A second dose of pulp pleasure - "Pulp Modern" (2,2) edited by Alec Cizak.

Editor Alec Cizak excels again with Issue # 2 of “Pulp Modern” (volume 2).  Every story in this collection of pulp across genres was a great read.  One of the features of good pulp writing that I love is the big middle finger it presents to political correctness.
Cizak’s opening editorial is a piece worth reading in itself, as he delivers a succinct and visceral onslaught against the evils of the PC brigades.  As he writes, “Honesty is the precise opposite of ‘political correctness’, and that’s the venue I operate in. Corporate-controlled media is garbage.”
Never a truer word spoken on the subject, and long may the likes of such anthologies celebrating raw and honest writing thrive.
As always, I can’t come up with a favourite here, but some choice pieces: Jim Thomsen’s “Black Lab” with the dark humour of violent meth-cookers meeting a Griswald-type family (oh, and the Labrador, of course!); “Eleven Irritated People” by Preston Lang, one of my favourite Indie crime authors, is a delicious twisted take on the jury story; Charles Roland does a great job with his schemers and hustlers in “Quick Cash Fast”; moving to fantasy pulp, Matthew X. Gomez in “A Long Journey’s End” rolls out a kick-arse female warrior to dream about (if you like those sort of women!); and for the dark side of cloning possibilities, “Double Jeopardy” by Susan E. Abramski is a nightmarish treat.
I’ve singled out 5, but all 12 of the stories in this issue are superbly written and a real credit to the pulp tradition.
And if you like the tradition, you simply must start reading “Pulp Modern”.
Cheers,
ABP