All Flesh is Grass. Print, too.

The above is the cover to my new book, The Pulp Magazine Holdings Directory, a guide to which issues of which pulp magazines are held in which libraries in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Europe.

In the Directory I covered 1,022 pulps.

Of those, 386 pulps are held in no (0) libraries in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Europe, and a further 145 pulps have less than five total issues extant.

38% of all pulps no longer exist anywhere. And 14% of the pulps survive only in scattered copies.

Which is to say, over half the pulps ever published in the United States are either completely gone or survive in fragmented form. (And around 60% of all surviving issues are only on microfilm or microfiche). 

(The preceding doesn't include true crime pulps or the Canadian and British reprints, which would increase the number of nonexistent pulps).

So it's not possible to go into a library anywhere to look at this:



(It's remotely possible that some pulp collector might donate this issue to a library somewhere, or open his or her collection to a stranger, but with a few prominent exceptions most pulp collectors seem to be hateful grasping antisocial illiberal pinchfists, their souls to the Devil, and the chances of a pulp collector being both generous and in possession of this issue of Zeppelin Stories are so small as to be infinitesmal).

And no member of the public can look at this in a library:



Scarlet Adventuress, greatest of the bad girl pulps, completely gone, and with it characters like Nila Rand, "the Devil's Mistress," and Kara Vania, "The Lady of Doom," and stories like "Shanghai Devil Woman," "Satan's Step-Daughter," and "They Called Her Brandy Flip."



The stories in this issue of Army Romances are "Love Thy Brother," "Flashback!" "Sweet and Hot," "Sweet Geisha," "Kiss of Dreamy Delight," "Do-Nut Girl," "When a G.I. Wants to Marry," "Dangerous Love," and "Slave of the Amazons." The titles are quite a bit at odds with the cover, but no one will ever have the chance to discover whether the cover was a salacious lie, or if BDSM pleasures are to be found in "Kiss of Dreamy Delight."



I know nothing about The Confessions of a Stool Pigeon ("By One of Them," let's not forget), but I'm sure the stories would be enjoyable in an overwrought, the-miseries-of-crime way. I'll never get to read those stories, though. 



A conservative estimate is that only 35% of spicy pulp issues--not pulps, issues--survive. One of the most popular genres of pulps is reduced to just over a third of its total output. It's likely that the missing 65% is so similar to the surviving stories that researchers can generalize about the genre based on a little over a third of what's left--but we'll never know for sure, will we?



The numbers are better for the romance pulps--59% of all romance pulp issues survive--but only two issues (of 175) of Cupid's Diary survive, less than a third (of 146 issues) of Live Stories survives, 0 issues (of 118) survive of Romance, and less than a quarter of all issues of Ranch Romances survive--and Ranch Romances published 854 issues from December, 1924 to November, 1968.

And, finally, consider the hero pulps, which is what most people think of when they see or hear the word "pulps."



The undisputed Big Names among pulp heroes were The Shadow, Doc Savage, the Phantom Detective, and The Spider. All 325 issues of the seven pulps The Shadow appeared in survive. All 181 issues of Doc Savage/Doc Savage Science Detective survive. All 170 issues of The Phantom Detective survive.

But The Spider? 118 issues, Oct. 1933-Dec. 1943. 10 are held in libraries. Oh, many more than those ten have been reprinted--there's a handy list of reprints which tells you which issues were reprinted, and where--but for poor academics like me, paying $25-$35 per reprint isn't feasible.

I could go on, but it would just get (more) depressing.

Of course, all of this is a good corrective to a writer's dreams of immortality. If stories about the Spider can so easily vanish, what chance does the average author now have? One of the best selling fantasy authors of all time was the Reverend Charles Monroe Sheldon, who wrote In His Steps in 1899. By 1934, it had sold 8 million copies. (In His Steps is a Utopia about what the world would be like if everyone followed Christ's teachings--and Utopias are generally classified as fantasies). There are several hundred copies available in libraries around the United States--but do you know anyone who's read In His Steps?

In other words:

I met a reader from an antique bookstore
Who said: Two vast and poetastering series novels, parts two and seven
Stand in the dollar bin. On the back of one,
Half-obscured, a bearded visage protrudes, whose smirk
And curled lip and sneer of self-satisfaction
Tell that this author well those passions read
To best exploit his audience, written in these lifeless things,
His hand which mocked them even as his bank account fed.
And on the title page these words appear:
"My name is ****** ******, Best-Selling Author:
Look on my sales, ye critical darlings, and despair!"
None of his other books remain. Round the decay
Of that bloated series, boundless and cluttered,
The doorstop trilogies stretch far away.

