Columnist Mark Squirek delves deeper into the world of pulp revivals and talks with Haffner Press’s Stephen Haffner.

Classic pulp literature is undergoing a renaissance of public awareness. Many who come to pulps for the first time are struck by the vivid imagery and wild imagination behind science fiction stories that date back to a hundred years ago.  Others love discovering heroes such as The Spider, Doc Savage or The Green Lama for the first time. One of the biggest reasons for this upsurge in awareness is the ability of small presses to reprint the best that the genre had to offer.

Over the last decade Haffner Press has emerged as one of the most important reprint houses in the field of pulp literature. Since 1998 the publishing company has been printing archival, high-quality editions of classic pulp fiction as well as helping new fans discover some of pulp’s best writers. Today their compilations and hardcover editions are among the most celebrated reprints in the genre.

This year Haffner Press has one of their most ambitious publishing schedules yet. There are at least eight new titles on the docket including Volumes Four and Five of their Collected Works of Edmond Hamilton and The Collected Captain Future Volume Three.

This spring will see several other titles including Thunder in the Void, a collection of Henry Kuttner’s best work in science fiction. The stories are being reprinted from such classic pulp titles as Weird Tales, Astonishing Stories, Planet Stories and Super Science Fiction.

Stephen Haffner, the publisher of Haffner Press, took a few minutes out of his packed day to talk about some of the upcoming titles with Scoop. “2010 saw the publication of one of our fastest selling books yet, Terror in the House, The Early Kuttner Volume One. This collection of the author’s early forays into the supernatural, horror and science fiction is already close to selling out in its first printing.” Kuttner is a favorite of Haffner’s and his enthusiasm for the writer shows as he speaks of the upcoming Kuttner science fiction compilation, Thunder in the Void.

“These are Kuttner’s early space opera stories, including a never-before-published story Kuttner wrote as a teenager. The themes are a bit more ‘adult’ than, let’s say, Captain Future. Two of the most fun and crazy stories come from the pulp Marvel Science Stories. This was owned by the man who eventually published Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman.”

“One of my favorites in this volume is The Time Trap. I call this a ‘kitchen sink’ novel. Absolutely everything that you could imagine is in this story. You have, of course, time travel. But there is also space travel, an alien invasion and brain-swapping. To tell you more would ruin the surprise!”

You can hear Haffner smile while he talks about the book.

Like other books they’ve published, they have chosen to focus on a single writer. Haffner tells us why Kuttner deserves such recognition as a writer. “We are dealing with a man who rose out of the new fandom of SF which began to form in the early thirties. Comics fans know similar stories of how Julie Schwartz and others rose to prominence. These are young fans that discovered pulps and science fiction and become inspired to write or work in the field by what they read. Most of the early organization of fandom occurred in New York City and the East Coast, while Kuttner was in LA. Regardless, he was one of them and eventually went on to be one of the most prolific and interesting writers in the genre. ”

“As a high school kid Kuttner wrote letters to Air Wonder Stories and Weird Tales. Eventually he struck up a correspondence with such luminaries as H.P. Lovecraft and future grandmaster Robert Bloch. His first sale was a poem in Weird Tales. Next up was his minor classic Graveyard Rats, which we reprinted in the recent Terror in the House. As a correspondent of the Lovecraft, Kuttner’s first sales were deeply embedded in the ‘Cthulhu mythos.’ ”

Haffner outlines how Kuttner rose through the ranks of pulps writers. “A lot of early young writers looking to learn their craft wrote pastiches of their favorite writers. At first Kuttner wrote acceptable versions of Lovecraft and sought out other less discriminating markets. Eventually Kuttner began submitting to the ‘shudder pulps,’ magazines that specialized in ‘weird menace’— that odd branch of horror with outré hauntings and overly-complicated machinations that are usually explained away with climaxes that are not out of place with the typical ‘Scooby-Doo’ cartoon. Finding immediate success, Kuttner was frequently seen in Thrilling Mystery, Spicy Mystery Stories, and Mystery Tales.”

As he continues Haffner notes the eternal connection between pulps and comics. “Kuttner soon began selling to Editor Robert O. Erisman at Western Fiction Publishing (which was owned by Martin Goodman, who came to own Marvel).  Several of Goodman’s pulps were branded with the ‘Red Circle’ seal of ‘quality.’ Seeing this publishing designation on the newsstand told readers that the material would be a bit racier and ‘out-there’.  These books put sex into science fiction magazines, albeit of a shallow variety. Kuttner added gratuitous themes of disrobement and torture and misogyny to a somewhat chaste genre in several stories. Some felt that this sullied his early reputation.”

Today what Kuttner wrote seems almost tame. His style reflects the quickness of what he wrote, but it also manages to combine an incredible imagination with entertaining and at times, outlandish plots.

Another volume scheduled for publication this spring also features Kuttner. This time it is work in collaboration with writer Arthur K. Barnes. Hollywood on the Moon/Man about Time: The Peter Manx Adventures focuses on the more humorous side of science fiction.

