Saturday, April 16, 2011

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Gunsmoke, June 1953

I'm fudging a little this time, because GUNSMOKE was a digest magazine, not a pulp.  But the authors in this issue (the first issue of GUNSMOKE's very short run) are outstanding:  Noel Loomis, Nelson Nye, Frank O'Rourke, A.B. Guthrie Jr., Evan Hunter, Jack Schaefer, Steve Frazee, Robert Turner, and Elmore Leonard.  Whew!  With contributors like that, how did this magazine fail?
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12 comments:

Matthew P. Mayo said...

Wow, I'd never heard of this magazine. What a line-up, indeed. I wonder if copies are still floating around....

11:35 AM, April 16, 2011
James Reasoner said...

I suspect that copies are hard to come by. I believe there was also an "annual" issue, which was actually just the two regular issues bound together.

12:35 PM, April 16, 2011
Thomas Block said...

Hi James,

there's an "annual" indeed. I'm very happy to own it. The most incredible story is "The man who had no thumbs" by Noel Loomis. Its the grittiest piece of dark and noir western fiction you could come by.
Best regards

Thomas from Germany

3:00 PM, April 16, 2011
James Reasoner said...

Thomas,
The Loomis story sounds really good. I wonder if it's included in the collection of his stories that Leisure published a couple of years ago. I'll have to look into that.

6:01 PM, April 16, 2011
Suresh Ramasubramanian said...

@thomas block -

"The man who had no thumbs" - I wonder if that's where JT Edson thought up one of his last characters - Waxahachie Smith .. texas ranger (what else) both of whose thumbs were amputated by a corrupt doctor in the pay of the villian.

So the guy gets himself a colt modified into a slip gun (no triggers, you snap the hammer back to fire) and a pump action colt lightning carbine - again, no triggers and fired by pumping the action.

Was this Loomis story similar?

6:47 AM, April 17, 2011
beb said...

People who quibble over whether a magazine is a pulp or not depending on its size are really out of their gords. The pulp is an all-fiction magazine of a certain type of fast-paced, hard-pounding action. It doesn't matter whether the magazine is pulp, digest or bedsheet sized (or even newspaper sized). it's the type of stories not the particular priting press it was printed on that determined whether it was a pulp.

2:13 PM, April 18, 2011
Richard Heft said...

James: "The man Who Had No Thumbs" is included in HEADING WEST, edited by Bill Pronzini. It's also included in BAR 6, a paperback collection published in 1956.

3:58 PM, April 18, 2011
James Reasoner said...

Thanks for the info. HEADING WEST had a paperback edition from Leisure a few years ago, so I'll bet it's pretty easy to find. I'll be keeping my eyes open!

4:07 PM, April 18, 2011
Richard Heft said...

I just ordered the Leisure Books PB of HEADING WEST for four bucks from Amazon Marketplace. And the BAR 1 - 6 series of western short stories, edited by Scott Meredith, appears to be hardback and not PB.

4:14 PM, April 18, 2011
Anonymous said...

Hmm. I leapt up at Mr. Heft's mention that the Loomis story was in Bar 6. But when I pulled that fine old paperback out of the archives I find that, while it has a Loomis story in it, the story is not The Man Who Had No Thumbs.
The Loomis tale in Bar 6 is called It Takes a Tough Hombre and the protagonist is just that. But he has thumbs.

The "Bar" series of western anthologies are fine stuff-- right out of the Gunsmoke era when pulp authors were still serving up action-oriented western short stories, but adding an extra richness of theme and character.

John Hocking

1:00 PM, April 19, 2011
Richard Heft said...

My error, it appears to be in Bar 5.

4:46 PM, April 19, 2011
Walker Martin said...

Peter Enfantino has just posted an excellent article discussing GUNSMOKE magazine, story by story. Check out http://barebonesez.blogspot.com

6:51 AM, April 22, 2011

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