RICHARD DEMING – The Sock-It-to-Em Murders. The Mod Squad #3. Pyramid X-1922, paperback original; 1st printing, December 1968.

   While the job of translating the TV program to book form is professional enough job, especially given the lack of time allowed, and while the outer essence of the characters is there, what it is that makes the show successful is not.

   But then, the TV programs seem to be content lately with putting Peter, Linc and Julie into exotic locations than taking advantage of their ability to communicate with youth, at the same time as they are finding themselves.

   In this book, the title of which means nothing, they are assigned to undercover work in a factory troubles with sabotage and industrial espionage, We get all the details of plant work, but nothing more meaningful, The solution works out clearly enough, but it would not have been difficult to write this without involving the Mod Squad at all.

Rating: ***

MEET ME AFTER THE SHOW. 20th Century Fox, 1951. Betty Grable, Macdonald Carey, Rory Calhoun, Eddie Albert. Screenplay:Richard Sale & Mary Loos. Director: Richard Sale.

   A rift develops between the star of a Broadway musical and her producer-director husband. When amnesia strikes, she heads straight for Miami, with seven years missing from her life – or so she says.

   Pure corn. On the other hand, Betty Grable seems ten times the glamorous movie star in this creaky vehicle than she did seven years earlier, in Pin-Up Girl [reviewed here]. Her strength was in musical comedy, and she made the most of it.

 JAMES SAVAGE – Girl in a Jam. PI Chuck Merrick. Avon T-356, paperback original, 1959. [Cover art said to be by Ernest Chiriacka.]

   This is probably PI Chuck Merrick’s only recorded case, and Al Hubin doesn’t even seem to know about this one. [This oversight has most assuredly been corrected by now.] He works for a large agency centered in Memphis, but this case takes him down to a small town in Georgia.

   Where his client is the female head of an electronics firm being plagued by sabotage. She is young, beautiful, has a graduate education, and on the front cover she is wearing a brassiere, Merrick calls he “Baby,” tucks her into bed and goes out to solve the case.

RANDALL GARRETT – Too Many Magicians. Lord Darcy #1. Doubleday, hardcover, 1967. Previously serialized in Analog SF, Aug-Nov 1966. Curtis, paperback, 1969. Ace, paperback, September 1979.

   Any number of writers have been successful at blending crime and science fiction, but no one has done it better than Randall Garrett in his Lord Darcy series. On the one hand, the Lord Darcy stories are meticulous science-fictional extrapolations — tales of an alternate-universe Earth in the 1960s in which the Plantagenets have maintained their sway, a king sits on the throne of the Western World, and not physics but thaurnaturgic science (magic, that is) is the guiding field of knowledge. On the other hand, they are pure formal mysteries of the locked-room and impossiblecrime variety, ingeniously constructed and playing completely fair with the reader.

   Too Many Magicians is the only Lord Darcy novel, and so delightful and baffling that a 1981 panel of experts voted it one of the fifteen all-time best locked-room mysteries. When Master Sir James Zwinge, chief forensic sorcerer for the city of London, is found stabbed to death in a hermetically sealed room at the Triennial Convention of Healers and Sorcerers, it seems no one could have committed the crime; indeed, there is no apparent way in which the crime could have been committed.

   Enter Lord Darcy, chief investigator for His Royal Highness, the duke of Normandy, and Darcy’s own forensic sorcerer, Master Sean O’Lochlainn. Using a combination of clue gathering, observation, ratiocination, and magic, Darcy and Master Sean sift through a labyrinth of hidden motives and intrigues and solve the case in grand fashion.

   This truly unique detective team also appears in eight novelettes, which can be found in two collections — Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981). The former volume contains one of Anthony Boucher’s favorite stories, the wonderfully titled “Muddle of the Woad.”

   These, too, are clever crime puzzles; these, too, are rich in extrapolative history and the lore of magic; and these, too, are vivid and plausible portraits of a modem world that could exist if Richard the Lion-Hearted had died from his arrow wound in the year 1199- — a world that resonates to the clip-clop of horse-drawn hansoms and carriages (for of course automobiles were never invented) and through which the shade of Sherlock Holmes happily prowls.

