Classic Pulp

[2/8] Hurled into the blazing noonday of the earth’s hollow heart, two helpless captives are driven in chains toward the monstrous Mahars—winged overlords who rule Pellucidar with terror and slave-blood!

Produced and Directed by Keith Brian Shaw [human]

Our A.I. Repertory Theater Cast

Host . . . . . . . . . . . .  . Adam Stone 

David Innes . . . . . . . Benjamin Ackerman

Perry  . . . . . . . . . . . . Frederick McElhone

Dian the Beautiful . . Marjorie Belmont 

Ghak  . . . . . . . . . . . . Victor Glenn

Audio production © 2025 Keith Brian Shaw

A.I.R.T. actors created using elevenLabs.ai

Source text is in the Public Domain

[1/8] A runaway “iron mole” plunges two unsuspecting explorers into a hidden inner world where ravenous beasts, savage tree-folk, and a motionless sun hurl them headlong into screaming adventure!

Produced and Directed by Keith Brian Shaw [human]

Our A.I. Repertory Theater Cast

Host . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Stone

David Innes . . . . . . Benjamin Ackerman

Perry  . . . . . . . . . . . Frederick McElhone

Audio production © 2025 Keith Brian Shaw

A.I.R.T. actors created using elevenLabs.ai

Source text is in the Public Domain

Let’s talk about ALL-STORY—the magazine that quietly helped invent modern pop fiction. 

Frank Munsey launched The All-Story magazine in January 1905 as a companion to ARGOSY, and it quickly became a playground for imagination. 

By 1914, readers were hooked on fast-moving serials, so it switched from a monthly to a weekly and, after merging with The Cavalier, became All-Story Cavalier Weekly for about a year before settling on All-Story Weekly. 

The stories came at a breakneck pace—fantasy, romance, science fiction, adventure—all designed to keep readers desperate for the next installment.

What really makes All-Story special is how many legends it launched. Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced John Carter of Mars here, and not long after, Tarzan swung into the pages and straight into pop-culture history. 

A. Merritt built entire dream worlds out of words, and Johnston McCulley created Zorro—the original masked hero who set the mold for everyone from Batman to The Scarlet Pimpernel’s modern cousins.

Even mystery master Rex Stout passed through, experimenting with serialized storytelling before inventing Nero WOLFE. 

By the time All-Story Weekly merged into Argosy in 1920, it had already changed the rules of commercial fiction forever.

Here are 5 standout tales from the magazines:

1. "Under the Moons of Mars” - Edgar Rice Burroughs February through July 1912. 

This is where it all began for John Carter—an ordinary man flung to Mars, sword in hand, leaping across red deserts and falling for a princess. Pure pulp magic!

2. “Tarzan of the Apes” - Edgar Rice Burroughs October 1912. 

Tarzan’s first swing into print turned one issue into publishing gold. It’s adventure, identity, and myth all rolled into one!

3. “The Moon Pool” - A. Merritt June 22, 1918. 

A glowing doorway to another world, lush and terrifying, filled with strange light and stranger beings. Merritt’s prose made fantasy feel cosmic!

4. “THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO” - Johnston McCulley August 9 throughSeptember 6, 1919.

Zorro makes his masked debut, charming by day and slashing justice by night. It practically invented the swashbuckling hero we still love!

5. "A PRIZE FOR PRINCES” - Rex Stout May 2 through 30, 1914.

Before Nero Wolfe, Stout wrote this high-stakes romantic adventure packed with political intrigue and moral tension. Proof that pulps could also aim for sophistication.

We did this just for fun on our season hiatus. It's the first appearance of Zorro from All-Story Magazine.

Please let us know if you's like us to do the whole story this coming season.

Enjoy!

Coming November 13th!

Introducing Classic pulp Stories

GRANDMA NEVER DRANK WHISKEY

When Jock Stanford bets the company on a flashy new speedboat, old Chugger Brown turns back to a forgotten mahogany relic—“Nell,” the lady of yesterday.

Can an aging boat, souped up with forbidden power, out-race a cutthroat rival and save them all—or will she splinter like a tree in a storm?

Adventure magazine debuted in November 1910 from The Ridgway Company (a Butterick subsidiary); the imprint changed to Butterick Publishing Company in October 1926, then to Popular Publications in July 1934, and the magazine continued—through several format shifts—until 1971.

What made Adventure special wasn’t only longevity but ambition: under editor Arthur S. Hoffman (1912–1927) it became a rigorously fact-minded market for historically and geographically “correct” tales, ran innovative reader departments (“The Camp-Fire,” “Ask Adventure”), went to a three-times-a-month schedule at its peak, and built an international audience that included Theodore Roosevelt. In October 1935, Time famously saluted it as “The No. 1 Pulp.”

Beyond sheer thrills, Adventure was a proving ground for writers who treated far-flung settings with reportorial care—Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, H. Bedford-Jones, Rafael Sabatini, Georges Surdez, Gordon MacCreagh, Arthur O. Friel, and many more.

The magazine’s pages mixed robust serials with standalone novellas, nurtured ongoing cycles like Lamb’s Cossacks and Mundy’s historical epics, and cultivated unusually engaged reader participation through classifieds like “Wanted-Men and Adventurers” and the “Lost Trails” column. The result was a pulp with a reputation for quality and authenticity that outlasted most rivals.

Here are five standout tales from Adventure magazine:

1. "Tros of Samothrace” — Talbot Mundy, Adventure, February 10, 1925.

Launches Mundy’s anti-Caesar epic—historical adventure at its boldest, and a signature demonstration of the magazine’s appetite for big, meticulously researched serials.

2. "Khlit” — Harold Lamb, Adventure, November 1, 1917.

The first story of Lamb’s gray-bearded Cossack sets the tone for a cycle whose lean prose, cultural breadth, and on-the-ground detail influenced generations of adventure and fantasy writers.

3. "The Pathless Trail” — Arthur O. Friel, Adventure, serialized from October 10, 1921 to November 10, 1921.

A landmark Amazon-jungle saga whose field-experience feel epitomizes Adventure’s “you-are-there” realism and helped cement Friel’s reputation as the pulp’s premier explorer-story hand.

4. "The Green Splotches” — T. S. Stribling, Adventure, January 3, 1920.

A much-reprinted early science-fiction classic about an alien outpost in South America—evidence that Adventurecould stretch beyond pure swashbuckling into idea-driven speculative fiction.

5. "Don Diego Valdez” — Rafael Sabatini, Adventure, June 18, 1921.

An early Captain Blood tale; its presence in Adventure showcases the magazine’s ability to attract top-tier historical romancers and feed material into later landmark novels.

PAIN-MAD VENGEANCE

[6/6] Trapped in an underground hell of disease and death, Paul Lawton turns his torment into fury to face the monstrous master of the plague!

In a climax of fire and madness, the green horror is unmasked—and the true face of evil stares back from beyond the grave! 

MASTER OF MONSTERS

[5/6] Dragged into the heart of the swamp, Paul Lawton faces the ghastly truth behind the plague—a nightmare kingdom ruled by a man who has become a monster!

As living corpses close in and the mad surgeon reveals his hideous revenge, Lawton’s only hope lies between love, horror, and the blazing fires of hell itself!