A story, a force, a tale that means something

July 6, 2014 4:36 PM

The Pulp Magazines Project is an open-access digital archive of all-fiction pulp magazines from 1896-1946, such as The Argosy, Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales. In addition to the archive, it features a cover gallery, a collection of articles and contextual material (including "So What is Pulp?", publisher index card files, and an office dummy), and links to dozens of related or similar resources such as the Speculative Fiction Collection at Virginia Tech, the Anarchist Periodicals archive at Pitzer College, and the Digital Dada Library.
posted by Monsieur Caution (14 comments total)

I wish they had larger images of the covers. I want this one. But great collection. Thanks.
posted by benito.strauss at 4:41 PM on July 6, 2014

benito, image searches are your friend (results, source).

Otherwise, you can extract the images from the PDFs.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:40 PM on July 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also: amazing! And the enlargeable flash interface is great for previewing before downloading the full PDFs.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:44 PM on July 6, 2014

Absolutely brilliant, thankyou.
posted by dng at 6:03 PM on July 6, 2014

LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY'S CALL OF CTHULHU CAMPAIGN JUST GOT A LITTLE MORE DETAILED
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:11 PM on July 6, 2014 [6 favorites]

It looks like they have more covers than magazines. I can't find my favorite issue of Weird Tales in this list. Am I missing something? I guess not everything is scanned yet?
posted by benito.strauss at 6:17 PM on July 6, 2014

In July 2011, it began with a modest library of five representative first-generation titles from the early 1900s. As of April 2013, this number had grown to include over two hundred individual issues, representing sixty three different titles from the United States, England, and Australia. Over time, the archive will continue to expand, as new magazines are digitized, and new contextual materials added.

So, it's an ongoing effort.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:47 PM on July 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

BASKETBALL STORIES CONFIRMED FOR GREATEST MAGAZINE EVER

SORRY, OTHER MAGAZINES
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:28 PM on July 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, it's an ongoing effort.

Yep, they have an updates page and a blog for finding out what's been added lately. The Weird Tales page mentions that, although most of what's there is in the public domain, one of the Robert E. Howard stories was reprinted with permission, so I think they're proceeding carefully. This /r/printSF thread mentions a possible alternative that seems a bit extreme.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 8:47 PM on July 6, 2014

I wish they had larger images of the covers. I want this one. But great collection. Thanks.

That's a Margaret Brundage cover, and this collection of her work has a reproduction that might scan well, if other sources aren't usable. But I did a Google image search for "Weird Tales" "October 1933", selecting the option for size > 4 megapixels, and that turned up this result, among others.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:02 PM on July 6, 2014

Damn, Monsier Caution, that's excellent. I found a few at about 1000 pixels, but nothing as good as you did. There's a drink or two for you next time you're in Boston.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:15 PM on July 6, 2014

I learned something weird tonight.

The Cosmopolitan mentioned in the second link, the 1890s magazine? It is the very same Cosmo that now offers sex tips to bored housewives.
posted by JHarris at 10:03 PM on July 6, 2014

Oh man this is so great! I fell in love with the cover art of the science fiction pulps when I was a teenager and I always wanted to read the stories they illustrated (the goofier and more obscure the better). Now I have about a dozen pulps dating from the 30's to the 50's, but they're really fragile and not all that pleasant to read. PDFs are much nicer for my purposes.
posted by gamera at 12:31 AM on July 7, 2014

This is terrific, many thanks for the post! I always wanted to read the first issue of Amazing...
posted by languagehat at 8:05 AM on July 7, 2014