———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

GEOFFREY HOUSEHOLD – Face to the Sun. Michael Joseph, UK. hardcover, 1988.

   
   Our light fingered hero is a young Englishman Edmund Hawkins, a descendant, on the “wrong side of the sheets” of British privateer Admiral Sir John Hawkins, and while Edmund’s crime is committed in that most British of institutions, Harrods, like his ancestor he is in fairly short order going to by laying siege to the Spanish Main.

   Personable and intelligent with a degree to his name his prospects seemed fairly good, starting his professional life earlier in a luxury Spanish resort, and then getting a fabulous job with the President of an African country who took a liking to him. But then he said the wrong thing to the wrong Chief of Police and he found himself no longer collecting his fabulous salary, fleeing the country with only the clothes on his back, and landing back in England with no money, no luggage, no family or influential friends, and no references.

   When his stomach and spine start to get acquainted, he decides to try his hand at petty crime while his clothes are still respectable enough to give him a shot at getting away with it and spies two women at lunch at Harrods with a bag that a man could pass off as a valise.

   At first he is quite pleased with the take, a tidy sum of cash, but then he notices what else is in the bag, a rather large emerald in a gold setting. At this point his life in crime starts to spiral out of control.

   Face to the Sun is the final novel of legendary thriller writer Geoffrey Household whose career spanned from the 1930’s to the 1980’s with career highlights like Rogue Male, A Rough Shoot, Watcher by the Threshold, Fellow Passenger, The Courtesy of Death, Dance of the Dwarfs, Rogue Justice, and The Sending across that long period in the spotlight.

   Final novels are, as lovers of books know, often troublesome things. Most of us have been burned by some favorite writer not quite being up to their best on their later outings, particularly that tricky last book. Raymond Chandler (who attended the same school as Household and P. G. Wodehouse and C. S. Forester, Dulwich) and Playback, Ian Fleming and The Man With the Golden Gun, Dorothy L. Sayers and Busman’s Honeymoon are examples. It’s an area filled with potential land mines, the writer’s age, health, just seeming out of date or out of step with the times, the creator sick to death of the creation, even reader expectations can all sabotage the process. Sometimes, as in the case of Chandler, age, health, drinking, grief, and the pressure to inject more violence and sex into his work all combined.

   Luckily Household manages to bypass all that with an entertaining read in his picaresque mode, with a sort of Ealing Comedy crossed with Graham Greene style adventure, in the tongue in cheek mode of Fellow Passenger, The Life and Times of Bernardo Brown, Olura, and his short fiction such as “Brandy for the Parson”.

   In short order Edmund will learn the women he stole the jewel from is the Evita-like wife of the Peron style dictator of a South American country and her daughter, Lady McMurdie. He will also quickly discover that the gem in question, la Punchada, is a treasured relic whose possession bestows with it the trust of the majority of the people. Lose the emerald, a copy of an Incan symbol, and lose the country.

   After meeting with the women, who would rather no one knows it was stolen, to arrange a quiet bit of blackmail to restore his failed prospects Edmund finds himself kidnapped by the beautiful Teresa and the not particularly loyal opposition. He escapes from that and meets with Lady McMurdie’s Scottish archaeologist husband, Sir Hector, who admits he married his wife in part for money and suggests Edmund come along with them back to South America as a sort of baby sitter to the emerald.

   Hector proves one of those familiar characters in Household’s fiction who is charming, likable, and not entirely honest about his motives, but then neither is our hero at every turn.

   Edmund, thinking it might be safer than waiting to be captured and tortured again, agrees and finds himself caught in a three way revolution replete with a likable Communist, the dangerous but amorous Teresa, the President and his Wife, threats to life and limb, torture, and eventual status as something of a mix between a Conradian hero and a South American T. E. Lawrence, and at least one big friendly dog.

   Household had one of the most successful careers in the genre over decades mixing a real gift for suspense with an eye for both terror and comedy. He delved in horror, fantasy, science fiction, and of course the thriller and never really left his comfort zone of the adventure story. His seven league boots as a younger man meant he was as comfortable in Spain, the Middle East, South America, and Africa as the English countryside, and his early reading of Stevenson, Conrad, and John Buchan meant his grounding in the novel of chase and pursuit and portrayal of one lone man pitting his wits against an army of pursuers was superior to most.

