Can AI help me deconstruct a modern interpretation of the pulp fiction genre?
A continuing hands on experiment using artificial intelligence to better understand how pulp fiction continues to influence modern fiction.
DISCLAIMER: This article discusses and is very favourable towards AI (and as you’ll see AI was very much in evidence during the creation of this article). If this is enough to trigger the hackles and the pearl clutching then please close this article and keep on scrolling. I’m not going to apologise for this.
If on the other hand the whole concept has got you a little intrigued and would like to learn about a way to use AI in a productive beneficial manner that will a) save you loads of time to do the things you want to do and b) leave you more knowledgeable about your craft than when you started, then please read on.
UPDATE : Rather than create a new post - I’ve decided to add a new appendix that (for now) completes the surface level investigation and looks at how we got from The Pulp Engine To The Modern Series Engine
Where it continues
So yesterday I dropped a post containing the details of a report I asked ChatGPT to compile regarding the literary works of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs - if you’re interested you can find it here.
I promised at the end of the post to add the content of a follow up conversation I had with my AI coach, well, here it is.
Getting started
I was interested to see how modern authors compared to the greats and so I continued the previous conversation thread with the following prompt
How does the work of Lee Child and the Jack Reacher series compare to the works of Howard and Burroughs?
🤔 NOTE 🤔 - As in my previous articles I’m going to be adding some callouts (like this) to highlight points that I think are worth emphasising - but unless told otherwise from here on in it’s the robot not me talking.
This is a really interesting comparison, because on the surface Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels seem far removed from pulp fantasy and planetary romance—but structurally and mythically, Reacher is very much a modern pulp hero. Child is closer to Howard and Burroughs than he might appear at first glance.
I’ll break this down into five parts:
Lee Child & Jack Reacher: style and themes
Reacher as a modern pulp archetype
Direct comparison to Robert E. Howard
Direct comparison to Edgar Rice Burroughs
The evolution of pulp across the three authors
Then I’ll close with what this means if you want to learn from all three.
Lee Child and the Jack Reacher Series
Writing Style
Lee Child’s prose is deliberately stripped-down, procedural, and rhythmic. He famously writes short paragraphs, short sentences, and lots of white space on the page.
Key stylistic traits:
Extreme clarity
Minimal description
Repetition as rhythm
Cause-and-effect thinking
A typical Reacher paragraph often looks like:
He looked at the guy.
Big shoulders. Bad haircut.
Military stance.
Probably trouble.
This is not accidental or lazy—it’s engineered. Child wants:
Maximum readability
Fast internal pacing
A feeling of inevitability
Compared to Howard’s lush lyricism or Burroughs’s descriptive adventure prose, Child’s style is austere, almost anti-literary. But that austerity creates a powerful sense of control and inevitability, which is central to Reacher’s appeal.
Themes
The Jack Reacher novels are obsessed with a few recurring ideas:
Justice Outside the System
Reacher is a wandering judge, jury, and executioner. He operates where institutions fail:
Corrupt police
Corporate crime
Small-town conspiracies
Abusive power structures
This places him firmly in mythic outlaw territory, despite the modern setting.
Radical Individualism
Reacher owns nothing, goes nowhere permanently, answers to no one.
This echoes a deep pulp tradition:
No home
No attachments
No past that binds him
Like Conan or Tarzan, Reacher exists outside civilization, but intervenes when it goes wrong.
Competence as Power Fantasy
Reacher is:
Smarter than everyone in the room
Physically dominant
Emotionally controlled
Strategically patient
The pleasure of the series comes from watching competence dismantle corruption step by step.
Historical Context
Lee Child emerged in the late 1990s, in a world:
Cynical about institutions
Saturated with bureaucracy
Suspicious of authority
Anxious about violence and disorder
Jack Reacher is a post–Cold War myth:
A former military man with no war left to fight
A relic of clear moral binaries in a morally murky world
In that sense, Reacher fills the same cultural role Conan or Tarzan once did—but updated for a world of surveillance cameras, legal loopholes, and corporate villains.
Jack Reacher as a Modern Pulp Archetype
Jack Reacher is not a realist character. He is mythic abstraction.
He is:
Too strong
Too smart
Too calm
Too correct
This places him squarely in the pulp tradition.
Pulp heroes are not meant to be psychologically complex in a modern literary sense. They are moral instruments—forces that move through the world correcting imbalance.
In that sense:
Conan is violence incarnate
Tarzan is natural superiority incarnate
Reacher is justice incarnate
Lee Child vs Robert E. Howard
Key Similarities
1. The Outsider Hero
Conan and Reacher are both:
Rootless
Unattached
Unaligned with institutions
Defined by action, not introspection
Neither hero explains himself. He acts.
