Classic Pulp

DEATH STRIKES AGAIN

[4/6] In a town gripped by a hideous plague, Paul Lawton races against madness and time to save the woman he loves from a fate written in green fire and death.

But when the dead rise and the living vanish into the swamp, the line between man and monster dissolves in a nightmare of horror and revenge!

THE DEAD RETURN

[3/6] When the green plague tightens its grip on Rillwood, vengeance rises from the grave with arrows and blood-soaked warnings!

Paul Lawton faces madness, murder, and a terror from beyond the veil that no man—or corpse—can escape!

ANCIENT ARROWS

[2/6] From the blighted heart of Blackwater Swamp comes a nightmare of deathless tribes and ghastly sacrifice!

When Paul Lawton’s fevered wound turns green and a woman’s body hangs riddled with ancient arrows, the swamp’s unholy secrets crawl once more into the light of day!

IT BEGINS

[1/6] From the black, stinking depths of Blackwater rises a horror the Wampanoags dared not name!

When Paul Lawton’s camera catches the ghastly truth—a human face behind the green glow—madness and murder slither from the slime to claim the living!

Horror Stories was Popular Publications’ most unabashed “weird-menace” showcase, launched in January 1935 as a sister to Terror Tales and Dime Mystery Magazine and ending in April 1941. Conceived under editor Rogers Terrill, the magazine codified the pulps’ shudder formula: an apparent supernatural outrage, relentless peril, and ultimately a (barely) plausible human explanation.

Its appeal was intensified by lurid covers—often by John Newton Howitt—whose tableaux of bondage, masks, and mad science became a visual shorthand for the genre’s feverish stakes.

Across its run, Horror Stories courted specialists in menace and momentum: Hugh B. Cave, Arthur J. Burks, Arthur Leo Zagat, Norvell W. Page, and Ray Cummings. The blend of breathless pacing and stagey shock made it a newsstand phenomenon in 1935, monthly at first and then bimonthly from 1936 through its wartime demise.

Within the Popular Publications line, it functioned as the purest expression of Terrill’s “mystery-horror-credibility” rule, pushing physical hazard and eroticized threat as far as censors and readers would tolerate, yet keeping the solutions rooted in human depravity rather than ghosts.

Historically, the magazine matters for crystallizing the weird-menace aesthetic at its peak, training a generation of writers in compressed, high-torque storytelling and providing iconic imagery that later bled into 1940s crime and 1950s horror comics.

Today its issues—especially 1935–1937 numbers—are prized by collectors for content and cover art; and its tales remain case studies in how pulp technique manufactures dread: the swift hook, the escalating trap, and the last-page unmasking that converts the monstrous into the monstrous-human.

Here are my five standout tales from Horror Stories

“Her Lover — Death!” — Wyatt Blassingame — January 1935.

A marquee piece from the inaugural issue that fixed the magazine’s house style of feverish menace with rational unwind.

“Mate for a Monster” — Hugh B. Cave — March 1935.

Early cornerstone by one of the line’s most prolific masters; repeatedly cited in contents lists and reprints.

“Death Rocks the Cradle” — John H. Knox — October 1935.

A fan-favorite Knox showcase that appears front-and-center on dealer and reprint notes for this issue.

“The Dead Hate the Living” — Wayne Rogers — December 1936–January 1937.

The lead story in the winter double-date number; its unforgettable title keeps echoing in later horror culture.

“The Mole Men Want Your Eyes” — Frederick C. Davis — April–May 1938.

Notorious even among shudder-pulp aficionados; later issued as a chapbook and often singled out in histories.

HE MAY BE AFTER YOU!

As chilling a masterpiece of psychological derangement as any story published in an American magazine in the 20th century!

Black Mask debuted in April 1920, launched by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan to help subsidize their higher-brow monthly The Smart Set. 

In its earliest years it ran a grab-bag of adventure, romance, and occult yarns, but the magazine’s identity snapped into focus when Joseph T. “Cap” Shaw took over as editor in 1926.

Shaw cultivated a spare, kinetic prose style and a stable of writers—Dashiell Hammett, Earl Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebbel—that forged the hard-boiled idiom and the modern private-eye template. 

Shaw's 1926–1936 tenure is widely seen as the magazine’s golden age.

After Shaw’s resignation in 1936, Fanny Ellsworth steered the magazine toward more subjective, psychologically driven crime fiction and brought in voices like Cornell Woolrich and Steve Fisher.

Popular Publications acquired Black Mask in 1940, installing Kenneth S. White as editor; the pulp finally ceased publication in 1951, with the brand and backlist later absorbed by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and periodically revived in anthologies and reissues.

Black Mask’s significance is hard to overstate: it incubated serials later issued as landmark novels (from Red Harvest to The Maltese Falcon), set the tone for American noir on page and screen, and professionalized a fast, streetwise realism that still shapes crime writing today.