   It is there, in the portrait of a man on the run, hunted yet determined to fight back that Household holds his own with Stevenson and Buchan the two Scots masters of that most feral of story. Grim, romantic, and wild in terrain and weather reading their work is an almost physical ordeal, best done in a comfy chair or bed while the winds howl outside. Nothing is quite as satisfying as nursing a warm drink while one of their protagonists suffers wet, cold, and fear in our stead.

   The genre will not see the likes of Household, Canning, Innes, Lyall, MacKinnon, MacLean, Higgins, and Bagley again, I fear, but they left behind a small library of classic books, and Household managed to go out on the same professional high note that marked his career from The Third Hour (1937) to Face to the Sun (1988).

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WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Twentieth Century Fox, 1945. Fred MacMurray, Joan Leslie, June Haver, Gene Sheldon, Anthony Quinn. Director; Gregory Ratoff.

   A young man classified 4-F finds a magic lamp and wishes himself into uniform – in George Washington’s army at Valley Forge. He also ends up saving Christopher Columbus from mutineers and is suckered into buying Manhattan from the Indians.

   Fred MacMurray’s clumsy mannerisms are engaging but wear thin surprisingly quickly. As a singer, though, well, he makes a fine comedian. This ditsy approach to history is good for a laugh or two, but it’s also terminally silly.

CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – The Corpse in Oozak’s Pond. Professor Peter Shandy #6. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1987; paperback, March 1988.

   The annual Groundhog Day celebration at Balaclava Agricultural College is disrupted by the discovery of a body floating in Oozak’s Pond (up above the methane plant). Since Chief Ottermole is more than willing, Professor Peter Shandy has another case to solve.

   There are soon two more bodies, and a lawsuit against the college, all involving the many (many) members of the Buggins family. This is a “laugh out loud” sort of book, but the ending is such a muddle you would not want to read this as detective story at all.

DAMON KNIGHT, Editor – Orbit 3, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, June 1968. Cover art by by Paul Lehr, Berkley S1608, paperback, September 1968. Cover art also by Lehr.

   Damon Knight has gone off the deep end, I’m afraid, in his search for literary excellence in SF. Of these nine selections, two have straightforward stories to go with their messages, and of the other seven, only one has any message which seems important enough to be reading about. Maybe we should be grateful that most of these  others are the shorter ones. ***

RICHARD WILSON “Mother to the World.” Novelette. The story. combined with personal diaries, of the last couple in the world, with an added twist. It is well that Martin Rolfe has a basic love and understanding for animals, since Siss, while a normal woman in all other aspects, has the mentality of an eight-year-old. Consideration slowly becomes love, as we watch, hoping that nothing happens to spoil it, and a family is begun. A family that may have a future. (5)

RICHARD McKENNA “Bramble Bush.” Novelette. Knight was right the first time: that is, I did not understand a word either. It is remarkable that an author makes no concessions to the reader in the interpretations of his visions. Here is an example, however, with theories of the fourth dimension. (0)

JOANNA RUSS “The Barbarian.” Novelette. Alyz meets a fat man who may or may not be a time traveler, but who is someone who thinks he is the master of his machines, yet who in his foolishness is inferior to Alyx. Confusing story, but a message lurks somewhere. (4)

GENE WOLFE “The Changeling.” Knight doesn’t understand this, shall I argue? The [relatively] high rating is based not on the possibility there might be a meaning, but on the reminiscences of small town life. (2)

DORIS PITKIN BUCK “Why They Mobbed the White House.” Why indeed? I thought this story might explain. Something about computers and income tax. (1)

KATE WILHELM “The Planners.” A glimpse into the life of the head of a research project which is trying to stimulate the intelligence of monkeys. But a glimpse is all. (2)

PHILIP JOSE FARMER “Don’t Wash the Carats,” What does it mean if a “literary Rorschach test” is nothing but nonsense to you? (0)

JAMES SALLIS “Letter to a Young Poet.” Well, that’s what it is. What did you expect? (3)

JOHN JAKES “Here Is Thy Sting.” Novelette. A newspaperman discovers a scientific project probing the experience of death from a qualitative approach. Of the two essential parts, the sleep and the pain, which is it that mankind fears? And if the fear of the pain were to be eliminated, what would be the effect on the future of mankind? And why was this story described as funny? Or amusing? ****½

SISU. Finnish, 2022. Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolin. Written and directed by Jalmari Helander.

