Remembering Derrick Ferguson (In His Own Words)
The New Pulp community lost a hero on April 4, 2021. The New Pulp movement lost its soul on April 4, 2020. The independent genre writers world lost its heart on April 4, 2021.
I know it’s all en vogue to all but raise writers to sainthood upon their death and rattle off accolades as if they were the second coming of Ray Bradbury incarnate. But trust me, all those are fair statements in regard to Derrick Ferguson.
I’ve long argued that (bear with me here for a moment) Isaac Asimov was the brains of sci-fi but that Ray Bradbury was its heart. In the same way, Derrick was the heart of the community of independent genre writers, and particularly that of New Pulp. But it wasn’t just his writing that put him there and defined it. It was his sort of ambassadorship for the movement, bringing the unrelatable term to the masses with comparisons to movies and other forms or entertainment, his “get started” lists of 100 New Pulp books you need to read, and his action-adventure mindset in regard to everything from his movie reviews to his posts in the Usimi Dero group he ran on Facebook that brought so many like-minded fans together.
How do I know he was the heart? Because unlike other fan groups, Usimi Dero was always a place of positive interaction among so many divergent fans of comics, books, movies, games, etc.
Derrick was also a friend even though we really only every spoke via podcasts or email. We did so many interviews together, and we connected on a level of writer similarities that I often referred to him as my New Pulp brother. We saw New Pulp the same way, along with several other folks. It was a way to rescue action and adventure stories from the traps of the past—whether they were systemic racism in the portrayals, sloppy writing in the structure and plots, or cliched stereotyped that didn’t go anywhere in the characterizations in the stories.
I loved that about him. I identified with him because of that. Whenever I had an editor or a publisher basically inform me to simplify it or just “let the hero be the hero,” I could always lean toward Derrick’s shared vision for what New Pulp could become beyond the limitations of Classic Pulp.
But lest I wax poetic, I want to let Derrick speak for himself posthumously.
You see, Derrick was very active (in addition to his own prolific writing bench) in my Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action writing blog. So, the best way I could think to honor this patron saint of New Pulp and action-adventure storytelling is simply to go back through many of his comments he made as part of his own interviews or in roundtable interviews.
So, this is Derrick defining himself, his work, and his writing legacy.
Read more:
https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2021/04/remembering-derrick-ferguson-in-his-own.html