“Hollywood on the Moon/Pete Manx is a ton-o’-fun. The ‘Hollywood on the Moon’ stories involve a futuristic (for the time) motion picture studio called Nine Planet Films Inc. Their ace cameraman is Tony Quade and the stories focus on his adventures trying to shoot film on various planets in the solar system.”

Explaining a bit of young Kuttner’s adaptive style, Haffner says “If Kuttner was aping Lovecraft for his early stories, here he was aping Stanley G. Weinbaum and his popular and then-groundbreaking stories of aliens such as “A Martian Odyssey.” At the center of it all is ‘man goes out to the stars and meets true aliens.’ The aliens in these stories have motivations that are unknowable and often seem absurd to us. Kuttner and his Barnes use to a wonderfully cheesy comedic effect.”

The second half of the volume will reprint the classic adventures of Peter Manx from Thrilling Wonder Stories. Described as a “temporal con-man” Manx is always on the run from someone. One day he stumbles upon a time machine in the laboratory Dr. Mayhem which proves to be a big mistake. It turns out you can get into as much trouble in the past as you can in the present.

While much of what Haffner publishes is devoted to a single writer, the company also knows how to put together a solid anthology. Tales From Super-Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg, concentrates on stories from the mid-fifties boom of science fiction. Super-Science Fiction lasted eighteen issues and was published from December 1955 until October 1959 and evolved from a second-tier SF magazine to a “monsters magazine” in its last four issues. 

As Haffner tells it, “Robert Silverberg put this together at my invitation. He wrote a huge amount for the magazine as did Harlan Ellison, as well as Isaac Asimov, a young Donald Westlake, and others. For Haffner Press we are leapfrogging from the Golden Age of the pulps to the last gasp of SF magazines on the newsstands of the fifties.” The stories in this anthology feature James E. Gunn, Robert Bloch, Jack Vance, and Robert Silverberg.

Each volume published by Haffner Press is thoroughly researched and gone over in detail. Since he started Haffner has been committed to making sure that both the most knowledgeable fan and the new reader can find something to enjoy in the books he publishes. He prides himself on finding stories that others may have long forgotten about.

Looking back at his earliest days he says, “Before the internet I dug through bibliographies and anthologies trying to build a collection of the stories that I wanted to read. What was amazing was that many of these stories were never reprinted outside of pulps. I began to imagine what these stories would look like in a format in which they deserved to be seen.”

There is a deep sense of historical obligation to the material in every book Haffner Press publishes. “Aside from cleaning-up typographical in-consistencies, it is paramount to maintain fidelity to the original published word. These were good enough for the editors in 1936. Even though some of the work may be politically incorrect, I don’t want touch another man’s words. These are stories of the times and it is important to recognize that.”

That deep research didn’t just stop at the material. Haffner wanted to create affordable hard covers that would last. “We looked at several different publishers from the turn of the century forward. I make sure that we use acid free archival quality paper. These are always going to be full cloth bindings. Smythe-sewn type of bindings instead of just pages glues to spine. There is no better, longer-lasting way to produce a printed work. These are designed to last centuries. A good printed book should last 400 years.”

The quality of his publications shows. Aftermarket prices on volumes that are out of print go up every year. Many of Haffner Press books are available at their original selling price, but hard to find books such as their very first Edmond Hamilton book, Kaldar—World of Antares list as high as $1,500 on eBay. Several out of print volumes in the Jack Williamson series, if you can find them, can go for over a hundred.

“Currently, demand for a second edition doesn’t support the cost of reprinting an out-of-print volume,” says Haffner. “I can only ask that fans get them when they come out.  We do 1,000+ copies for new titles and our commitment to several authors’ Collected Works sees us doing new titles versus reprinting earlier.

“What drew me to the writers we collect and present in a prestige-format was that their stories are incredibly entertaining—at the time these were original ideas that have since become standards of modern science fiction. It is fascinating to go back and read the originals. I want others to find that thrill.”

Before he goes Haffner brings up the most-viewed pulp character in the world right now. Thanks to the success of the CBS sit-com, The Big Bang Theory, millions are looking straight at a pulp-culture icon and may not even know it.

“Right by the front door of Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment is a beautiful poster of the first issue of Captain Future and yes, this does bring fans to our new website. Many don’t know who he is until they see him on our site. Captain Future is an anachronism even of its time. But that’s what the public came to believe that SF was in the 1940s. This was mostly due to the wide-spread influence of Flash Gordon (the comic strip and the serials). They expected spaceships, ray-guns, and adventure like they found in Captain Future.

Once again the connection between comics and pulps is made clear. These stories were written by prolific pulpster, Edmond Hamilton who, as the pulp market began to shrink, ended up writing Superman and Batman for twenty years. Some maintain he created the Legion of Super-Heroes. If not, he certainly expanded it.

Scoop thanks Stephen Haffner for his time. You can find out everything you need to know about the books that he publishes by visiting their newly updated website.