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Books So Bad They're Good: The Great Shaver Hoax [1]

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Date: 2022-07-09

What became known as The Great Shaver Mystery began innocuously enough in 1943 when a factory worker named Richard Shaver wrote a letter to the editor of Amazing Stories, Ray Palmer. Palmer, whose growth had been stunted by a severe childhood accident, had earlier revived the near-moribund Amazing Stories with stories by newcomers such as Isaac Asimov, and though Asimov quickly graduated to John W. Campbell, Jr’s, legendary Astounding Science Fiction, Amazing and its companion publication, Fantastic Adventure, were fixtures of the SF world during the war years. He was always on the lookout for promising newcomers, particularly if they wrote the sort of fast-moving, pulpy space operas that his readers loved.

Shaver’s letter, which claimed that he’d discovered a proto-language he called “Mantong,” intrigued Palmer enough that he applied its principles to analyzing modern English. The results were so promising that Palmer asked Shaver for more information about this potentially game-changing discovery.

Shaver promptly responded. And instead of what Palmer probably expected (a polite letter of clarification), Shaver sent him a 10,000 word document he called “A Warning to Future Man” that detailed a discovery so huge, so exciting, so explosive that it made Mantong look like a single torpedo compared to the Hiroshima bomb.

For it seems that Shaver had learned of the existence not just of a proto-language, but of a proto-civilization possessed of advanced technology and weaponry that put the Manhattan Project to shame. These people, who were highly sensitive to the radiation from our yellow Sun, had built massive cities in a series of caverns deep under the ground where they could live in peace. Eventually, though, that old devil sun had proved too much for them to endure, and the majority of them had decamped for other worlds with less sunlight in a strange reversal of 1950’s Americans leaving the cold and gloomy North for the glorious sunshine of Arizona, Florida, and the rest of what became known as the Sunbelt.

Some of their descendants had remained, however, still living underground. A handful of them, the “Teros,” were kind and benevolent toward us hardy surface dwellers, but the majority, whom Shaver called “Deros” (short for “detrimental robot” because they acted mechanical, not because they were actually, y’know, were machines or anything like that) were EEEVVVILLLLLLLL and used their advanced technology to cause illness (mental and physical), accidents, and even natural disasters because they felt like it.

And oh yeah, they liked to kidnap us pathetic surface dwellers for torture (male), rape (female), and meat (everyone regardless).

Shaver claimed to know this because he himself had first come under the influence of the deros about ten years earlier, when he began receiving telepathic messages via a welding gun on the assembly line where he worked. These messages, which included (you guessed it) a graphic and hideous torture session, eventually forced him into a sanatorium for a short period. He then left and spent the next decade either being tortured/interrogated/imprisoned by the deros (his account) or drifting/working/possibly being institutionalized again (his biographers, who concluded that Shaver was simply one of the millions of underemployed Americans who dropped out of sight during the Great Depression).

Needless to say, Palmer was fascinated. Deros, teros, underground torture chambers, nubile young beauties being violated, refugees from lost continents — this was the juicy, richly imaginative stuff that was the lifeblood of Palmer’s mini-empire, and never mind that it was supposedly the autobiographical account of a man whose sanity was, to put it mildly, questionable. Publishing Shaver’s account would not only boost Amazing’s circulation (always a plus, especially during wartime), but show that snooty Campbell guy in New York that there was still a market for wild, pulpy adventure no matter how many magazines he sold thanks to that Asimov kid and his “Foundation” stories or that Heinlein guy and his “Future History.”

The only problem was that Shaver’s letter was, well, a bit dry. The raw material — mind rays! abduction of pretty girls! torture! — was there, but the actual story wasn’t. Something had to be done.

And so Palmer decided to help his new correspondent in the only way he could: rewrite his life story into a pulp adventure.

”I Remember Lemuria!” (by Richard S. Shaver, with a whole lot of “help” from Raymond A. Palmer), which Palmer swore was still largely Shaver’s story even though Palmer had tripled its length by adding a typical fast-moving, not precisely credible plot, came out in the March 1945 edition of Amazing. Despite a cover art featuring a for-real bug-eyed monster with green skin and a stylish matching tunic, a woman wearing a helmet left over from an old Buck Rogers serial, and what looked like one of those super-scientific wonder machines called “a gearbox,” the issue caused the kind of sensation that only those lucky enough to have experienced the 1977 premiere of Star Wars: A New Hope can truly appreciate. The magazine sold out almost immediately, while eager readers flooded Amazing’s mailbox with literally thousands of letters commenting, denouncing, or even confirming Shaver’s story.

