The movie is called Pulp Fiction because it’s designed as a modern tribute to old “pulp” crime and adventure stories that were printed on cheap wood‑pulp paper and filled with lurid, sensational plots.

What “pulp fiction” originally meant

  • In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, publishers sold cheap magazines and paperbacks printed on low‑quality pulp paper, which made them affordable mass entertainment.
  • These “pulps” were packed with hard‑boiled crime, violent thrills, sex, horror, Westerns, and sci‑fi, written quickly and sold in huge quantities to working‑class readers.

How this connects to the film

  • Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction uses intersecting stories about hitmen, gangsters, boxers, overdoses, and seedy L.A. nightlife, echoing the edgy, sensational tone of classic pulp magazines.
  • The movie’s mix of crime, dark humor, sudden violence, and moral ambiguity mirrors the kind of stories that used to appear in pulp crime and mystery magazines.

Why Tarantino chose the title

  • The title signals that the film is a stylized, self‑aware love letter to that older pulp tradition, not a realistic crime drama.
  • Structurally, the film works like a pulp anthology: separate yet linked tales that could almost be individual stories in a mid‑century crime magazine.

Little extra context

  • Historically, “pulp fiction” long predates the movie; the term was already used for decades to describe those popular, low‑brow adventure and crime stories.
  • The film helped re‑popularize the phrase in the 1990s, so many people today first meet the term through Tarantino’s movie and only later learn its older publishing roots.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.