   A top-notch, gritty, down-and-dirty action film — mostly.

   Sisu  opens in 1944 as the Germans are being driven out of Finland in a scorched-earth retreat, destroying roads, bridges, farms, villages… well, pretty much everything and anyone in their path.

   Far away from all this, Aatami (Tommila) a Finnish ex-commando has shrugged off the war and gone prospecting, He strikes gold, loads up his riches, and heads back to Civilization, only to find Civilization ain’t what it used to was, and getting there won’t be no picnic neither. He’s stopped by retreating German soldiers determined to kill him and take his gold. He fights back and….

   …and that’s pretty much the plot here, folks: the Nazis chase, shoot, stab, drown, and hang Aatami, and eventually get his gold. Then he chases, shoots, stabs, etc. the Nazis to get his gold back.

   To his credit, writer/director Helander keeps this grim enough to be almost not-unbelievable. Everyone in the movie is dirty, unshaven, lean and hungry. When Aatami gets wounded, he screams and bleeds convincingly, and when the bad guys get killed, it’s done with a seriousness that lends a certain significance to their brief moment of screen time and carries Sisu well beyond the sort of thing Tom Cruise does. Until…

   About fifteen minutes before the end credits scroll, someone decided to nuke the fridge, and about the time Aatami hitches a ride on the belly of an aging bomber plane, hanging on the handle of his miner’s pick, I began to feel a twinge of Damn Silliness. And when he emerges from a particularly explosive event, scathed but game, I could almost hear ghostly echoes of the theme from Mission Improbable   in the not-too-distant distance.

   But maybe I’m expecting too much. Sisu is just a movie, after all. ’Tain’t like it was an actual War, nor anything else to take seriously. It’s a fun movie, too, and one that does a capable job of entertaining a public raised on bread and circuses. But for a while there, it’s a film to be taken seriously, and enjoyed on a more mature level. And I kind of miss the movie they didn’t make of this.
   

   PulpFest 2025 got underway early on Wednesday evening, August 6, when the convention’s chairperson, Jack Cullers, opened the dealers’ room at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh — Cranberry for vendors to set up for the convention. Many PulpFest dealers took advantage of this early setup to load in their wares and socialize with friends.

   According to PulpFest’s marketing and programming director, Mike Chomko, the DoubleTree staff went above and beyond to have the hotel’s exhibition hall ready and waiting for the convention’s dealers. He recommends that all PulpFest vendors take advantage of the convention’s early set-up hours to prepare their exhibits for the convention’s official opening the next day.

   After the dealers’ room closed at 9 p.m., a small crowd gathered in the programming room for a showing of Frank Lloyd’s 1924 silent film adaptation of Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk. This year, PulpFest celebrated the sesquicentennial of the historical fiction writer’s birth. Although his work appeared predominantly in British magazines and hardcover, Sabatini’s fiction also ran in Adventure, The Cavalier, Top-Notch Magazine, and other periodicals.

   PulpFest 2025 officially opened on Thursday morning, August 7, with the arrival of more dealers for unloading and setup. Early-bird shopping began around 9 a.m. and continued until 4:45 p.m.

   This year’s dealers’ room sold out several months before the start of the convention. In order to accommodate additional dealers, PulpFest expanded into the hallway, just outside the main exhibition area. With more than twenty additional tables in the foyer, the convention had over 90 exhibitors with their displays covering more than 170 tables.

   Dealers with substantial pulp offerings included Adventure House, Ray Walsh’s Archives Book Shop, Steve Erickson’s Books from the Crypt, Doug Ellis & Deb Fulton, Heartwood Books & Art, Paul Herman, John McMahan, Peter Macuga, Phil Nelson, Sheila Vanderbeek, and Todd & Ross Warren. You could also find original artwork offered by Doug Ellis & Deb Fulton, George Hagenauer, Craig Poole, and others.

   In addition to pulps and original artwork, you could find digests, vintage paperbacks, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, first-edition hardcovers, genre fiction, series books, Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and pulp-related comic books, and more.

