Saturday, August 11, 2012

Pulpfest 2012 Day Three

My third and final daily report on Pulpfest. If you haven't seen the first two entries, they are: Day One and Day Two.

The bug that's been floating around my house this past week finally caught up to me, so I decided not to go back downtown for the evening panels. Part of what I missed was the presentation of the Munsey Award ("presented annually to a deserving person who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp community") and the Rusty Hevelin Service Award ("designed to recognize those individuals within the pulp community who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition"). The winners of those awards were:
  • Munsey Award - Matt Moring
  • Rusty Hevelin Service Award - Jack & Sally Cullers
The Pulpfest committee's writeup of the award presentations provides more details both about the awards themselves and those who won them this year.

I did make it to the convention earlier in the day to take another look at the dealer's room, this time bringing my father (who introduced me to Pulpfest in specific and conventions in general) along. I picked up a few more items for my collection and did a lot of window-shopping. One of the things that I got to look at wistfully from afar was the three volume set of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin stories.

More within my price range was Jim Beard's intriguing collection of stories about the adventures of Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker.
"Part detective, part occultist, Janus is himself a man of mystery whose own past is shrouded and the motivations behind his calling kept hidden. Within this volume you will find eight tales as narrated by his clients, each with his or her own perspective on this uncanny hero and his amazing career."
A glance through this book intrigued me and I'm looking forward to starting to read it very soon.

Jim Beard displays two of his books.
One very nice display in the dealer's room showed various awards and mementos from Rusty Hevelin. Rusty passed away late in 2011. I never knew him to any significant extent, but he was a familiar face when I went to conventions in my younger days and he was in attendance at last year's Pulpfest. The three photos below are from that table.

Display of Rusty Hevelin awards and mementos.

Painting of Rusty Hevelin

A poll (with Phil Foglio illustrations) asking whether Rusty
should grow his beard back out or not. (Date unknown)

The convention's dealer's room will be open tomorrow morning, but I've spent what I planned to spend (and, well, a tiny bit more) so it will be 2013 before I have more of a Pulpfest experience. It was, as always, a good experience this year and I look forward to next year's convention.

2 comments:

  1. Just curious, Michael (and my memory's terrible), but did you ever finish SGT. JANUS?

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    1. Jim,

      No, though not for lack of interest. I'm partway through the book and it's hanging out in my stack of books by my bed for reading. I've seen your updates on Facebook and will be looking forward to reading future Sgt. Janus stories once I've finished reading these!

      -Michael

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