Dr. Ballard, please call surgery

Bondage photos inside astronaut's car

Associated Press
April, 10, 2007

ORLANDO — A police search of former astronaut Lisa Nowak’s car turned up bondage photos on a computer disk, British currency and pills, according to documents released today by prosecutors.

A judge last week agreed to unseal some of the documents in the Nowak’s case.

She is accused of trying to kidnap a rival for a space shuttle pilot’s affections.

Nearly all of the 16 images found on the disk depicted bondage scenes, according to a forensic examination report by the Orlando Police Department. Some of the images showed a nude woman while others were drawings.

The documents did not make clear if Nowak was the woman in the photos or who the disks belonged to.

Also found were nearly $600, 41 British pounds and four brown paper towels with 69 orange pills. It was not clear what the orange pills were. Investigators also examined two USB drives found in the car that contained family pictures, digital movies and NASA related materials.

They concluded that information found on the disk or the two USB drives did not have any direct evidence related to the attempting kidnapping, the report said.
Nowak’s attorney, Donald Lykkebak, declined to comment Tuesday on the newly released documents.

Nowak was arrested in February after police say she drove from Houston to Florida to confront Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. Authorities have said Nowak had an affair with Shipman’s boyfriend, Bill Oefelein. She pepper-sprayed Shipman through a partially lowered car window, an arrest affidavit said.

Police said they found a BB gun, new steel mallet, a knife and rubber tubing in Nowak’s possession. Nowak, 43, pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping, burglary with assault and battery. NASA released Nowak from the astronaut corps a month after her arrest.

Research is never done

One upcoming project of mine uses Venus as the setting. It isn't the Amtorian's action-oriented pulpy Venus, though, but rather the singularly hellish world that we now know is a far cry from the "Earth's twin" entry in most science textbooks from the 1950s and 60s. The rub, though, is that I'm not a planetologist or an astronomer or have any science background beyond a keen interest in space science developed while I was still in elementary school. Which means that most of the real research materials I have access to--from various popular (to not-so-popular) science books on Venus to articles in Icarus and the like are often so far over my head I feel like I'm sitting at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. There's a reason why my chosen profession is journalism after all. Fortunately, there are plenty of mailing lists and message boards around where I can pick up on really interesting developments in space science written in a language even semi-competent lay people (such as myself) can comprehend. Such as this recent update on the ESA's Venus Express mission:

Tracking alien turbulences with Venus Express
European Space Agency

New images and data from ESA's mission to Venus provide new insights into the turbulent and noxious atmosphere of Earth's sister planet. What causes violent winds and turbulences? Is the surface topography playing a role in the complex global dynamics of the atmosphere? Venus Express is on the case.



Venus' atmosphere represents a true puzzle for scientists. Winds are so powerful and fast that they circumnavigate the planet in only four Earth days - the atmospheric "super-rotation" - while the planet itself is very slow in comparison, taking 243 Earth days to perform one full rotation around its axis.

At the poles things get really complicated with huge double-eyed vortices providing a truly dramatic view. In addition, a layer of dense clouds covers the whole planet as a thick curtain, preventing observers using conventional optical means from seeing what lies beneath.

Venus Express is on the contrary capable of looking through the atmosphere at different depths, by probing it at different infrared wavelengths. The Ultraviolet, Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board is continuing its systematic investigation of Venus' atmospheric layers to solve the riddle of the causes for such turbulent and stormy atmosphere.

The images presented with this article focus on Venusian atmospheric turbulences and cloud features, whose shape and size vary with planetary latitudes. At the equator, clouds are irregular and assume a peculiar "bubble"-shape. At mid latitudes they are more regular and streaky, running almost parallel to the direction of the super rotation with speed reaching more than 400 kilometres per hour. Going higher up in latitude, in the polar region, the clouds end up in entering a vortex shape.

With its multi-wavelength eyes, VIRTIS can observe the atmosphere and the cloud layers not only at different depths, but also both in the day-and night-side of the planet - a characteristic that allows an overall assessment of the "environmental" causes that can be at the origin of such an atmospheric complexity.

At the equator, the extremely violent winds of the super-rotation are in constant "battle" with other kinds of local turbulences, or "regional" winds, creating very complex cloud structures.

One type of regional wind is due to the strong flux of radiation from the Sun reaching the atmosphere of the planet on the day-side. This flux heats up the atmosphere creating convective cells, where masses of warm air move upwards and generate local turbulence and winds.

On the night-side there is obviously no flux from the Sun, but the clouds' shape and the wind dynamics are somehow similar to that we see on the day-side. So, scientists are currently trying to understand if there is any mechanism other than "convection" responsible for the equatorial turbulences, both on the day- and night-side of Venus.

