The Golden Age and quality

The Golden Age for pulp magazines occurred 75 years ago in the 1930s, and although I don't have the stats to back it up, probably for general interest fiction magazines as well. I can only guess at a number (and I'm too lazy to look it up, but rest assured, it's close), but back then, there were around a hundred fiction magazines being sold at drugstores and newsstands all over the US. In fact, back then, damn near every magazine had at least one short story between its covers.

(This is an incredibly broad subject, so I'll probably return to different aspects of it at a later date, so don't fret if I omit something.)

Here's something else that'll shock you if you know anything at all about the modern market for short stories; the guys who wrote the stories for these magazines were mostly professional writers. So how is that shocking? It's shocking because there is not one pro short story writer left in this country. Not one! And how can there be when stories sold to the few fiction magazines left only fetch a token payment, or up to $500 or so if you're lucky?

So who are the authors for these publications? They're mostly hobbyists and a few novelists who are slumming because it's good PR. Don't get me wrong, good stories still occasionally get published, but I don't have one doubt that they'd be ten times better if there actually was a chance that the people clacking on their keyboards could realistically turn pro one day.

It's not going to happen and they know it. The worst thing about a situation like this is that it tends to drive people with talent to other endeavors while the hacks, who never seem to get tired of churning out reams of crappy prose, keep at it and have just enough success to keep them from quitting. A look at what happened to the poets will show this to be true. Before about 1920 (or thereabouts), a talented poet could make a living writing poetry. It was a slow process, but at some point, the only poets left (and I use the term loosely) were fatuous gasbags who were only able to label themselves as such because they had cushy jobs as professors.

What I'm getting at is that I believe that we as Americans are missing out on something important here. Obviously, we'll never get back to the way it was in the 30s; television, the Internet, and urban life in general have seen to that, it's just that I think it could be better.

So I have to wonder where the big companies and media moguls fit in this. Not one of the privately owned fiction mags has anything resembling deep pockets, and the university sponsored ones are a complete lost cause, but why can't a really rich guy (or company) in this era of the really rich kick out ten or twenty million bucks and get something going? There are a thousand individuals and companies in this country for whom that would be pocket change.

What's more, my proposal doesn't have to be a money losing proposition. In a nation of 300 million, I find it hard to believe that the top selling fiction mag has a circulation of only 300,00, and the top science fiction magazine does about 70,000. It won't necessarily rake in the bucks, but with enough seed money, a staff committed to quality could take it a long way.

So, if you're a rich dude and this idea appeals to you, my emails at the top right of the page.