Yes. Really.

This was in spite of a prose style that is dignified by the term clunky. I mean, just get a load of this scintillating dialogue that opened “I Remember Lemuria!”:

I was working in the studio of Artan Gro when I heard a great laugh behind me. If ever there was derision in a laugh, there was derision in this one. I flung down my gaudy brushes and my palette and turned about in a rage—to find the master himself, his red cave of a mouth wide open in his black beard. I cooled my temper with an effort; for great indeed is Artan Gro, master artist of Sub Atlan. "I am sorry, Mutan Mion," he gasped, "but I can't control my laughter. No one ever has conceived, much less executed, anything worse than what you have put upon canvas! What do you call it, 'Proteus in a Convulsive Nightmare'?" But Artan Gro could control himself, I was sure. It is one of the things I have learned of the really great in the arts; they make no pretenses. He was laughing because he wanted to tell me frankly what he thought of my ability as an artist. It is bad enough when your friends mock your work (and they had), but when the master is convulsed with laughter it is high time to wake up to the truth. "It is true, great Artan Gro," I said humbly. "I want to paint but I cannot. I haven't the ability." Artan Gro's expression softened. He smiled, and as he smiled it was as though he had turned on the sunlight. "Go," he said, "go; to the deeper caverns at Mu's center. Once there study science; learn to mix the potions that give the brain greater awareness, a better rate of growth." He patted my shoulder and added a last bit of advice. "Once you have mixed the potions, take them. Drink them—and grow!" He passed on, still chuckling. Why is the truth always so brutal? Or does it just seem brutal when it comes from those wiser than you? I slunk from the studio; but I had already determined to take his advice. I would go to Tean City, at Mu's center. I would go to the science schools of the Titans.

And then there was this gem, from the 1946 sequel “The Return of Sathanas”:

As I remember Sathanas, he was a fellow of some fifty feet in height, dark visaged, with the horns that indicated a crossing of the blood line with that of some Titans (which wasn't uncommon in ancient Mu). I had seen him first at a council meeting some centuries ago, when I first acquired the status of a Ruler by my acquisition of the tiny planet of Callay. It was after concluding most of the formal ceremony incidental to the investiture of several new rulers that someone first introduced us.

which did nothing except prove Shaver (or Palmer, or both) was a lousy writer no matter how many high concept things like Titans, planets named “Callay,” or potions that give the brain greater awareness he described.

As ridiculous as it may sound today, a huge number of readers (tens of thousands according to Palmer) wrote in describing their own experiences with what they now realized were deros. Strange voices saying strange things...aches and pains doctors could not explain, let alone treat...inexplicable events/encounters...all were described in rich detail, and all swore that yes, every single word was true and thank you so much for finally telling the world that I’m not crazy, Mr. Shaver/Mr. Palmer, thank you thank you thank you!

If that weren’t enough, one of Amazing’s new correspondents was an ex-fighter pilot named Fred Chrisman, whose life was so colorful that it’s amazing Anish Kapoor hasn’t attempted to copyright it. Chrisman, who wrote a pseudonymous letter claiming he’d fought deros in a cave somewhere in the Burma theater during World War II, would go on to claim that he’d been involved in a UFO incident in 1947 (spoiler: it was volcanic debris), teach high school, found a secret society, and then be misidentified by Jim Garrison as one of the “three tramps” hanging around Dealey Plaza during the Clay Shaw trial.

“Whew,” as they say in the Common Speech of the West.

