Reading Spicy Zeppelin Stories by prolific modern pulp writer Will Murray. Years ago. from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, Odyssey Publications published pulp-related books, such as annual collections of Doc Savage related materials from Murray, a short-lived fanzine devoted to The Shadow, and pulp reprints. For years, among pulp fans, there was a long-running joke about there being a "lost" magazine, see title, that was supposed to be the ultimate absurd cross-genre pulp magazine. The people at Odyssey made an attempt to recreate the fictional one and only issue, with partner Will Murray writing six stories with different aliases shortly before Odyssey closed down. A few years ago, Spicy Zeppelin Stories was reprinted (previously published in 1989 by another small press outfit with different interior artwork, etc.) this time as it was intended to be, with the bonus of a seventh story, a sequel to the first. The stories match up with a pulp genre: adventure, aviation stories, mystery, G-man, "weird menace", space opera, and Western, but all centered around airships, and with the sort of salacious content that appeared in the "spicy pulps". Such as "King of the Zeppelins", where a tycoon attempting to establish an airship line is stranded on a South Pacific island after his new "stratospheric zeppelin" goes down during a test flight. “Zeps of the Void,” where a "space zep" is hijacked by aliens and the mysterious Smith, who is either a space pirate or ruthless vigilante, depending on what you heard, deals himself in. For the "weird menace" story, we have "Catwalk Creeper", where during a trans-Atlantic zeppelin flight, female passengers are being turned into stone by a mysterious assailant.
