I'd heard about this earlier today, pulp scholar and historian and author
Will Murray passed at 73, which was a shock. I had read his work including his authorized Doc Savage novels, and
Writings in Bronze, a collection of articles and essays he'd written on various aspects of the pulp character, including a profile on the main author behind the house name of Kenneth Robeson, Lester Dent. He'd also published three books of essays and articles on the biggest pulp hero of them all, The Shadow and the characters legacy. His book
Wordslingers: An Epitaph for the Western was the result of a decade of research, searching the pages of
Writer’s Digest and similar magazines for letters and articles that told the story—as it was happening—of the rise and fall of the Western pulp, from 1906 to the field's last gasp in 1960 as paperbacks and TV cornered the Western market in the '50s, in the words of the writers and editors who made the pulp westerns happen, then put it all into historical context.
Critics and editors alike have periodically declared the Western story dead and buried. Stubbornly, it refuses to remain interred. The U.S. cowboy rides eternal.
He was still writing, having recently published a crossover novel pitting pulp hero Secret Agent X against the mad scientist/occultist Dr. Death, who'd been the star of his own pulp magazine for a brief while in 1935, and had been publishing collections of his various Lovecraft Mythos stories over the years. he was a talent and a top researcher helping carry the torch of pulp fiction into the 21st century.
