Thursday 6 April 2006

A bloody pulp

Before I was born...well the early 1970's there was a writer called James Herbet he written a book called The Rats which is now infamous it's abilty to make the skin crawl and has probably made a lot of money for rent-o-kill.
James Herbet's book was a massive succsess world wide selling millons of copies and it still sell strong to this very day.

Now he started out writing a type of horror called Pulp horror the kind of stuff that many fans of the U.S comic E.C would recognise.
Pulp horror is basicly for entertainmentit plenty of ghastly deeds,a troff full of gore and some dirty sex.
It's view as the most low brow form of horror litriture around people often disregaurd it as badly written and horribly concived.
I freely admit that after The Rats had been set upon the public there were many hack writers scribbling out paper backs with the promise of a quick few quid.
The problem is that amongst the slew of hacks and wittles scribes there were writers with obvious talent and love for the genre.

My foavourite pulp horror writer of all time is Guy N.Smith a man who never pretneded he wasn't in it for the money but he was also a writer with tremendious indsutry and knowledge of what the pblic wanted to read.
His most famous books were and still are his Crab nasties the basic premise being that humans are being attacked by a legion of well orginised and blood thirsty giant crabs.

...with a plot like that how can you not have fun reading his stuff since then Guy N.Smith has championed the pulp genre by writing over 80 titles that contain a host of grisley monstrousities and diabolical jernoys.
It has been said that one of his more famous works The Sucking Pit is THE ultimate pulp horror paperback even Stephen King himself endorse the work.

I have almost all of Guy N.Smiths books(they take up a lot of shelf space I can tell you) but I haven't got around to reading this one yet(currently reading Doomflight) so maybe I should.
So what I would say to anyone who wants to read the trashy horror books in todays supposedly high-brow world is that do it it's fun and you will find some extremely well written peices.
Also just like any diet reading is no different as long as you balance pulp horror with other works like Lord of The Flies,The Wasp Factory,I Am Legend e.t.c...you won't go far wrong.

2 comments:

  1. I'd like to see some more of this style of writing from you. You should develop it further.

    I quoted you in my blog the other day, I hope you don't mind!

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  2. wow! a quoted author! how marvelous to be in your circle of friends!

    :)

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