Issue 45: From the Pulp Lit Pulpit

Revolution and Evolution

For our latest issue of Pulp Literature, Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Landels looks forward and back, embracing both the future and the past. Enjoy the opening of our latest editorial from Issue 45, Winter 2025.

From the Pulp Lit Pulpit: Revolution and Evolution

by Jennifer Landels

“A wave of progress is rising and rising …” ~ Spirit of the West, ‘Darkhouse’

Vancouver band Spirit of the West’s album Labour Day came out in 1988, but the lyrics are surprisingly relevant today. From homelessness and substance use in ‘Gottingen Street’ and ‘Drinking Man’, a housing crisis in ‘Profiteers’, and trans- and homophobia in ‘Take It from the Source’, there’s a familiarity in these topics. The ear-worm that keeps circling my brain most often these days is ‘Darkhouse’, a lament about the loss of lighthouse keepers to computerized systems. Lines like “Soon we’ll be watching the world turn / with no hands at all” and “Burning the bridge between our rise and fall,” seem like they could just as easily refer to our ever-more-automated world, including the rapid rise of machine learning, aka ‘Artificial Intelligence’.

Here at Pulp Literature Press, we’re fans of the past. After all, our name and format pays homage to the twentieth-century pulp mags that kindled a bonfire of creative genius in genre fiction. We publish in print because we believe a beautiful, physical book is a joy to read that gets passed from hand to appreciative human hand. And we believe in the written work of a human brain.

But we’re not Luddites. We embrace the technology that allows us to create and distribute a magazine from our desktops, and are delighted to have digital subscribers who devour our weightless ebook editions. And while we honour the written words that have come before us, we strive to publish stories by new voices, from demographics less heard in the past, with fresh, genre-defying ideas.

See what else Pulp Literature Issue 45, Winter 2025 has in store!

JM Landels divides her professional time between writing, editing, drawing, and teaching people to swordfight from horseback. She has no hobbies, since they all tend to turn into professions.

Her fantasy trilogy Allaigna’s Song: Overture is available from Pulp Literature Press and most fine booksellers, and her novel-in-progress The Shepherdess is appearing in even-numbered issues of Pulp Literature.