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Category Archives: Horwitz Publications
Carter Brown and the Australian craze for faux American crime fiction

In 1950s Australia, one author – writing pulp novels about detectives and cities he’d never visited – gave birth to a phenomenon. I’m over at the CrimeReads writing about Australia’s most successful, least critically recognised, 20th century author, Alan Yates aka Carter Brown, and the popularity of faux American crime fiction in post-war Australia. You can read the entire article at their site here. … Read more
Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian noir, Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Carter Brown, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp paperback cover art
Tagged Al Wheeler, Alan Yates, Audrey Armitage, Australian pulp fiction, Bill Williams, Carter Brown, faux American crime fiction, Horwitz Publications, K. T. McCall, Marc Brody, Mickey Spillane, Muriel Watkins
Lockdown recollections of the outside world and the wonder of Space Age Books

I was saddened over the Eastern weekend to hear of the death of Mervyn ‘Merv’ Binns on April 7, at the age of 85. Binns was a major participant in Melbourne science fiction fandom going back to its earliest days in the 1950s, and established Space Age Books, Australia’s first specialist science fiction bookshop, and a frequent bolt hole for myself and no doubt so many other teenagers, desperate to escape the boredom of long suburban weekends in the 1970s and 1980s.
I only met Binns once, but his passing feels particular poignant given the circumstances we currently find ourselves in, unable to leave our houses and take part in Melbourne’s physical public culture, a field in which Binns once played a small but important role, to go to the pub with friends, browse in a bookshop or go to the cinema or film club screening.
But more than this, memories of Space Age Books briefly made concrete my fears about one of the unintended consequences of the (very necessary) restrictions evoked to combat the Covid-19 virus – its potential impact on the few remaining cultural holdouts that make living in Melbourne feel special compared to a lot of other places: bookshops, including the second-hand and antiquarian bookshops, independent cinemas and cinema clubs, record stores, and other speciality businesses that deal in material cultural items and experiences and, just as importantly, provide a space to engage in face to face discussion about them.… Read more
Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Dystopian cinema, Horror, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Science fiction and fantasy
Tagged Horwitz Publications, Lee Harding, McGill's Newsagency, Melbourne bookshops, Melbourne science fiction, Mervyn Binns, Open Leaves Bookshop, Robert Bloch, Ron Smith, science fiction, Space Age Books
‘An Explosive Novel of Strange Passions’: Horwitz Publications and Australia’s Pulp Modernism
I am jazzed to have had published the first of what I hope is several peer reviewed articles flowing my from the research for my dissertation. “An Explosive Novel of Strange Passions” Horwitz Publications and Australia’s Pulp Modernism,’ appears in the latest edition of Australian Literary Studies Journal. It is open access until April next year.
Here is the abstract for the piece: The scant academic attention Australia’s pulp publishing industry has received to date tends to focus on pulp as a quickly and cheaply made form of disposable entertainment, sold to non-elite audiences. This paper will examine Australian pulp fiction from a different standpoint, one which links New Modernist Studies and the history of the book. This approach, referred to as pulp modernism, is used to question the separation of low and high publishing culture, dominant for much of the twentieth century. I apply this methodology to late-1950s and early-1960s Australian pulp fiction by examining the Name Author series released by Sydney-based Horwitz Publications, one of the largest pulp paperback publishers in the decades after World War II. The series took prominent mid-century Australian authors and republished them in paperback with covers featuring highly salacious images and text. The series offers a glimpse into a uniquely Australian version of pulp modernism.… Read more
Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, British pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, New English Library, Pulp fiction, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers
Tagged Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Joseph Conrad, Midcentury pulp fiction, Post war Australian pulp, pulp modernism, Ruth Park
Melbourne launch details for Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980
Melbourne folk, please join myself and my coeditor, Iain McIntyre, on Tuesday, December 3 for the Melbourne launch of Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980. Entry is free and the event will kick off at 6.30pm at the Old Bar, 74-76 Johnson Street, Fitzroy.
The book will be launched by Melbourne literary historian and pulp fiction fan, Stuart Kells. There will be readings from some of the novels featured in Sticking it to the Man, music from DJ Bruce Milne, and copies of the book will be available at a reduced price. We’ll also throw in a free pulp novel with every purchase. Kids are welcome.
I hope to see some of you there.
This is the second pulp and popular fiction related history book that Iain and me have done and it is a glorious, full colour volume. From Civil Rights and Black Power to the New Left and Gay Liberation, the 1960s and 1970s saw a host of movements shake the status quo. With social strictures and political structures challenged at every level, pulp and popular fiction could hardly remain unaffected. Feminist, gay, and black authors broke into areas of crime, porn, and other paperback genres previously dominated by conservative, straight, white males.
Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Book cover design, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Horwitz Publications, New English Library, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980
Tagged 1950-1980, Andrew Nette, Counterculture books, Iain McIntyre, Pulp fiction, pulp paperbacks, Revolution, Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, Stuart Kells