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    Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine: Pulphouse
    Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine: Pulphouse
    Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine: Pulphouse
    Ebook259 pages3 hours

    Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine: Pulphouse

    By Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Edward Bryant, William F. Wu and

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine changed the publishing landscape when the anthology series first appeared in 1988. The series won the World Fantasy Award as a recognition of the power of its fiction and the transformative nature of the publication. From the beginning, award-winning author and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch demonstrated her talent for publishing the cutting edge of late 20th century short fiction—and much of it still slices pretty deep.

    The stories in this volume still resonate in the 2020s. While some stories no longer define the cutting edge, they show how the short fiction field followed the template that Pulphouse laid out in its years of publication. Powerful, thought-provoking, well-told, these stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine will keep readers breathless on the edge of their seats.

    Includes:

    "While She Was Out," by Edward Bryant

    "The Murderer Chooses Sterility," by Bradley Denton

    "The Two-Headed Man," by Nancy A. Collins

    "Savage Breasts," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

    "Bits and Pieces," by Lisa Tuttle

    "Willie of the Jungle," by Steve Perry

    "Clearance to Land," by Adam-Troy Castro

    "Soft Whisper of Midnight Snow," by Charles de Lint

    "Offerings," by Susan Palwick

    "On a Phantom Tide," by William F. Wu

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateJun 30, 2021
    ISBN9798201620301
    Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine: Pulphouse
    Author

    Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

    Read more from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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      Book preview

      Stories from Pulphouse - Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine

      Stories from Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine

      Edited by

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      WMG Publishing, Inc.

      Dedication:

      For Dean Wesley Smith and Debra Gray De Noux

      —this book is ours, guys.

      And especially for Bill Trojan

      —we couldn’t have done this without you.

      Contents

      The New Introduction

      The Original Introduction

      While She Was Out

      Edward Bryant

      Introduction

      While She Was Out

      Edward Bryant

      The Murderer Chooses Sterility

      Bradley Denton

      Introduction

      The Murderer Chooses Sterility

      Bradley Denton

      The Two-Headed Man

      Nancy A. Collins

      Introduction

      The Two-Headed Man

      Nancy A. Collins

      Savage Breasts

      Nina Kiriki Hoffman

      Introduction

      Savage Breasts

      Nina Kiriki Hoffman

      Bits and Pieces

      Lisa Tuttle

      Introduction

      Bits and Pieces

      Lisa Tuttle

      Willie of the Jungle

      Steve Perry

      Introduction

      Willie of the Jungle

      Steve Perry

      Clearance to Land

      Adam-Troy Castro

      Introduction

      Clearance to Land

      Adam-Troy Castro

      The Soft Whisper of Midnight Snow

      Charles de Lint

      Introduction

      The Soft Whisper of Midnight Snow

      Charles de Lint

      Offerings

      Susan Palwick

      Introduction

      Offerings

      Susan Palwick

      On a Phantom Tide

      William F. Wu

      Introduction

      On a Phantom Tide

      William F. Wu

      Acknowledgments

      About the Editor

      Subscriptions

      The New Introduction

      Wow. Looking back on something from thirty years ago is weird. I have a strong memory of the early days of Pulphouse, particularly the Hardback Magazine, but I’d forgotten a lot of things. Some of those things were good things. I’d also remembered too many of the bad things.

      I’m not doing a best-of here, because what is best-of right now might not be best-of twenty years from now. I’m proud of what we did with the Hardback. Many of the writers we picked as new writers, often with their first sales, are still around.

      Some of the stories we had in the magazine are dated now, but not for the reasons you’d think. You see, we conceived of Pulphouse as a dangerous magazine, meaning we were publishing stories that the editors of other publications often turned down, not because the stories were bad, but because they dealt with topics that publishers deemed unsaleable.

      Some of those stories are now mainstream. Some use a very 1980s way of describing things that have moved into the culture in a slightly different way. (I’m thinking in particular of stories that featured what we would now call non-binary characters. The language from the time is offensive to readers now, but we didn’t have the same language back then.)

      With that in mind, some of the stories you’ll read here won’t seem dangerous at all. They’ll seem normal. Because we were often ahead of the trend, buying what became mainstream a decade or two or three later.

