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Comment by dleslie | Hacker News Reader

I hope I don't get roasted for this; but I whole-heartedly agree. There's also a sizeable publisher that I find has remarkably poor editorial control, and so I hesitate to read works published by them: Tor.

Which is strange; they've always been a source of pulp science fiction and fantasy, but I enjoy such works and have enjoyed Tor works in the distant past. But recently? Notsomuch.

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You aren't wrong. Even if the content if good, even great, with incredibly rare exception, you really, really need a good editor to turn that content into something useful.

It's the same in the record business. See "The Wrecking Crew" about how the studio musicians turned the raw material of the artists into hits. (Often the original bands could neither sing nor play their instruments very well.)

Isn’t pulp fiction by definition low quality?

Pulp fiction just means works published in pulp magazines or similarly disreputable publications. Some was bad, some was great. Many acclaimed authors wrote for the pulps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine#Authors_featured

In your very own link it says the term is used to refer to "run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature".

Pulp is, by definition, material printed in cheap wood pulp magazines.

Pulp is, by association, low-quality writing.

Pulp is also, by allusion, a particular genre/structure mirroring the dominant topics and styles of the original magazines - regardless of its quality.

On the other hand, I loved The Murderbot Diaries from Tor.

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