   Additionally, one could find pulp reprints and contemporary creations, including artwork, new fiction, and fanzines produced by Age of Aces, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Wayne Carey, Flinch! Books, Doug Klauba, Craig McDonald, Meteor House, Charles F. Millhouse, Brian K. Morris, Will Murray, Wayne Reinagel, The Shadowed Circle, Stark House, Steeger Books, Mark Wheatley, and others.

   New authors and publishers who attended their first PulpFest included Brian Belanger, Robert Mendenhall of Blue Planet Press, Allan Liska of Green Archer Comics, Duane Laflin, Joseph Nelson of Point of Impact Publishing, and Veritas Entertainment.

   The fifth annual PulpFest Pizza Party followed the closure of the dealers’ room at 5 p.m. About 80 pizzas were baked for the convention’s members, thanks to the generosity of PulpFest’s dealers. Since it was started in 2021, the annual pizza gathering has become a very popular fixture at PulpFest. The convention’s advertising director, Bill Lampkin, promises more “Pizza at PulpFest” gatherings in the years to come.

   Following opening remarks by chairman Cullers, the convention’s admirable programming line-up began with Bernice Jones & Cathy Wilbanks exploring Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ideas concerning manhood. Afterward, Ed Hulse discussed another birthday boy, Edgar Wallace. Known as “The King of the Thrillers,” 2025 also marked the 150th anniversary of the author’s birth.

   Tim King of The Shadowed Circle, and pulp historian and author Will Murray came up with a roster featuring the “Masters of Villainy,” part of the convention’s salute to the 90th anniversary of such villain pulps as Doctor Death and The Mysterious Wu Fang. Both debuted in 1935, along with Doctor Satan in Weird Tales.

   The convention’s Burroughs programming continued — ERB completed the trio of authors born in 1875 — with an entertaining foray into the world of Tarzan merchandising by writer and publisher Jim Beard. Next came a peek at Adventure magazine and the creators who made it “The No. 1 Pulp,” according to Time magazine. Tom Krabacher, Kurt Shoemaker, and, once again, Ed Hulse discussed the writers, departments, and particularly, editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman. It was these “masters” who made Adventure the best pulp on the newsstand.

   Thursday closed out with a showing of King Kong, the 1933 movie classic on which Edgar Wallace lent a hand. The author died while working on the film due to complications from undiagnosed diabetes.

   Despite a long day of buying and selling, and an evening packed with programming, many conventioneers gathered in the hotel lounge to talk and reminisce about their favorite authors, cover artists, and pulp characters long into the night. Late Thursday night was scheduled as a “Bronze Bash,” an informal gathering of the “Fans of Bronze,” many of whom helped to revive the long-defunct Doc Con, which took place at this year’s PulpFest.

   There was more buying and selling on Friday, August 8. Competing for attendees’ attention were three afternoon presentations. Authors John Bruening, Morgan Holmes, Craig McDonald, and Will Murray, with William Patrick Maynard moderating, got the ball rolling with a panel discussion concerning “Personal Demons and the Creative Mind.” Next came the 2025 “Flinch! Fest,” hosted by John C. Bruening & Jim Beard of Flinch! Books, followed by “The Universe According to Edgar Rice Burroughs,” a panel led by Christopher Paul Carey — director of publishing for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. — and Cathy Wilbanks, the organization’s Vice President of Operations. Joining them were writers Chris L Adams & Win Scott Eckert, both of whom have continued the popular creations of ERB. There was also a Burroughs-inspired art show hosted by Henry G. Franke III, co-founder of ERBFest and editor of The Burroughs Bulletin and The Gridley Wave.

   After the dinner break came more evening programming, beginning with a look at the “Masters of Men’s Adventure Magazines,” presented by Wyatt Doyle, one of the co-editors of “The Men’s Adventure Library.” Next came a pair of contemporary artists — Mark Wheatley and Doug Klauba — both inspired by ERB’s creations, who explored “The Masters of Tarzan Illustration.”

