Fun Pulp Anthology

It's hard to describe this collection. I'll start by saying it's a good listen and worth a credit for the epic introduction by Harlan Ellison alone!



This is not at all a global or real historical survey of fantasy themes, as I was hoping from the description. It's mainly American, a little European, and mostly 20th century, with a sprinkling of earlier stuff. On the theme of 'Pan', for instance, there's four or five modernish short stories and just one tiny snippet from The Bacchae.



It leans heavily towards not-exactly-timeless stories that sound as though they're drawn from pulp magazines-- not a bad thing! as I'd come across hardly any of these before and they're generally good fun and read with spirit. Still, they're not towering masterpieces by any means and there's about twenty too many of the nymph-like, nagging and/or drippy women typical of the genre which gets a bit grating.



Though I would love to hear a real anthology of the historic roots of modern genre fiction, I can't mark down this audiobook for not being what I want it to be. Four stars, mostly pretty good stories excellently read.



This badly needs a table of contents available somewhere, there's dozens of stories and good luck remembering who wrote what as the introductions fly past.

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