For instance, VIRTIS imaged clouds over Alpha Regio, an area close to the equator. This area is characterised by a series of troughs, ridges, and faults that are oriented in many directions, with surface features that can be up to 4 kilometres high. There might be a connection between the surface topography and the local atmospheric turbulence which is observed in this area. This and other hypotheses are being investigated by the Venus Express science teams using data from several instruments.

Actually, the Venusian topography may play an important role also in the global atmospheric dynamics. Understanding this surface-atmosphere connection is one of the major objectives of Venus Express - something to be verified in the whole course of the mission.

In many ways, advances in science make a writer's job more difficult. Unless you're working on an outright pulp throwback, you no longer have the free hand Burrough's did to invent a spectacular setting on an unknown world cloaked in clouds. Robot probes and increasingly-sophisticated ground-based observations have done away with the steamy, jungle-covered Venus of yesteryear. On the plus side, science has helped a great deal, unveiling mind-boggling environments never dream possible a century ago. The settings are far more exotic than anyone ever dream possible, just in disturbingly harsh ways. Instead of inventing a consistent world, now writers educate themselves on the actual conditions and environment there--and this gives rise to all sorts of narrative potential.

The pitfall, of course, is that if you cut corners in your research, some sharp-eyed reading is going to call you on it within five minutes of your story seeing print. So much the price of progress. But hey, I love this stuff and would read it anyway. Writing at least gives me the opportunity to use "I'm working" as an excuse.

Jump the fence

And find some resurrection.

Alexis has it right. The unexpected and incongruous appearances of nature amid the dim din of urbanity give us portals we too rarely look through.

Spring is breaking out with gusto across the Northern Hemisphere. After the long grey dormancy, green nature and frisky wildlife dance across the secret interstitia of the cityscape, providing the perfect antidote to break the postmodern haze for those who can slow down long enough to widen the aperture of their senses and take in the rich light.



Practitioners of speculative fiction persistently imagine a post-urban future in which mankind's disregard for the environment leaves a vacant tablet of desiccated and silent nature as grey as its abandoned concrete superstructure. The most recent compelling example being Cormac McCarty's The Road, its central character a devastated landscape populated only by nature's ghosts.

Surely these kinds of speculation are just another variation of man's hubris, the anthro-centric notion that we have the power to destroy nature. I think it more likely that, if humanity receded back into the caves of abandoned tenements, nature would rapidly tear down the evidence of human hives, cracking the concrete and healing the wounds of the earth with adaptive genius. My evidence for this supposition is the wonders I see every day in the midst of my own busy metroplex.



There are the myriad species that in my short life have adapted to human environments and flourished. The turkey vultures that hang glide through the thermal release of hot interstate blacktop and feast on roadkill. The peregrines and hawks that carom off the currents between the skyscrapers and fetch the tiny mammals who live off restaurant trash. The grackle who loiter at streetside cafes and scam their way into free french fries. Alexis' monk parakeets, the descendents of escaped pets who colonize the arc lights over the intramural fields north of my house.



More importantly, every city harbors pockets of wild nature. Most downtowns channel pre-settlement rivers and streams under the concrete skin of the city, like Austin's Little Shoal Creek, or the Hartford River, which eccentric canoeists aquatically spelunk with headlamps, studying graffiti like Neolithic cave paintings. In Austin, covert nature is all over the place. The secret tunnel city of the voles buried in the tall grass under the Loop 1 Mopac freeway. The schools of black tadpoles in the toxin-rich creeks that drain North Austin into the Colorado River. The opossum that scavenge alley trash after dark. The screech owls that greet early-rising writers with alien hoots in the pre-dawn moonlight. And the river itself, where, below the dam, a canopy of tall virgin timber on the banks hosts a fresh array of fauna that has settled in to the latest paradigm.



Most of the Lower Colorado, our geographic spine, has been dammed up since the 1930s, producing three riverine "lakes" within the city limits that are more landscaping features than natural environments. But on the other side of the Longhorn Dam that holds in "Town Lake," the Colorado returns to its natural channel, providing a refuge habitat for all sorts of shallow water-feeding birds and river predators. This stretch of the river is pure urban negative space — only a thin stand of trees protects it from dense industrial uses on either side — starting in the middle of the East Austin barrio, passing the mothballed Air Force base that now serves as Austin's spiffy airport, industrial pits, invisible factories, then southeast to Moorcock country.



In late spring, the herons and egrets stand in the shallows beneath the dam like predatory supermodels, waiting for the bottom-draining pour-off to deliver the big bass from the cool bottom of the lake. Mexican guys from the neighborhood hang out there too, casting their rods in the deep containment tanks, occasionally producing mutant catfish.



