DARK WORLDS CLUB: Your novel Dire Planet is one of the best Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired books I have ever read. How do you preserve the same action-filled flavor without becoming a pale imitation or pastiche?
JOEL JENKINS: I think the important thing for me was to recreate the excitement that I felt when I first encountered the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novels but to do so without slavishly following his storytelling formula. Though I borrowed or stole the concept of a misplaced earthling on Mars in a sword and science fiction setting, and stayed true to cliffhanger storytelling style that pulp writers developed so well, I was able to throw my own spin on things by turning a couple of ERB's conventions on their head and by using some more modern storytelling techniques—such as having a dual timeline that converges at the end of the tale.
Though Dire Planet and the subsequent novels Exiles of the Dire Planet, and Into the Dire Planet owe much to ERB I felt they needed to stand on their own—to be complete in and of themselves, without the reader requiring any knowledge of ERB's tales, and to exist in a fictional universe that was entirely their own.
DWC: Why should anyone want to write Pulp in this age of post-modern reconstructionism?
JJ: To put it simply, I write the kind of stories that I would enjoy reading. I like pulp-style stories a lot more than I like the experimental or avant-garde fiction of many modern authors. I like stories where you can tell who the hero is; I like stories that are crammed with imagination and action instead of hundreds of pages of padding.
This isn't to say that a pulp writer shouldn't be able to employ any number of storytelling techniques within the framework of an action-packed tale, but my feeling is that the story should come first; Allegory, symbolism, theme and anything else should be worked in so that they enhance rather than detract from the story.
DWC: If you could meet any Pulpster in history who would you want to sit and have coffee (or beer) with? Why?
JJ: I think it would have to be Robert E Howard, creator of Conan, Solomon Kane and King Kull, and I think I would prefer him sober, thank you. He's been the subject of so much debate and speculation that it would be an incredible opportunity to cut through all the spin and form a first-hand opinion.
There's been much debate about if L Sprague deCamp rode Howard's coattails for profit or whether or not he was instrumental in bringing about the popularity of Conan. I'd be interested in getting Howard's take on some of deCamp's back-handed compliments, the way deCamp and others have handled his legacy, and getting his opinion on some of the pastiche work that has been done, since his death, using the characters he created.
DWC: If a publisher was going to specialize in Pulp-descended fiction, what advice would you give them?
JJ: I would suggest that they make their fiction readable by a wider audience. Today, all bets are off, and the spicy tales of the pulp era are considered quaint in comparison to the stuff that comes off the mainstream presses.
One of the things about the pulps of the 1930's is that they were subject to the mores of the times. Authors limited profanity in their stories and broached taboo subjects in clever ways that were not so graphic that younger readers couldn't enjoy those tales—but in a way that an older, more astute reader might be able to pick up on the subtext. I think that some of that restraint might broaden the marketability of modern pulp-style stories.
DWC: What's new from Joel Jenkins and Pulpwork Press?
JJ: Despite the latest trend to vampires that are brooding and romantic, I prefer my vampires vicious and bloodthirsty—and that's what you get in Devil Take the Hindmost, my latest book from Pulpwork Press (available at pulpworkpress.com, amazon.com or in various digital formats at Fictionwise.com).
For 2009 Pulpwork plans on releasing two of my novels: The Nuclear Suitcase, a guns and guitars action novel set in the 1980's, and I've already had the pleasure of seeing the completed cover artwork by M.D. Jackson, who also did the fantastic cover for Dark Worlds #2 which illustrates a scene from “Lords of the Bitter Dark”. Incidentally, “Lords of the Bitter Dark” is an excerpt from my second novel which Pulpworks will release in 2009, Through the Groaning Earth. This is a dark fantasy novel which is a sequel to the already released Escape from Devil's Head.
Additionally, Pulpworks has plans for a digital pulp-style magazine with serialized stories and they have announced the impending release the latest Derrick Ferguson novel, Dillon and the Golden Bell—which is like a mixture of James Bond, Doc Savage, and Shaft.
DWC: What classic Pulp would you like to see made into a good movie?
JJ:
The cover for DIRE PLANET was painted by Mats Minnhagen.
G. W. Thomas has been published since 1987. He has appeared in over 400 publications including Writer's Digest, The Writer and Black October Magazine. His website is www.gwthomas.org
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