THE DIGEST ENTHUSIAST
Book One Jan 2015
Edited by Arkay Olgar
Larque Press LLC
116 pages
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, we were lucky enough to enjoy
all the wonderful little magazines available on the newsstands during those
decades. They were called digest and
they covered every genre imaginable. We
fondly remember having subscriptions to both The Worlds of If and Analog;
two of our favorite sci-fi monthlies.
Every now and then we’d pick up a mystery digest like Alfred Hitchcok and Ellery Queen as well. It
seemed whenever any particular mystery series made it big in the paperback
field, invariably there would be a digest monthly. I can still recall picking
up copies of The 87th Precinct
Mystery Magazine and Shell Scott
Mystery Magazine. Both were
short-lived, but not so the popular Mike
Shayne Mystery Magazine that, as best I can remember, was around for a long
time.
Today the digests are all but gone save for a handful. Which is why we were delighted to see the
arrival of a brand new title that is actually devoted to those great little
monthlies; The Digest Enthusiast. Issue number one is an eclectic treasure
of both factual article on specific digest titles of old, a review of another
little series, The Paperback Parade, and
three really excellent short stories done in various lengths by writers Joe
Wehrle Jr, Lesann Berry
and Richard Krauss. We hope this
inclusion of short fiction will be permanent feature and offer new pulp writers
another market for their tales.
Among some of the digest title histories examined here are Coronet, Galaxy Science Fiction and
Photo-rama to name a few. We have to
confess, our favorite article was the interview with Canadian fan/writer
Matthew Turcotte in regards to his collection of Archie Digests which he claims is well over thousand issues
strong. Just amazing.
The Digest Enthusiast is
extremely well produced, with clean layouts and clear, expertly printed
articles about a lost American publishing format. We recommend it highly to all our pulp
readers.
2 comments:
This was a really fun read - a good mix articles covering both old and new publications, plus some new works of fiction (complete with illustrations). Good things come in small packages!
A great nostalgic look at all the digest sized magazines that replaced the pulps on the news stands.
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