Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Ace-High Western November 1945

Since all of my favorite authors have had the courtesy not to die in the last week, we return to our survey of the old pulp magazines. The Magazine of the Week is the November 1945 issue of Ace-High Western, one of the Western pulps.

I am not a big collector of Westerns, but I acquired the Magazine of the Week because the lead story, "Barb Wire Brings Bullets!", is by Clifford D. Simak, one of my favorite Golden Age science fiction writers (featured in one of my "Neglected Master" book reviews: A Choice of Gods), another example of how freely the pulp writers crossed genre barriers. I also liked the wonderfully vibrant cover on the Magazine of the Week. Most of the Western pulps distinguished themselves from the other pulp genres with less garish, higher quality cover art, and what fun is that?

Westerns were among the most popular of the pulp magazine genres -- witness the fact that Ace-High Western ran for 30 years, while its sister magazine Ace-High Detective lasted all of nine issues. Unlike science fiction, however, it is not accurate to say that the pulp magazines created Westerns as a genre. Westerns became a distinct genre during the heyday of the dime novels in the 19th Century, for example the Deadwood Dick dime novel that was our January 23 Book of the Week.

Westerns have declined in readership over the years, but still linger as a discrete publishing category, largely thanks to the continuing popularity of Louis L'Amour. Louis L'Amour is another author who established his career in the pulp magazines, usually writing under the pseudonym Jim Mayo. It is ironic that L'Amour arguably saved the Western genre from extinction, since he started out primarily in a different pulp genre, then switched to Westerns as that genre disappeared. His original genre of choice was perhaps the most important genre of the pulp era, but it no longer exists as a separate publishing category. Next week's Magazine of the Week will be an example of that lost genre.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Selected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe

The Book of the Week is the Armed Services Edition of Selected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1945.

Like Mary Shelley last week, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a great influence on two different genres (three, if you count poetry as a separate genre). He is best remembered today for his horrific imagery, which inspired later horror writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, but he is also credited with inventing the modern detective story, beginning with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

The Armed Services Edition run of paperback books was printed between 1943 and 1947, exclusively for distribution to American servicemen overseas. A huge number of these books were printed and so many are still in existence, but they are difficult to find in good condition - American G.I.s were notoriously rough on their books, being understandably preoccupied with other concerns such as not getting their asses shot off. Copies in fine condition of the most desirable ASE titles, including The Adventures of Superman and Tarzan of the Apes, thus command very high prices.

The peculiar sideways format of ASE books resulted from the fact that the American publishers who agreed to make these books at well below their usual profit margins as part of the war effort (at the request of Army Librarian Ray Trautman - any relation?), used presses designed for magazines. These presses required wide paper, which then had to be cut into squat little rectangles in order to be small enough to fit in a G.I.'s pocket. Why didn't they have paperback presses, you ask? Because mass-market paperbacks were still a very new concept in the early 1940's - indeed, the success of the ASE program helped the idea to catch on in the late 40's and early 50's. Next week's Book of the Week will be the very first mass-market paperback, Pocket Book #1.