      And a handful of these stories are still dangerous, in the sense that no one else is publishing this kind of work. I’ll try to point these things out in the introductions.

      One of my criteria for choosing the stories in this volume was this: Could I remember the story without rereading it three decades after the story first entranced me? The answer is yes for each one of these stories.

      Then I reread, decided whether or not the story fit into what I was doing here, and ended up with ten stories out of oh, so many that we published in those twelve volumes.

      After thumbing through the volumes, I decided to pull the introduction from The Best of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, published by St. Martin’s Press in 1991. That introduction, written while Pulphouse still existed, explains the origins better than I can from a distance of thirty years.

      It also captures some of the breathlessness of the time. When I wrote that, I had no idea what was coming. I would become the first female editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and while I would continue to edit books for Pulphouse Publishing, my days of editing magazines there ended, and Dean Wesley Smith took over.

      There was a freedom in editing stories for a limited edition volume with a set readership. I could publish stories that offended, stories that experimented, and stories that surprised. I could publish stories about LGBTQ people and people of color without getting hate mail. (The early 1990s were a different and difficult time.) I could publish stories with strong women and stories with images that still raise my eyebrows even today.

      I brought a lot of those attitudes to F&SF when I edited there, but with that came the hate mail and the not-so-subtle worries of the publisher that some of the outlier stories (as he called it) would damage his magazine.

      It was his magazine. I sometimes lost those fights. I never lost the fights at Pulphouse because I was the co-owner of the publishing company. In the F&SF years, I learned a lot about editorial courage, the economics of a large subscriber base, and the tyranny of the almighty dollar.

      Some of the stories in this volume still would not show up in the mainstream publications of today, although more of them would. (Thank heavens.) The world has changed dramatically since The Hardback Magazine existed.

      Sometimes editing it feels like yesterday; sometimes I find it unreal that the entire project even existed, born as it was on the scarred dining room table in my truly crummy one-bedroom apartment.

      Sometimes I think courage is simply ignorance of the rules. Or maybe a much-too-healthy ego. To this day, I don’t understand why stories about people who are not white and middle class didn’t get through the gatekeepers in publishing for decades.

      I’m proud of what we did with The Hardback Magazine. We launched careers, changed some minds, and made a difference.

      That doesn’t happen very often, in any career.

      —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Las Vegas, Nevada

      April 3, 2021

      The Original Introduction

      I can never pinpoint the exact moment when the craziness started. Perhaps it began the first time Dean Wesley Smith and I gazed at each other (across a crowded kitchen in New Mexico—add violins or an ominous orchestral rumble, depending on your point of view.) Perhaps it started during those late night conversations in his apartment in Eugene, conversations that began with Why doesn’t somebody…? and ended with Yeah! What a great idea! Sometimes I think that we both were individually crazy (I did, after all, work for seven years at a very political, listener-sponsored radio station for relaxation—and Dean, well, Dean gave away free 52 issues of a magazine he wrote, edited, designed and published) and when we got together, the insanity reached critical mass.

      No matter. The spark of Pulphouse Publishing might be lost in the sands of time, but the memories remain. We started Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine for a variety of reasons. Dean’s first novel, Laying the Music to Rest, had just been rejected by a major publisher because it couldn’t decide how to market the book. ¹ A number of my stories had been returned by my regular editors because the stories were too weird. We complained that there weren’t enough markets—especially markets open to unusual work—and we decided to do something about it.

      Of course, we had no idea what we were getting into.

      We did have some experience. I knew, from my radio days, that in order to be experimental, we could not be tied to a subscription or advertising base. Too many subscribers revoke their subscriptions because of dirty words or sex scenes. (Just that year, an editor had warned me that even though he was publishing one of my stories, he was worried that he would lose a lot of subscribers because of a scene in which a woman raped a man.) Too many advertisers tried to control content they viewed as potentially harmful to their product or their image. I had also spent my years at the station editing a nightly newscast. I understood that content had to flow together and that deadlines were firm.

      Dean, on the other hand, published a writer’s magazine for a number of years. He knew that there was more to a magazine than its editorial content. Design, marketing, and a unified vision were important. His years as an architect gave him both design skills and an understanding of the importance of details. His law and business experience helped with the publishing side.

