Action Stories was a multi-genre pulp magazine

Pulp magazine

Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...

 published between September 1921 and Fall 1950, with a brief hiatus at the end of 1932.

As an adventure pulp it did not feature the horror and science fiction of other pulp magazines. Instead it focused on real-world adventure stories. At first mostly westerns

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 but branching out into sports fiction, war stories and adventures in exotic countries in 1937.

Writers who appeared in Action Stories included Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

, Walt Coburn
, Morgan Robertson

Morgan Robertson

Morgan Andrew Robertson was a well-known American author of short stories and novels, and the self-claimed inventor of the periscope.He is best known for his short novel Futility, first published in 1898...

 (a number of his stories were posthumously published here), Horace McCoy

Horace McCoy

Horace McCoy was an American writer whose hardboiled novels took place during the Great Depression. His best-known novel is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , which was made into a movie of the same name in 1969, fourteen years after McCoy's death.-Early life:McCoy was born in Pegram, Tennessee...

, Theodore Roscoe

Theodore Roscoe

Theodore Roscoe was an American biographer and writer of adventure, fantasy novels and stories. Roscoe's stories appeared in pulp magazines including Argosy, Wings, Flying Stories, Far East Adventure Stories, Fight Stories, Action Stories and Adventure. A collection of his stories, The Wonderful...

, Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina was an American writer who published over one hundred short stories, serials, novelettes, one-act plays and short stories....

, Anthony M. Rud,
Thomas Thursday

Thomas Thursday

Thomas Thursday was a lesser-known pulp writer who ended up having one of the longest careers writing for the pulp magazines. His first published short story, "A Stroke of Genius," appeared in Top-Notch . He submitted the story to them after finding an old issue in the subway. He used the penname...

 and Les Savage, Jr..

Reprints

A British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

reprint published by Hutchinson & Co. ran from April 1923 to January 1928.

In 2007 replicas of the original pulp magazine are available from publishers such as Girasol Collectibles and Adventure House.

External links

• Magazine Datafile for Action Stories
  • Illustrated issue checklist
  • Issue contents (beginning of list, which covers several pages)