anniversary of Amazing Stories, one of the panel presentations was on the Gernsback years editing his magazine up until the time he was squeezed into bankruptcy by Bernarr MacFadden, who then took over the book and put in one Ray Palmer as editor of Amazing.  There was another session on the life of Ray Palmer, who was only a bit over four feet tall due to a childhood spinal injury and botched surgery which resulted in being a hunchback. 

Famed DC editor Julie Schwartz knew him, and named the silver age Atom after him.

Every attendee gets given an annual issue of The Pulpster, which is now up to issue #35.  This is a very professional zine featured various pulp research articles. One article by author Craig MacDonald focused on the debate whether Ian Fleming plundered the Doc story “The Fantastic Island" when writing Bond novel Doctor No. Craig referenced some of my research on Doc Savage pulp distribution in the UK for inclusion in the article, so a shout out to Craig for that.  Back in 1935 (when The Fantastic Island was published), Ian Fleming was toiling as a stockbroker at Rowe & Pitman at 43 Bishopsgate, London.  Atlas Publishing & Distributing (who distributed Doc Savage in the UK in the 1930s) had offices and bookstore at 28 Bishopsgate. It is not inconceivable that Fleming did not pick up a pulp to read from time to time. According to Google AI the addresses are only 25 feet apart, nearly adjacent on the same side of the street. He probably walked past it every working day.

My haul of stuff is shown in the photo below. As you can see, it comprised mostly paperbacks that I’d had and disposed of in the past. The CONAN paperbacks were the UK Sphere printings from circa 1974, and had come from the estate of Glenn Lord, who was Robert E Howard’s literary executor. I purchased the two Doc Savage hardbacks from the late Will Murray, which he kindly autographed for me.

The two comics I picked up were Sinister House of Secret Love #3 and #4.  I bought these to add to my collection of DC comics from mid 1971 to mid 1972, when the price rose to 25 cents (7.5p in Blighty) and page count went up to 48, then 52 pages. Those gothic horror romance comics, along with regular DC romance comics , are very rare finds at marts here in the US. I don’t remember seeing them on T&P stands at all in the UK back in the early 1970s.

© DC Comics

© DC Comics

Both Sinister House of Secret Love and Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love were gothic romance books which became more House of Mystery-type books around 1973, with a title change. I believe some of those subsequent issues may have turned up in the UK.    Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love became Tales of the Dark Mansion.  I do wonder if someone on the editorial team twigged that the term “Forbidden Love” might have other connotations….

I still need to get a two more of the Sinister House books and four of the Dark Mansion books to complete the mid-'71 to mid-'72 era for those titles. 

Some tables in the Dealer’s room at the con had some very interesting items. One dealer had some complete runs of British comics from the 1920s and 1930s  , such as the Magnet, Rover, Wizard, Dandy and Hotspur, including in incomplete run of The Triumph from 1939, which featured the first foreign reprint of the Superman newspaper strip.

In addition to pulps and comics, there were lots of those seedy “Men’s Adventure” magazines from the 1950s and 1960s that T&P did import if I recall correctly.

So, it was a great three days, and had some great conversations with attendees and dealers alike.  It seems they had a record breaking attendance this year of close to 500 people. Considering that the majority of attendees are in the 60+ age bracket, it seems that a new wave of fans is getting interested, which bodes well for the future.

Here's a few photos I took to give a flavour of the item on offer.