Barry Reese
Creator of Action & Adventure fiction
What Happened to the Western Novel?
by James Wallace Harris, Thursday, May 24, 2018
Jess Nevins has some interesting data in his essay, “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” about the number of titles published yearly for each pulp genre. I’m not sure of his source, or how the numbers were compiled, but I’m going to copy his tables here for convenience. I’m assuming these numbers are the total titles publishing in a given year.
Notice, that of the six genres, western pulp titles were the most numerous every year between 1936-1949. The pulp magazine essentially died out by 1950, although a handful of science fictional and mystery titles continued as digest-size magazines. Some people claim television killed the pulps, others suggest various financial concerns and magazine distribution policies.
When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s westerns were extremely common on television, maybe even the most popular kind of show. The list on…
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If you study the photo at this page https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/classics-of-science-fiction-short-stories/ you’ll see that westerns were the most common pulp magazine at the newsstand. I’m guessing this photo is late 1938 or 1939. I’m trying to date some of the magazines from the covers.