      We studied the market and decided that, with our skills, we could put together a hardback book filled with short stories by name and unknown writers and sell it to the collector’s market. The collecting field was going through a boom during that period, and would go for anything unusual and different; a hardback magazine with the freedom to publish stories in any (and every) genre seemed to us to be unusual—and worthwhile. We didn’t expect to sell a lot of copies, but we set our price structure so that we didn’t have to. We called the book a magazine instead of an anthology because it was quarterly, available by subscription. Originally it was going to have interior advertising and more columns. (Look inside Issue One. Our one and only ad appears there, and shows why we decided against advertising.)

      Dean spent hours and hours, sometimes going days without sleep, designing the look of the magazine. He also read slush. I read manuscripts too, and contacted writers. Jack Williamson agreed to let us reprint his essays on writing. Steve Rasnic Tem and William F. Wu sent us wonderful stories. Kij Johnson was the first new name to rise above the slush pile. We grew excited with our growing project.

      Then we tried to contact other writers, and discovered that we couldn’t explain what a hardback magazine was. Dean had already decided to do a mock-up of the magazine. Detail-oriented perfectionist that he is, he wanted everything to be exactly right in the first issue. That meant we needed to have a practice step in between.

      A Pulphouse tradition, Issue Zero, was born. Issue Zero (which we have done on all of our projects since) is a mock-up, done to show exactly what the project will look like, and to work out the bugs in the system. Issue Zero of the Hardback Magazine shows that we expected the magazine to be smaller in size and scope than it turned out to be. It also proved to be the smartest thing we did.

      Dean used Issue Zero to attract bookstores. I sent copies of it to my favorite writers. Many responded with stories. We gathered an impressive line-up: Kate Wilhelm, Charles de Lint, Edward Bryant. Then I got my phone call from Harlan Ellison.

      Actually, it wasn’t a phone call. He left a message on my answering machine. I received your Pulphouse loss leader, he said. I want to talk to you about it. He left his phone number and hung up.

      I called him back before I had time to worry about what he wanted. (After all, the back of my brain reasoned, we did call Pulphouse a Dangerous Magazine. Was he objecting? Were we too close to Dangerous Visions?) When Harlan came on the line, my worries evaporated. He was effusive. He thought we were brilliant, absolutely brilliant, to do a mock-up of our product, and for that reason alone, decided to contribute a story to our effort.

      He later explained to me what we had done right. Not only had we some impressive names already in our roster (including people who rarely wrote for anthologies), but we proved that we could produce a product. So many magazines appear as announcements in writers’ publications and as invitations to writers, but somehow disappear around payment and production time, that writers and agents naturally mistrust any new publication. Most would-be magazine publishers never realize the costs involved. We, at least, were thinking about production as well as editorial content.

      As the list of contributors for the first issue began to grow, so did book dealers’ interest. People we had never met ordered the product in quantities we hadn’t even dreamed of. Within a month, we doubled our projected sales, and sold out our first issue before it appeared in August. And we realized we were in over our heads.

      Dean and I are writers, creative types who pride ourselves on our lack of organization and messy desks. (Dean, striving for perfection even in clutter, tends to have a perfectly messy desk.) We knew nothing about shipping, packing, or filing. We had enough work for the two of us, plus two more without trying to stay organized. If we had to be organized, we would be overloaded.

      But to run a business of the size that Pulphouse had become in just a few short months, we needed to be organized or we would fail.

      Enter Debra Gray Cook. Debb was a friend of Dean’s who worked as a secretary/receptionist for a poster company. She took a half-time job at a video store because she was bored. She had been offering her assistance for months. We finally took her up on it.

      Bringing in Debb was the second most intelligent thing we did.

      Debb immediately organized us. Her job at the poster company had taught her about shipping. She spent a hot, dismal weekend with us (volunteering her labor—and we worked all night and into the next day) in Dean’s unairconditioned second floor apartment shipping out Pulphouse’s first issue. By the end of the marathon shipping session, we were covered with sweat and Styrofoam. Debb and I had rug burns from kneeling on the rough carpet, and shoving books into boxes. Dean had thrown out his back from carrying books up and down two flights of stairs (never do shipping from the second floor), Debb could barely move her arms from pulling the tape gun. We were too tired to celebrate.

