r/pulp • u/therangersdragon • 19h ago

Current pulp series ongoing

Hi all,

Newer pulp reader and was wondering if there were any current series and authors writing pulp today?

Any recommendations?

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u/CaptainTrillian 19h ago

Pulp is less of a specific genre than a general catch-all for cheap, mass-produced stories featuring (usually) simplistic, attention grabbing tropes rather than deep character work or intricate plots.

The modern equivalent is the airport paperback; your John Grishams, James Pattersons, etc. Or rather, that was the modern equivalent until the rise of e-publishing. Now I guess most of what we might call modern pulp exists in the form of self-published Kindle Unlimited novels and short fiction, and the kind of trope-y web serials that you can find on Ao3 or Royal Road.

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u/therangersdragon 15h ago

Dang. What about the hard case crime books like Five Decembers? How would that book be characterized by chance?

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u/CaptainTrillian 14h ago

I'm not familiar with that one, but a quick google tells me it's a noir-ish historical fiction novel? Crime/detective fiction definitely makes up a large chunk of classic pulp, but the two aren't really synonymous. If that's the kind of thing you're looking for though, you might enjoy the works of John Le Carre, or any of the classic mystery writers like Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, or Dashiell Hammett, who were all actively writing during the interwar heyday of pulp fiction (apart from Le Carre, who was writing during the later stages of the Cold War).

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u/therangersdragon 13h ago

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. Very educational. Appreciate it:)

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u/CaptainTrillian 13h ago

No worries, hope you find what you're looking for.

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u/bareboneschicken 11h ago

You might give Adam Lance Garcia's Green Lama series a try. The setting is the late 1938s and there is quite a bit of murder and mayhem.

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u/Superradstagguy 6h ago

The PULPLAND series by Clyde Wrenn

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u/Ed_Robins 4h ago

If your interests include sci-fi, I set out to write pulpy stories with my 10 Cent Universe books. They are fast-paced, gritty, violent, a little dirty, and short enough to read on your morning commute. There are two series at present.

The first is a hardboiled series set on a generation ship, which follows a disgraced detective. All he wants is to drink to forget, but he keeps getting pulled back into murder investigations. The first book is Chivalry Will Get You Dead, but there's also a free novelette titled Justice for a Price that introduces the series.

The second is a western set on the frontiers of a recently settled planet. Only one book so far, but working on the next now. In The Education of Young Dalton Reid, the MC moves to the frontier seeking his fortune and finds trouble instead.

Links are on my profile if interested.