   The panelists for Farmercon XX also took to the stage to discuss “Tarzan the Time Traveler and Discourses on Doc.” Christopher Paul Carey & Win Scott Eckert explored Philip José Farmer’s novel, Time’s Last Gift, and the writings of the Science Fiction Grand Master that concerned Doc Savage. Morgan Holmes examined the historical fiction of Rafael Sabatini, while a conversation between Will Murray and filmmaker Ron Hill concerning the sixties revival of Lester Dent’s Doc Savage by Bantam Books closed out the programming.It was followed by a late-night showing of George Pal’s Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. Love it or hate it, 2025 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the pulp-inspired movie.

   Once again, there were more late-night gatherings in the DoubleTree’s lounge area. Friday night’s informal socializing was billed as “Fraternize at Farmercon.”

On Saturday, August 9, the dealers’ room opened again at 9 a.m. and brisk business continued. All told, 464 people passed through the entrance to the PulpFest 2025 dealers’ room, where they were tempted by 150 tables filled with thousands of pulp magazines, digests, vintage paperbacks, original art, and much more. But before entertaining, all shoppers had to pass through twenty or more additional tables in the foyer, including booths devoted to ERBFest and Doc Con, two of the “micro-conventions” that have associated with the annual PulpFest.

   Henry Franke’s “Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure” art show again tempted attendees to leave the dealers’ room to look at the displays inspired by the popular writer. “Pop Culture Archaeologist” Michael Stradford was also on hand to discuss actor and model Steve Holland, the man who “became” Doc Savage for James Bama and some of the other artists who painted the paperback covers for the Bantam Books series. Next came devoted Doc Savage fans, Ron Hill and Chris Kalb, with a look at George Pal’s film and its history and promotion. Closing out the afternoon programming was a “fan cut” of the film. It was a fitting close for Doc Con’s celebration of the golden anniversary of Pal’s Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze.

   After the close of the dealers’ room and the dinner break, came more evening programming, beginning with a look at PulpFest 2026, presented by committee members Cullers and Chomko. Afterward, the 2025 Munsey Award was presented to researcher, writer, and all-around good guy, John DeWalt. The Munsey Award recognizes an individual or organization that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.

   This year, a second award was presented: the Rusty Award, named after longtime Pulpcon organizer Rusty Hevelin. It was given to Ray Walsh, longtime dealer, convention organizer, and, with Robert Weinberg, publisher.

   Professor Garyn Roberts closed out this year’s programming with his memories of Ray Bradbury, the writer that he called a friend. Bradbury also happened to be a devoted fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

   Ending the evening was the convention’s Saturday night auction. It featured over 250 lots of material including a nice run of the large-sized Argosy from the early 1940s; over 50 issues of New Worlds Science Fiction, long the leading British science fiction magazine; 26 early issues of Weird Tales in good to very good condition; a complete set of Bantam’s Doc Savage paperbacks; several Arkham House first editions; a nice selection of Shadow pulps; the ultra-rare LA Bantam Book #13, Children’s Favorite Stories; a run of Who’s Who in Baseball from the 1930s; artwork by Michael Kaluta; and more.

   The highlights of the auction were two lots of Street & Smith’s People’s Magazine. Each of these sold for amounts far north of $1500. You’ll find the results of this year’s auction on the PulpFest website. Click the “2025 Auction” button at the top of the convention’s homepage.

   Once more, pulp fans socialized in the hotel’s lounge after the auction. Saturday’s informal gathering was billed as a “Barsoomian Bull Session.” Door prizes were available, thanks to Henry Franke, co-founder of ERBFest.

   This was the fourth time that PulpFest had hosted both Farmercon — which has been coming to PulpFest almost annually since 2011 — and ERBFest — a “convention within a convention” that began at PulpFest in 2021. Joining them was a third convention — Doc Con, a gathering of the fans of “The Man of Bronze.” It had been nearly a decade since the last Doc Con.

   According to PulpFest’s Mike Chomko and The Shadowed Circle’s Tim King, next year’s PulpFest will also be hosting a brand new convention: Shadow Con. We hope no one has been “clouding their minds” and that the rumor is true.

   Although the dealers’ room opened for a final time on Sunday, August 10, buying and selling opportunities were limited as dealers packed up and prepared for the drive home.

   PulpFest 2026 will take place July 30 through August 2 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh — Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. The convention will be celebrating the centennials of Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories. Both magazines premiered in 1926. You can learn more by visiting pulpfest.com.