Pulp Today w/ David Avallone

On the season finale, we read and talk about J.G. Ballard's intro to his classic novel CRASH, in which he defends science fiction – a pulp genre – as a legitimate and worthwhile literary pursuit. Expanding his argument to encompass other disrespected genres could serve as the thesis statement of PULP TODAY. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Paul Auster uses the detective genre to investigate questions of identity, story and reality itself in CITY OF GLASS, the first novella in THE NEW YORK TRILOGY. In a P.I. story… the first initial is “Private,” but does that second initial stand for Investigator, Eye... or I? --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Returning guest Emily Edwards, author of the upcoming detective novel Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man, and host of the hilarious podcast “F*ckbois of Literature,” introduces us to the Babysitters' Club Mysteries with #12: Dawn and the Surfer Ghost. It's exactly what you think. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

As San Diego Comic Con 2022 approaches, David Avallone reads from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's INFERNO, which connects the dots between fan conventions and eternal suffering. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

A great mystery novel with multiple narrators, turned into a great film with just one. David Avallone discusses the life and work of Vera Caspary, blacklists and greylists, and the impossibility of reading this book without imitating Clifton Webb. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Like Dashiell Hammett, Andrew Vachss walked the walk before he sat down to write about crime. Unlike Hammett, Vachss was able to write explicitly – honestly – about the kind of monsters who walk the earth disguised as ordinary people. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Sixty-six episodes in, and we still haven't gotten around to a single swashbuckler pulp. We correct that oversight with today's reading from C. S. Forester's classic Royal Navy hero, in his first adventure. Bonus: what does swordplay really sound like? --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Anyone remember THE FELONY SQUAD? Has Michael Avallone's well-regarded original tie-in outlived the memory of the TV show it was based on? Listen to a chapter and decide for yourself... --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

To celebrate the premiere of STRANGE NEW WORLDS and commemorate the passing of original STAR TREK artist James Bama, this week's topic is the novelizations of James Blish. There is a reading from the SPACE SEED short story, and Montalban/Nimoy/Shatner impressions are just barely avoided. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Less than two decades after the Great War, writers who lived through it were already turning their nightmarish experiences into high adventure… and fantastic science fiction. Chief among these was Robert J. Hogan, air war veteran, pulp writer, and creator of the indelible G8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES. Bonus: local air traffic provides realistic sound effects during the reading. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

No martinis this time, as the subject is Charles Jackson's ground-breaking classic about an alcoholic's five day bender. Also featured: the things you find in old paperbacks, and a telegram from Jackson to Michael Avallone. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Critically acclaimed author Gary Phillips joins David Avallone to read from, and talk about, Chester Himes' classic COTTON COMES TO HARLEM, and all things pulp. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

William Eastlake's dreamlike World War Two classic, about modern war crashing into the priceless relics and art treasures of Europe. In all that destruction... what can be saved? All that, plus a pretty lazy Burt Lancaster impression. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

What does a surrealist Christian allegory have to do with pulp fiction? Everything. G.K. Chesterton's classic, influential masterpiece, subtitled "A Nightmare", echoes in every spy and conspiracy story you've ever read. "The adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane." --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

R.L. Stine is a wildly prolific paperback horror phenomenon, and comics writer Kelly Sue Milano (HEX11) joins David Avallone to talk about FEAR STREET SUPER CHILLER: SILENT NIGHT. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Can a serious author write a serious novel about... Superman? Tom De Haven answers that question with a resounding, entertaining, delightful "yes!" --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Some books open important doorways for you. For David Avallone, one of those was Robert Silverberg's classic science fiction anthology DEEP SPACE. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Richard Condon wrote sophisticated thrillers that were as pulpy as they were smart, and influenced everyone who ever tried to turn conspiracy theories into entertainments. One of his best, WINTER KILLS, centers around the youngest member of the most wealthy and influential family in America… as he tries to figure out who assassinated his brother, the President. Ripped-from-the-headlines catharsis; a pulp model as old as Oedipus Rex. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Graham Greene was a master of pulp fiction and a great “literary” novelist, and THIS GUN FOR HIRE (originally A GUN FOR SALE) is one of his sharpest. Can you really put up a wall between two aspects of your own talent? And what makes a man a murderer? Big questions. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

In memory of breathtaking Italian actress Monica Vitti, today we talk about the iconic character MODESTY BLAISE, and how an entertaining comic strip became a train-wreck of a film, and then an excellent series of spy novels. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Groundbreaking author Ursula K. Le Guin examines the power of dreams and the danger of wishes coming true in her classic novel. The use of Who concert laser show effects in the PBS adaptation is, sadly, not addressed. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Due to recent ethical concerns, Pendant shows will be removed from Spotify on Feb. 4, 2022

Science fiction writers often try to predict the future, with varying results. H. G. Wells does a terrifyingly good job in his mostly-forgotten 1914 novel THE WORLD SET FREE. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