2. Civilization Is Weak and Corrupt
Howard:
Civilization is decadent and doomed
Barbarism renews the world
Child:
Institutions are compromised
Justice requires an outsider
Different framing, same core belief: systems fail; individuals matter.
3. Violence as Moral Force
Neither author treats violence as tragic or morally ambiguous.
Violence is:
Necessary
Clarifying
Cathartic
Howard mythologizes it.
Child proceduralizes it.
Key Differences
Prose - Howard is Lush, poetic, baroque. Where as Child is Minimalist, clinical
Tone - Howard is Mythic, fatalistic. Where as Child is Rational, controlled
Worldview - Howard tends towards Cyclical decay. Where as Child focus on Localized corruption
Hero’s Mind - Howard’s heroes are Passionate, Where as Child’s are Hyper-logical
Howard’s heroes burn.
Child’s hero calculates.
If Howard’s writing feels like a war drum, Child’s feels like a metronome.
Lee Child vs Edgar Rice Burroughs
Key Similarities
1. Serial Adventure Structure
Like Burroughs, Child writes:
Episodic stories
Familiar formulas
Predictable but satisfying arcs
Each Reacher book is a self-contained adventure, much like a Tarzan or John Carter novel.
2. Moral Clarity
Burroughs:
Heroes are noble
Villains are evil
Justice prevails
Child:
Reacher is always right
Villains always deserve what happens
Outcomes are clean
Both authors prioritize reader satisfaction over moral ambiguity.
Key Differences
Tone - Burrough’s writing is Romantic, optimistic. Where as Child’s is Hard-edged, cynical
Hero - John Carter is an Idealized gentleman, Where as Reacher is the epitome of the Detached enforcer
World - Burrough’s stories highlight the Exotic and wondrous, Where as Child’s stories exist in the Drab and bureaucratic
Emotion - Burrough’s stories are Earnest, Child’s are Suppressed
Burroughs invites wonder.
Child invites certainty.
The Evolution of Pulp Across the Three Authors
You can almost see a straight evolutionary line:
Burroughs (Early 20th Century)
Adventure as wonder
The world is vast and exciting
Civilization can be improved
Howard (Interwar Period)
Adventure as struggle
Civilization is decaying
Strength is the only truth
Child (Late 20th / Early 21st Century)
Adventure as correction
Civilization is broken but localized
Intelligence and force restore balance
Each reflects the anxieties of their time.
What This Means for Your Own Writing
If you’re looking to synthesize lessons from all three:
From Burroughs
Embrace story momentum
Deliver clear pleasures
Let readers feel awe or satisfaction
From Howard
Commit to emotional intensity
Let theme bleed into action
Make the world feel ancient, dangerous, or inevitable
From Child
Strip prose to its functional core
Trust repetition and structure
Let competence be the fantasy
The key shared lesson:
Pulp works when the author commits completely to the hero’s role in the world.
Whether that role is:
Conquering kingdoms
Swinging through jungles
Walking into small towns and breaking bad men
…the hero must feel necessary.
Ok, back again. Whilst this post is a lot shorter than yesterday’s I still think it contains a lot to think about and certainly gave me a much deeper insight into the work of Lee (and Andrew) Child.
There’s still a lot more to unpack here and I for one want to continue to explore how deep this rabbit hole goes and what else I can learn, so expect more in this mini series.
If you’d like to see how this conversation with my AI genre fiction major professor progresses then subscribe to my publication to have future posts delivered directly to your inbox. And if you’re feeling especially generous then please consider sharing this post using one (or more) of the conveniently placed buttons below.
Appendix : From The Pulp Engine To The Modern Series Engine
Given the context of the post (and in part due to it’s previous length) I decided to add this appendix rather than create another separate short post.
So following on from the previous prompt / reply ChatGPT decided it was going to be helpful and suggest some options to continue the investigation
If you like, next we could:
Map Reacher directly onto Conan or Tarzan scene-by-scene
Break down a Reacher opening chapter against a Conan or Barsoom opening
Or explore how this lineage feeds directly into modern genre fiction (thrillers, LitRPG, grimdark, space opera)
So being of an inquisitive nature I decided to continue the prompt game and ask
Let’s explore how this lineage feeds directly into modern genre fiction
Here’s what we got…
If you trace a straight line from Burroughs → Howard → Child, you can see a bunch of modern genre “engines” that are everywhere now: episodic escalation, competence-as-fantasy, hyper-clear moral framing (or its inversion), and worldbuilding as a delivery system for set-piece thrills.
Here’s how that lineage shows up in modern genre fiction—by mechanic, not just by vibes.
The pulp engine becomes the modern series engine
Episodic structure: “New place, new threat, new climax”
Burroughs helped popularize the serial adventure rhythm: the hero cycles through dangers and discoveries, often with cliffhanger energy.
