In 1896, publisher Frank Munsey, believing that a story was more important than the paper it was printed on, changed "The Argosy" from a boy’s magazine to an all-fiction magazine with untrimmed, rough wood-pulp pages and measuring approximately 7 by 10 inches and half-an-inch thick. He had created the first "Pulp." Before failing circulation (and, finally, one major distributor’s embargo) killed them off in 1953, the Pulps had divided, amoeba-like, into unknown hundreds of titles, and furnished inexpensive reading, escape from social oppression, and hope for the future for tens of millions of Americans. In 1970, only a handful of small digest-sized detective, western, and science fiction magazines remained – the dull residue of a once-gaudy galaxy that had given early expression to some of our finest artists and writers and inspired countless others.
