Doug Ellis’s Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention has wrapped up for another year (see my report from last year here). I got to see many old friends, meet some new ones, and also connect in person with a few for the first time — including Barbara Barrett, who traveled many hundreds of miles to make it to Chicago. Barbara has been blogging for Black Gate for many years and her early article “Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry” is one of the most popular pieces we’ve ever published… but we’ve never met in person, and it was an absolute delight to finally join her for dinner — and give her a big hug.

In between all the meetings, reunions, and forging of new friendships, I also picked up a treasure or two. I’ll be reporting on some of the most interesting here over the next few weeks (the most common comment I heard as I put away my purchases was, “Something new for you to blog about!”), but I can’t resist telling you about one now.

Just before the show closed, I found a dealer in the far corner with a box labeled “$5 Pulps!” That’s a price I find hard to resist, especially when there were several in terrific condition in the mix. I bought 15 magazines, including early issues of Astounding, Unknown, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, and many others. But the most intriguing find was half a dozen Super Science Stories I’d never seen before, most in terrific shape. As I was settling up with the seller, author and pulp expert Bob Weinberg wandered by and took note of them. “Those are the Canadian editions — very rare,” he said. “They frequently used cover art from older pulps. For example, the cover for this issue, with Leinster’s ‘The Red Dust?’ It’s re-used from a much earlier source, and has nothing to do the story. In ‘The Red Dust,’ they’re not even wearing clothes!” That’s another marvelous thing about Windy City… not only are the bargains fabulous and the selection incredible, but you’re surrounded by people who know a lot more about pulp magazines than you ever will. Bob dug into the box and happily bought the last two issues that I’d overlooked and we both left pleased with our finds.

Three of the issues I brought home are above. I’ll be reporting on many other splendid treasures over the next few weeks.

So far I’ve covered the following treasures found at Windy City this year:

Super Science Fiction pulps
The Vril Agenda by Derrick Ferguson and Josh Reynolds
Science Fiction of the 30′s edited by Damon Knight
Fantastic Novels, July 1948
Two Decades of Interzone
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIII edited by Karl Edward Wagner
Weird Tales #290
Stephen E. Fabian’s Ladies & Legends
The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Aidan Chambers
Subterranean Magazine #2

Read all of our recent Vintage Treasure articles here.