My preferred canoe put-in is under the Montopolis Bridge, a mud parking lot under the shade of transecting freeway overpasses leading to Houston, Bastrop, the Hill Country and the Airport, a popular neighborhood beer drinking, wading, and water spraying off-roading spot, where the Cub Scout finds used hypodermic syringes from time to time. At the edge of the lot there is a battered sign marking the area as the "Colorado River Preserve."



On the shaded exterior right angles of the concrete overpasses, huge colonies of cliff swallows have built their condomiums of mud and spit, feasting at dusk on the big bugs that swarm the arc lights.



Downriver, it is a world of wild green. Secret lagoons full of turtles the size of tennis rackets, baking themselves on little islands of dumped concrete, the young displaying their fresh canvases of nature's body art. An osprey flies low, a white Stuka dappled in dark muddy browns, carrying a dripping freshkill rat in its talons. Further down, a pair of osprey work on making eggs in one of the tall trees.



It's their world, we're just living in it.

Parrot Paradox

The mass of twigs on the lowest rung of this power tower is home for a colony of parrots. Also the twigs on the middle rung, and I think they're starting a penthouse on the top rung too. They are a species called monk parakeets, native to the temperate regions of South America. Wild colonies of these birds are quite firmly established in Houston, Dallas and Austin, in all of which places I've seen and admired them. Handsome vivid green psittacines with long tapered parrot-tails. They evidently think that power towers are a fine place for their colonial nests. Near where I live, deep within the city limits of Houston, these South American parrots swoop and chortle in the air over a herd of horses (paints, bays, palominos) grazing in the power line right-of-way between two of the most-traveled thoroughfares in the city.

Civilization utterly disrupts whatever natural ecology it touches. And at this point, civilization touches the whole face of the Earth and another few planets besides. A small community of forward-thinking scientists are engaged in Mars exploration planetary protection studies, not just to protect Earth from Mars microbes, but also to protect Mars from being contaminated by living things from Earth! On Mars and on Earth, ecological chaos is not a happy prospect. And yet: I can appreciate the joie de vivre of the misplaced parrots on a sunny day like today. I'd like to think that enjoying watching the parrots is a good sentiment, an extension of being truly dismayed by how much humanity resembles a plague species on Earth – and yet able to love other people.

Contradictions demand resolution into one term or the other. Either this or that. Good vs. bad. Black or white. Sometimes a contradiction is irresolvable: an endless war, or an irresistible force and immoveable object staring each other down until something breaks. Paradoxes work differently. This AND that, yin and yang – order and chaos. Death and life. A Friday that commemorates a heinous execution perpetrated by a militaristic state; and yet this Friday is the one called Good. When I have to live with opposites as tense and charged as a live power wire – I'd much rather the opposites be paradox. Paradoxes form the kind of existential space in which we can be alive and in love with the world.

Paradoxes persist. So, it seems, do parrots.

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled blog...

I normally don't link to my other, personal blog, but I'm making an exception just this once. I've announced my candidacy for president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and hope to gather as much support as I can before the election. Please spread the word.

Don Webb's Letters from Doublesign

"Don Webb is a genius. He's not widely appreciated. There are some things mankind was not meant to know." -- Bruce Sterling.

One of our genre's great achievements in recent years has been the successful infiltration of the mainstream with a fresh infusion of winking fabulism — explorations of *everyday magic* lurking in the suburban American psychoscape — neighborhood zombies, television programs that invade reality, flea market talismans. Horror tropes repainted with anime eyes in a literary variation of pop surrealism that subtly flags the signposts of contemporary middle-class consciousness, documenting the obliteration of the barriers between reality and imagination.

Then there's Don Webb. Old school slipstream with a stiffer proof, practiced by an actual Magus. They grow their fabulists differently in Amarillo. Maybe it's the nuclear effluent in the water.



Don Webb has been floating clandestine balloons of eldritch literature (mostly in short form -- hundreds of them) since the 1980s. These tiny wonders are beautiful terrors that occupy some unlit zone between Lovecraft and Nabokov. The stories have Don's hypnotic voice, the one he uses to set off flares in the minds of his writing students, a voice that knows how to turn words into spells. They sneak up on you, burrow in behind your pineal gland, and don't leave.

Don Webb is the Left Hand Paul Harvey, broadcasting secret messages to you on an AM wavelength that's not supposed to be there any more.

So go buy the May issue of FSF, turn to p. 108, read "The Great White Bed," and see if you don't agree. Then go buy the new collection When They Came, and wait for the apparition on the cover to start illuminating your dreams.