      But celebrate we eventually did. And we were well into Issue 2 by the time we saw that the reviews from the first issue were positive. (Boy, was I relieved.) Pulphouse Publishing grew into an entity all its own. First Dean quit his day job. I followed, and Debb followed not long after that. We acquired Axolotl Press, started Author’s Choice Monthly, and found an office. We hired help, most notably Mark Budz, who is now the editor of our Short Story Paperback Line. The office grew another story. At this writing, we have 14 employees, and more projects than I care to think about. Every time we announce something new, people tell us that we’re crazy, that what we’re trying is impossible. And we love proving them wrong.

      But we never could have done this without the help and advice of Bill Trojan (skeptic book dealer with a heart of gold), Nina Kiriki Hoffman (typesetter/proofer/good friend extraordinaire), Phil Barnhart (former boss—a man who knows potential when he sees it[thank god]), Alan Bard Newcomer (computer/technical wizard), and Lynn Adams (whose creative touches have added more to the Pulphouse memorabilia line than anyone else’s). These folks have been with us from the beginning. The other folks, whose contributions have been almost as significant, are listed on the acknowledgments page. These people have given more than we could ever hope for. We have a wonderful group of friends. They’ve supported us well.

      As has the science fiction community. Issue 12, the last issue of the hardback, appeared this summer, and a number of people are sad to see it go. So are we. But the hardback served its time. We’re moving on to larger, crazier projects with the potential for a larger audience. Dean Wesley Smith is now editing our flagship: Pulphouse: A Weekly Magazine. By the time you read this, he will already have more than 12 issues completed and shipped (in our air-conditioned shipping office on the first floor, thank you.) It took the hardback three years to get that far. I hope that the Weekly will have as much success and acclaim. It already does, from my point of view.

      I am pleased, though, that Gordon Van Gelder helped us do this book. Only 1250 copies of each issue of the hardback magazine exist. Although a number of stories were reprinted in year’s best anthologies, a number weren’t. I wish we could find a paperback publisher for the entire run (even though I know I am dreaming). But for every story included in this volume, there are five that I would have liked to have added. For every author, there are a dozen more I would have liked to include. Picking the stories for this volume was one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever done.

      So, if you get a chance, search out copies of the hardback magazine. Look up stories by newer writers, like Marina Fitch, Ken Wisman, and Kij Johnson. Keep your eyes open for stories of theirs; they’ll be showing up in lots of publications. We weren’t able to include stories by Damon Knight, Robert Sheckley, or Kate Wilhelm either. Please remember that what you have in your hand is just a sampling of what we have done in the hardback—and of what Pulphouse Publishing plans to do in the future. And above all, enjoy.

      —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Eugene, Oregon

      1 The editor who did publish the book, Brian Thomsen, didn’t have that problem. He published the book as science fiction. It wound up as a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for the best first horror novel of the year. Evidently, there were people who liked it regardless of whatever label it wore.

      While She Was Out

      Edward Bryant

      Introduction

      I started Volume One with this story, started the St. Martins’ Best of Pulphouse with it, and need to start with it here.

      The story is tough and suspenseful. It was quite a shocker back in the day, because of what is now a pretty unsurprising twist. Strong women were just coming to their own in fiction in 1991 (yes, I know. Weird). I like to think we helped start that trend, but we didn’t. We were on the leading edge of it, along with some really great mystery writers, like Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton.

      Edward W. Bryant, Jr. was a great supporter of Pulphouse. He was on the cutting edge of short fiction in the 1970s, but like so many writers, ended up writing less and less and reviewing more and more. Ed was well known in science fiction circles, but not as well known as he should have been as a writer.

      While She Was Out appeared as Ed started to slow down as a writer. He published less and less throughout the 1990s, and even though he passed away in 2017, he published no original material (that I can find) during the last two decades of his life.

      What a loss to readers. At least we still have the stories he did write, like this one, which is one of my all-time favorites.

      While She Was Out

      Edward Bryant

      It was what her husband said then that was the last straw.

      Christ,

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