Cirrus@Austlit

‘Pulp' originally referred to the cheap wood -pulp paper used in American mass -market magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term is now used for rapidly written, formula -driven fiction characterised by high 'story value' but no literary merit. Pulps appealed to naive readers — including young adults hungry forbidden fruit — but crime, romance and science fiction/fantasy also attracted more sophisticated readers, many of whom became writers.’(Introduction 257)