Are litrpgs modern pulp fiction?

[CountVanBadger]

Not annoyed at all. (Well, with you, a little.)

There's a fundamental difference that doesn't seem to be obvious or apparent to anyone, so no one will agree. I didn't think I needed to explain, but I guess I will.

Pulp fiction and LitRPG (as practiced on Web Novel venues) are both serial in nature, it is true. But even that isn't much of a similarity, because the serialization is executed on different scales.

Pulp fiction novels did repeat serially, but each volume adhered to the novel form. We don't have to get all pedantic about what that means. One attribute matters most: every installment finished. Each volume had a satisfying ending. That is what kept readers coming back.

Some pulp serials were effectively never-ending, just like Web novels. How many pulp westerns did Louis L'Amour publish? Hundreds! I won't look it up, someone else feel free. But each volume caught the bad guys, saved the maiden, jailed the cowpokes, and so on.

Editorial boards made sure that every volume ended. Editors also enforced a loose system of peer review. Even serials were accepted or rejected. Loose standards were enforced, before trees were committed to the enterprise.

Web novels? In contrast? And LitRPG in particular? Back in the day, the first precursors to the genre were novels. Subject to editorial review. They developed, climaxed, ended. But no more. That's gone. The Patreon system is antithetical to the novel form. Now these "web novels," almost universally and with rare exceptions, are never-ending stories. They are not serial in terms of stories. They are serial in terms of chapters. Never-ending chapters that develop toward nothing and lead nowhere. Most of them do not finish until the drip feed runs dry or until the writer loses interest.

They are not peer reviewed, so there is no counterbalancing force to check them. Anyone can "publish" anything.

Pulp fiction? Not the same. There were hundreds of Nancy Drew Mysteries. Maybe even thousands. And yet, each and every one solved its case. Each one finished. Each one had an editor who made damn sure of it.

Holy semantics, Batman!

 

[Snake99]

Light novels are pulp fiction

 

[TinaMigarlo]

Not annoyed at all. (Well, with you, a little.)

There's a fundamental difference that doesn't seem to be obvious or apparent to anyone, so no one will agree. I didn't think I needed to explain, but I guess I will.

Pulp fiction and LitRPG (as practiced on Web Novel venues) are both serial in nature, it is true. But even that isn't much of a similarity, because the serialization is executed on different scales.

Pulp fiction novels did repeat serially, but each volume adhered to the novel form. We don't have to get all pedantic about what that means. One attribute matters most: every installment finished. Each volume had a satisfying ending. That is what kept readers coming back.

Some pulp serials were effectively never-ending, just like Web novels. How many pulp westerns did Louis L'Amour publish? Hundreds! I won't look it up, someone else feel free. But each volume caught the bad guys, saved the maiden, jailed the cowpokes, and so on.

Editorial boards made sure that every volume ended. Editors also enforced a loose system of peer review. Even serials were accepted or rejected. Loose standards were enforced, before trees were committed to the enterprise.

Web novels? In contrast? And LitRPG in particular? Back in the day, the first precursors to the genre were novels. Subject to editorial review. They developed, climaxed, ended. But no more. That's gone. The Patreon system is antithetical to the novel form. Now these "web novels," almost universally and with rare exceptions, are never-ending stories. They are not serial in terms of stories. They are serial in terms of chapters. Never-ending chapters that develop toward nothing and lead nowhere. Most of them do not finish until the drip feed runs dry or until the writer loses interest.

They are not peer reviewed, so there is no counterbalancing force to check them. Anyone can "publish" anything.

Pulp fiction? Not the same. There were hundreds of Nancy Drew Mysteries. Maybe even thousands. And yet, each and every one solved its case. Each one finished. Each one had an editor who made damn sure of it.

this person gets it.
Take the pulp serial paperback "Casca: the eternal Mercenary"
(Barry Sadler, author)
First paperback, a novelty premise.
But as stated by this poster, it was a *complete* story.
It had editorial gatekeeping, minimum standards.
True, the premise was open ended.
Every paperback installment, was a different time period. A different war.
But it had in its own paperback... a beginning and premise, a conflict, and a resolution/ending.
all within 180 to 250 pages.
That's markedly different from what we get today (with most WNs)

 

[Lysander_Works]

Short answer, no. The question encapsulates "all" litrpg fictions, which there will naturally be some exceptions to, including the possibility of books that are less Litrpg and more game-lit, but tagged Litrpg or tagged both.

Long answer: a vast majority could be pulp, if you congregated everything and found a way to sort and count them out. Without exact data, who could say?

 

[CountVanBadger]

The question encapsulates "all" litrpg fictions, which there will naturally be some exceptions to

Holy semantics, Batman!

 

[LitSam]

I'm starting to think most author's can't read. The question is "Are litrpgs modern pulp fiction?"

And most of people are here comparing them directly, instead of thinking about how litrpgs/WN are a natural evolution of the pulp format.

First paperback, a novelty premise.
But as stated by this poster, it was a *complete* story.
It had editorial gatekeeping, minimum standards.
True, the premise was open ended.
Every paperback installment, was a different time period. A different war.
But it had in its own paperback... a beginning and premise, a conflict, and a resolution/ending.
all within 180 to 250 pages.
That's markedly different from what we get today (with most WNs)

Believe me, If author's back then could've published online they would've. There's a reason those book were printed on the cheapest paper.
Since companies had to print actual books, of course there would be editorial department. If they could post online, there would be no risk of a book series flopping.
"Every paperback installment, was a different time period. A different war." Not even sure what's that supposed to mean. In my region a new book from a series would be released once a month. If logistics would've allowed releasing them in chapters they definetly would've. The problem that format would look like a newspaper, and nobody wants a shelf full of newspapers.
Think of a book more as an episodic serial chapter or even an arc. Even WN/litrpgs exist with self-contained chapter that have a hook, conflict and resolution, all in one.
Most of the stuff I have from 80s and early 90s are 80-100 pages, sometimes split into two stories.

So they're both short, serialized fiction, known for its "trashiness" and easy reading, carried by their premise. I'd definetly say litrpgs/WNs are a modern version of pulp fiction.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

this person gets it.
Take the pulp serial paperback "Casca: the eternal Mercenary"
(Barry Sadler, author)
First paperback, a novelty premise.
But as stated by this poster, it was a *complete* story.
It had editorial gatekeeping, minimum standards.
True, the premise was open ended.
Every paperback installment, was a different time period. A different war.
But it had in its own paperback... a beginning and premise, a conflict, and a resolution/ending.
all within 180 to 250 pages.
That's markedly different from what we get today (with most WNs)

But this completely ignores the pulp magazines, which generally had one complete story and a handful of serialized stories per issue (but there were exceptions - some, indeed, only ran short stories that were complete in and of themselves; others only ran serials - though some of the serials were only two or three chapters long so WERE complete over time). The model that the early comic books (that weren't reprints of newspaper strips) followed, by the way - and they often split the "complete" story into chapters with the serial stories in between them.

 

[BearlyAlive]

On the whole "editing" discussion: If pulp writer/publisher had gotten away with unedited loose collections of letters or chapter releases, they totally would have done the current "patreon format" most web novels are doing.
They just couldn't because the people then had actual expectations for books, so everyone involved needed to at least do the work expected of them.

Now? Now we're flooding AI with never-ending books that are neither coherent nor grammatically correct, so the AI can write even worse BS for us.