Here's a somewhat subjective list of the top 5 black mask stories!

Number 5. “Finger Man” — Raymond Chandler, October 1934.

This is vintage early Chandler—it has FIRST-PERSON BITE, crooked politics, and the moral weather that soon becomes Philip Marlowe’s world.

4. “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” — Raymond Chandler, December 1933.

Chandler’s print debut; the template for his wise, weary voice and the Hollywood-corruption vein he’d mine for decades.

3. “Knights of the Open Palm” — Carroll John Daly, June 1923.

First Race Williams story; establishes the shoot-first hard-boiled private eye and pits him against the Klan—hugely influential.

At number 2 is “Red Harvest” (Part 1: “The Cleansing of Poisonville”) — Dashiell Hammett, November 1927.

The Continental Op’s gang-war clean-up; a proto-noir masterpiece of institutional rot and ruthless tactics.

You can listen to our pilot episode for our Continental Op SERIES right here on the Pulp Preservation Project podcast.

And the number one story HAS TO BE Sam Spade’s debut, “The Maltese Falcon” (Part 1) — Dashiell Hammett, September 1929.

This serial is TRULY "the stuff that dreams are made of."

It is the story that crystalized hard-boiled detection and became one of crime fiction’s canonical novels, not to mention an iconic movie. 

Hammett's style continues to influence contemporary crime novelists. Writers like James Ellroy and Sara Paretsky are heirs to the hardboiled tradition that Hammett pioneered.

FLESH v. METAL

Hunted by machine-men and betrayed by science, one father and son hold the only key to humanity’s survival.

Can flesh and blood outwit Atrakin, the immortal metal tyrant who would rule the universe?

Super Science Stories was a pulp science fiction magazine first published in March 1940 by Popular Publications, a company well-known for its wide range of pulp titles. The magazine was created at the request of Doubleday’s paperback line, which needed a steady flow of science fiction content for reprints in their Better Little Books series.

Edited by the legendary Donald A. Wollheim in its early years, the magazine offered space opera, adventure tales, and speculative stories from both established writers and new voices in the genre. Though not as prestigious as Astounding Science Fiction, it gained a loyal readership thanks to its fast-paced storytelling and willingness to feature up-and-coming authors.

The magazine’s initial run lasted from 1940 until 1943, when wartime paper shortages forced Popular Publications to suspend it. It was revived in 1949 and ran under the same publisher until 1951, with a brief final return from 1959 to 1960 under Feature Publications.

Across these periods, Super Science Stories played an important role in shaping the pulp science fiction landscape, offering early publication opportunities to writers such as Philip K. Dick, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov. Although never considered a top-tier title, its mix of bold cover art and sensational, action-oriented stories captured the adventurous spirit of mid-20th-century science fiction.

Here’s a Top 5 list of standout Super Science Stories tales:

1. “Robots Return” — Isaac Asimov (March 1940)

Asimov’s story, co-written with Frederik Pohl (under the pen name James MacCreigh), was among the earliest Super Science Stories pieces to gain recognition. It’s important because it foreshadowed themes of machine intelligence and destiny that would become central to Asimov’s career.

2. “Let the Ants Try” — Frederik Pohl (Winter 1949)

A short but striking tale of time travel and unintended consequences, this story remains one of Pohl’s best-remembered pulp contributions. It showed his sharp satirical edge, which would later define his career as both writer and editor.

3. “Adam Link’s Vengeance” — Eando Binder (Summer 1940)

Part of the popular “Adam Link” robot series, this installment carried on the saga of a sympathetic artificial being. The series influenced later robot narratives (including Asimov’s) and was one of the magazine’s marquee attractions.

4. “Dark Mission” — Henry Kuttner (November 1940)

Kuttner was a prolific pulp talent, and this story combined space adventure with his knack for darker, psychological twists. It stood out for elevating pulp action into something moodier and more nuanced.

5. “Flight of the Starling” — A. E. van Vogt (May 1941)

One of van Vogt’s early appearances, this tale of interstellar conflict and vast cosmic stakes showcased the sprawling imagination that would make him one of the Golden Age’s most distinctive voices.

DEATH ALL AROUND

[2/2] As the death toll rises Edward V. King and Pat Lee race to solve the murders by levitation. Can they release New York from the grip of fear?

Our A.I. Repertory Theater Cast

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

Narrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Samuel A. Cranston

Patricia Lee  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bette Nance

Ed V King. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Benjamin Ackerman

Ivan  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mitrofan Kirillova

Yan Dimitri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louie Tinsdale

Girl  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nellie Vinson

Thug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quentin Margolies

Masked Man  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kevin Wendt

Audio production © 2025 Keith Brian Shaw

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

Source text is in the Public Domain