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Eclipse, v. 1, issue 1, whole no. 1, February 1941
Page 9
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ECLIPSE 9 SUPERSTITIONS IN THE PULPS by Harry Warner, Jr. "Superstitions" is used advisably; frankly, there's no other word that fully describes the silly things some pulp magazine editors believe. "Traditions" isn't applicable, for most of these things run in cycles and are forgotten too soon to attain the dignity of a tradition. Or perhaps "legends" would do just as well. Anyhow -- There are a large number of things which are more or less tabu in the pulp publishing field, and they've always seemed to me to be rather silly repressions. Perhaps foremost among them is the question of covers. According to the old, old superstition, a cover must have one, and should have another element. The absolute necessity is one of the characters on the cover holding a gun of one sort of another and more likely than not shooting it. Just a wee bit less essential for the fantasy pulps is some sort of monster at whom he's shooting; one the other classes of pulps, like Westerns and detectives, that monster turns into a girl whom he's protecting. (This, of course, is a direct descent from the rule that slick magazines must have a pretty girl on the cover, preferably with crossed legs.) Lately the cheaper fantasy pulps have been featuring both the girl and the monster on the same cover, besides the hero with his gun, but that's not quite universal yet. Now, this strikes me as just about the most useless idea imaginable. In the first place, there might be some excuse for it if only one or two of the pulps used that type of cover; it's conceivable that some potential buyers might be attracted to it if some magazine used it and the others did not. But that's the point: they all, almost without exception, use some sort of variant on that basic idea. Check back over past issues of Thrilling Wonder or Amazing, for instance, and see for yourself just how much of a regular practice it is. And so it's now at the point where a cover on a fantastic without the gun, monster and girl stands out. And I believe that when such a cover comes along, it actually helps sales of that magazine, just because it's different. A case to cite might be the first issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. According to Hornig, the first issue of it sold so will that another one was rushed through within a few months; SFQ actually is being published more frequently than his two bi-monthlies. And yet that first issue had almost everything against it from the start -- a price of 25c for less pages than you get in most 20c magazines; few illustrations; and a rather weighty lead novel. If sales of it actually were as high as claimed (and quick publication of the next issue wasn't just because they got rights to the novels for a mere pittance) I challenge anyone to tell what, outside of the cover, made people buy it. (It couldn't have been the fact that the lead novel was a reprint one; that fact was very carefully concealed in the blurb.) That same holds true of the oldest-fantasy-magazine-without-a-change-in-publishers-today, Astounding. While the gun-monster-and-girl plague has affected it at times, on the whole it has been relatively free from them on the covers,
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ECLIPSE 9 SUPERSTITIONS IN THE PULPS by Harry Warner, Jr. "Superstitions" is used advisably; frankly, there's no other word that fully describes the silly things some pulp magazine editors believe. "Traditions" isn't applicable, for most of these things run in cycles and are forgotten too soon to attain the dignity of a tradition. Or perhaps "legends" would do just as well. Anyhow -- There are a large number of things which are more or less tabu in the pulp publishing field, and they've always seemed to me to be rather silly repressions. Perhaps foremost among them is the question of covers. According to the old, old superstition, a cover must have one, and should have another element. The absolute necessity is one of the characters on the cover holding a gun of one sort of another and more likely than not shooting it. Just a wee bit less essential for the fantasy pulps is some sort of monster at whom he's shooting; one the other classes of pulps, like Westerns and detectives, that monster turns into a girl whom he's protecting. (This, of course, is a direct descent from the rule that slick magazines must have a pretty girl on the cover, preferably with crossed legs.) Lately the cheaper fantasy pulps have been featuring both the girl and the monster on the same cover, besides the hero with his gun, but that's not quite universal yet. Now, this strikes me as just about the most useless idea imaginable. In the first place, there might be some excuse for it if only one or two of the pulps used that type of cover; it's conceivable that some potential buyers might be attracted to it if some magazine used it and the others did not. But that's the point: they all, almost without exception, use some sort of variant on that basic idea. Check back over past issues of Thrilling Wonder or Amazing, for instance, and see for yourself just how much of a regular practice it is. And so it's now at the point where a cover on a fantastic without the gun, monster and girl stands out. And I believe that when such a cover comes along, it actually helps sales of that magazine, just because it's different. A case to cite might be the first issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. According to Hornig, the first issue of it sold so will that another one was rushed through within a few months; SFQ actually is being published more frequently than his two bi-monthlies. And yet that first issue had almost everything against it from the start -- a price of 25c for less pages than you get in most 20c magazines; few illustrations; and a rather weighty lead novel. If sales of it actually were as high as claimed (and quick publication of the next issue wasn't just because they got rights to the novels for a mere pittance) I challenge anyone to tell what, outside of the cover, made people buy it. (It couldn't have been the fact that the lead novel was a reprint one; that fact was very carefully concealed in the blurb.) That same holds true of the oldest-fantasy-magazine-without-a-change-in-publishers-today, Astounding. While the gun-monster-and-girl plague has affected it at times, on the whole it has been relatively free from them on the covers,
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