Howard compresses the same engine into shorter, denser bursts: a hook, escalation, set-piece, aftermath.
Child modernizes it into the thriller episode: Reacher walks into a town, finds rot, applies pressure, leaves.
Modern echoes:
Long-running fantasy and thriller series that are “modular” (you can pick up book 7 and still have a good time).
Streaming-era pacing in prose: shorter chapters, frequent turning points, high readability.
Worldbuilding shifts from “wonder” to “system”
From Barsoom’s spectacle to “rules you can exploit”
Burroughs’ planetary romance is built on spectacle and novelty (weird cultures, creatures, vistas). Howard’s Hyborian Age turns that into texture + myth (ruins, lost epochs, decadence, barbaric vitality). Modern fantasy often pushes one step further:
Not just “this world is cool,” but “this world has a learnable system.”
Readers get pleasure from understanding and predicting the rules.
That’s basically the core of progression fantasy: stories centered on gaining power / skill, often through training and defined advancement.
Modern echoes:
Sanderson-style “rules-forward” magic (even when it’s not progression fantasy per se).
Cultivation-inspired fantasy and web-serial structures.
Readers discussing builds, power curves, and optimal choices the way gamers do.
Howard’s “barbarism vs civilisation” becomes grimdark and beyond
Howard’s signature argument—civilisation is fragile, decadence invites collapse—gets inherited, then re-coded.
Grimdark often keeps Howard’s cynicism about institutions, but swaps the clean heroic lens for moral greys, gallows humor, and systemic rot (and sometimes turns the heroic fantasy ideal inside out).
You can feel Howard’s DNA in modern “hard-edged” fantasy even when there’s no barbarian: the sense that the world is a meat-grinder and ideals are expensive.
Modern echoes:
Grimdark / “flintlock” cynicism about power structures.
Dark fantasy where horror and adventure cohabitate comfortably (a Howard specialty).
Burroughs’ “planetary romance” becomes space opera and science-fantasy
Burroughs’ big contribution isn’t scientific plausibility; it’s mythic adventure in a science-fiction wrapper. That blueprint is basically space opera’s comfort food:
Bold hero
Exotic cultures
Princess politics / romance stakes
Swashbuckling in a “techno-wonder” setting
Modern echoes:
Space opera that reads like fantasy with spaceships.
Science-fantasy that leans on archetypes and melodrama on purpose.
“Competence porn” and the rise of the problem-solver hero
Howard gives you physical mastery (the body as destiny). Child gives you procedural mastery (the mind as weapon). Modern genre fiction explodes this into a major pleasure-center:
Heroes who win because they are better at the job—detectives, engineers, soldiers, mages, strategists.
Narrative pleasure comes from watching competence dismantle chaos.
Modern echoes:
Military SF, techno-thrillers, heist fiction, “competency fantasy,” rationalist-adjacent storytelling.
Even cozy variants: competence as comfort rather than dominance.
LitRPG and web fiction are basically pulp’s native habitat—reborn
Pulp magazines trained readers to crave:
fast hooks
recurring heroes
escalation
reliable delivery
That’s extremely compatible with online serial ecosystems—and it’s one reason LitRPG / progression fantasy feel like pulp’s grandchildren.
A mainstream publishing signal: Publishers Weekly ran a piece explicitly about LitRPG “going mainstream.”
And progression fantasy’s “named category” was actively formalized in the late 2010s / early 2020s by writers talking genre definition and history.
The counter-current: cozy fantasy as “low-stakes pulp”
It sounds like the opposite of Howard… but it’s still pulp logic: strong subgenre promise + reliable delivery.
Cozy fantasy leans into:
safe affect
found family
slice-of-life rituals
gentle arcs
…and it’s now prominent enough that major publishers are doing curated “cosy fantasy” lists and marketing pushes.
So: pulp’s legacy isn’t “only blood and thunder.” It’s also audience-first storytelling—delivering a specific emotional meal consistently.
A useful way to think about it: three dials modern genre keeps turning
Wonder dial (Burroughs)
Intensity dial (Howard)
Certainty / competence dial (Child)
Most modern subgenres are just different settings of those three dials:
Grimdark: low certainty, high intensity
Cozy fantasy: high certainty, low intensity
Progression fantasy / LitRPG: high competence certainty + systemized intensity
Space opera: high wonder + heroic certainty
Ok, back to me (again), so we could go on and on here (in fact I did - more on that in a future post), but this felt like a good closure point. Like I said before for modern writers interested in the history (and future) of pulp and how it’s legacy impacts what we do today there’s a lot to unpick here and I’d be happy to continue this discussion in the comments below.
Until next time.
Jon Howksi
The most interesting part is the feedback loop: old pulp shaping AI, and AI refracting pulp back into modern fiction.