The American UFO Pulps
Hilary Evans's research paper on the American UFO pulp-magazine tradition
History
The American UFO Pulps is held in the archive as a research paper by Hilary Evans, the British researcher whose substantial bibliography on UFO and anomalous-phenomena history (Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors 1984; Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians 1987; the co-edited UFOs 1947 to 1987: The 40-Year Search for an Explanation 1987; Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Behaviour 2009 with Robert Bartholomew) is one of the more durable academic-tradition bodies of work the field has produced. The paper sits inside Evans's broader interest in the social-psychology and publishing-history dimensions of the UFO phenomenon, treating the postwar American pulp-magazine wing as a documentary tradition in its own right.
The pulp-magazine wing of postwar American UFO publishing was the commercial-distribution layer that ran below the civilian-research bulletins. The civilian-research operations (APRO Bulletin, NICAP UFO Investigator, Saucer News, the Cleveland Bulletin) reached low-thousands subscriber bases through subscription and direct-mail distribution. The pulps reached hundreds of thousands of readers through newsstand and drugstore distribution. The two traditions ran on different commercial logics, attracted different contributor pools, and treated the case material at different levels of editorial rigour. Evans's paper is the documentary trace of the pulp wing's specific working method.
For the in-archive primary-source record of the American UFO pulp tradition Evans's paper analyses, see the Fate Magazine, Search Magazine, and MYSTIC Magazine collections from the Palmer publishing operation. For the later popular-press continuation, see the Conspiracy Journal collection from the Beckley imprint. The archive holds Evans's single research paper.
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