A reading from Michael Avallone's THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT A DAME, featuring a missing Shakespeare play and a psychotic private detective who may or may not be Mike Hammer. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Special guest Stephen Robinson, writer for Wonkette, AV Club and playwright, joins David to talk about Patricia Highsmith's classic mystery, the Hitchcock film adaptation, and to nerd out on a wide variety of topics. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

A dive into autobiographical science fiction, from the master of broken realities... Philip K. Dick. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Setting aside the weighty issue of “is Die Hard a Christmas story?” we ask the more interesting question, “is Dashiell Hammett's The Gutting of Couffignal a Die Hard story?” Listen in, and hear the most hardboiled final line in all of pulp fiction. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

H.G. Wells wonders aloud what it would be like to be on the short end of the big stick, in the apocalyptic classic often imitated but never surpassed. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Kurt Vonnegut's classic novel about how maybe it doesn't matter who you are inside, if your outside is too convincing. There's a great movie adaptation by Keith Gordon. Listen to this, then go track that down, too. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

You know the Hitchcock movie, you may even know the sequels, the cable series, or the Gus Van Sant weirdness... but have you read the original, by the great Robert Bloch? You should. Let's talk about why... --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Nerdist's own Hector Navarro (@Hectorisfunny) joins me to talk John Carter, Tars Tarkas, “planetary romance,” a pretty solid movie sabotaged by its studio… and eventually we get around to a reading from A PRINCESS OF MARS, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

A special episode to commemorate reaching the cosmically significant Number 42: the brilliant and talented Susy Kane (LODGE 49, HOUSE OF ANUBIS) joins me to read THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, by the late, beloved Douglas Adams. The convo quickly turns into the history of British comedy in general and Spike Milligan, specifically, who was the wellspring of everything that followed him, including the work of Douglas Adams. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

You're listening to a podcast on Pendent audio. A show you've enjoyed before? Perhaps. Or perhaps you are a fan of Italo Calvino, summoned here by a Google search. You check the length. Fifteen and a half minutes? Too long? Or maybe just right...? Perhaps you could listen. Is the chair comfortable? That's key. And the coffee. Refilled? You don't want to run out. Certainly not halfway through a reading of Italo Calvino's metafictional shenanigans and IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER... --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

So it's 1978 and you're a teen and you've seen STAR WARS 10 times and there's no home video or streaming yet, and you're hungry for more space opera. Where can you go to get it? You go back to the source: E.E. “Doc” Smith and the LENSMEN series. Gather around, and give a listen to thrilling tales of what Jack Kirby called "techno-cosmic war..." --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Some thoughts about a particularly vivid flavor of American speech, as expressed and maybe partly invented by Damon Runyon, and how it still echoes today. Plus a few words about the joys of writing in the specific language of a time and place. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Originally recorded on January 25th, 2020... after the inauguration of Joe Biden, after the insurrection, after the Fall of Trump. That particular American moment we were in got David thinking about the opening of A TALE OF TWO CITIES, and living through challenging historic times. Here's a few pages of Charles Dickens to chew on. Plus... a little something about cultural echoes, and a third rate Ronald Coleman impression. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

The talented and lovely Mageina Tovah joins David Avallone to talk about a book that meant a lot to both of them growing up: Ray Bradbury's dystopian classic FAHRENHEIT 451! You might remember her from Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN movies or SyFy's THE MAGICIANS... but Mageina also has a long history with Bradbury, which she talks about here... and we read a little section of the book together. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Originally recorded just after a certain orange goon lost and lost “bigly”... it seemed like a good time to pour a glass of whiskey, smoke a celebratory cigar, and read a little something from Ev Ehrlich's comic pastiche of Ulysses Grant's Memoirs, GRANT SPEAKS. A little straight talk from the man who saved the Union. Give a listen... --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

I'd been wanting to talk about the James Bond novels since I started this series, and the defeat of Trump, in November of 2020, made me choose the fall of a cartoonish supervillain as my first reading from Ian Fleming's 007 novels. Now and forever... welcome to Hell, Blofeld. --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD! Are you one of the Frightened? Originally “broadcast” last Halloween, the third and final episode of my little TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED mini-series, presents one of the more batshit stories from the collection... and one that haunted me since I read it as a kid. Enjoy! --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

THE HAND OF FATE! Are you one of the Frightened? The second of three episodes from Michael Avallone's Tales of the Frightened collection. Today, I'm reading one of my favorites: Dad's take on the old Mesopotamian folk tale APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA. I also take a cheap shot at Peter Bogdanovich, who -- let's face it -- had it coming. Give a listen! --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions

Are you one of the Frightened? Here's the first of three horror-themed episodes for Pulp Today, reading from Dad's Tales of the Frightened stories. Today, I talk about Dad's many horror novels, and the whole weird twisty history of the Tales of the Frightened project.... and read the first story in the collection. Also, I drink. Because (waves generally around at the world.) --Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/iTunes!-- Website: pendantaudio.com Twitter: @pendantweb Facebook: facebook.com/pendantaudio Tumblr: pendantaudio.tumblr.com YouTube: youtube.com/pendantproductions