Fred Chrisman and Madame de Elevator aside, what was now known as the Great Shaver Mystery had captivated Americans all across the country whether they read science fiction or not. “Shaver Clubs” devoted to discussion of Shaver’s revelations sprang up all across the country, and may well have been one of the taproots of the post-war paranormal boom that led to nonsense like The Search for Bridey Murphy, belief in UFO’s, and the popularity of the works by J.B. Rhine, J. Gaither Pratt, and J. Allen Hynek. Shaver continued to send material to Palmer, Palmer continued to polish and publish, and soon Amazing was publishing so stories and letters about deros, teros, and underground torture chambers that it might as well have renamed itself Richard Shaver’s Science Fiction Magazine.

The unfortunate fact that many (if not all) of the alleged first-person accounts came from what historian Mike Dash termed “the sorts of people who would otherwise spend their time claiming that they were being persecuted by invisible voices or their neighbor's dog” did not seem to matter. Shaver fans were everywhere, holding discussions, writing letters and memoirs, even calling into Long John Nebel’s late night radio show in New York to natter on about deros and underground civilizations. Best of all, at least for Amazing’s publisher, circulation soared thanks to the Great Shaver Mystery. Who could ask for more?

Needless to say, not every letter was adulatory. Readers who had some grasp of clinical psychology were outraged at what they saw as Palmer’s exploitation of a man who showed every symptom of paranoid schizophrenia, especially as Amazing’s content shifted from hard science fiction and fun pulp to approximately 75% stories by Richard Shaver, influenced by Richard Shaver, or exploring deros, teros, and other concepts first mentioned by Richard Shaver. Author Harlan Ellison, then a teenager, was so outraged that he reportedly cornered Palmer at a convention and yelled at him until he confessed that yeah, the whole thing was a hoax. Less bellicose fans, eschewing such tactics, bombarded Amazing’s parent company with letters and petitions demanding that Palmer stop publishing such junk or they’d cancel their subscriptions.

Despite might be the first great fannish letter writing campaign, the outrage seemed to fall on deaf ears, at least between 1945 and 1947. Shaver was not much of a writer, even with a boost from his editor, but who could resist titles like “Earth Slaves to Space” or “"Zigor Mephisto's Collection of Mentalia"”? Or the letter from a woman who claimed she’d ridden a secret elevator into the subbasement of a Paris office building and found herself captured by French deros, who (of course) raped and tortured her for several years until a tero came along and freed her to tell the tale?

Alas for the Shaver Clubs, all things good and Lemurian must come to an end. Thanks either to declining sales (the official explanation) or all that angry reader energy (science fiction fandom), Amazing ceased to publish any and all Shaver content by 1948. Shaver did manage to publish a few more stories (including a last Lemurian/Shaver tale in a 1949 issue of Other Worlds), but his career as science fiction writer was basically over by 1952 or thereabouts. He published the occasional issue of something he called The Shaver Mystery Magazine, but by the 1970’s he had shifted to seeking evidence of ancient civilizations through close examination of what he called “rock books,” slices of agate and other unremarkable but pretty rocks he swore contained secret clues to Atlantean and Lemurian civilization that had been cleverly concealed in geological formations. He’s now considered something of an outsider artist, with several exhibitions devoted to his rock books mounted in California.

As for Ray Palmer...soon after his publisher forced him to stop publishing Shaver-related content, he co-founded the legendary paranormal monthly Fate with a business partner, Curtis Fuller. By the next year he’d left Ziff-Davis, publisher of Amazing Stories, and quickly made a name for himself published accounts of UFO sightings, near-death experiences, sightings of unknown animals like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, precognitive dreams, alternative medicine, reincarnation, and similar fascinating nonsense. He even was investigated by the FBI for potentially leaking government secrets after he published something called “Venusians Walk Our Streets,” which claimed that American labs were touch with — you guessed it — Venusians and were developing new alloys and metals thanks to this dangerous knowledge.

(Spoiler: they weren’t, and Palmer knew it)

This may be why Palmer started forwarding all his fan mail on UFO’s to the local CIA office, although one would think that the feds would be far more interested in the possibility that vast underground cities full of deros and their death rays were influencing our weather, but at this point, who knows?

What we do know is that Palmer continued to champion the Great Shaver Mystery for the next thirty years, even co-authoring Shaver’s 1970’s memoir. Whether he believed a word of it, or took Shaver’s “rock books” seriously isn’t clear, but the fact that he still collaborated with the man to write a book that sold few copies and received very little attention would seem to indicate that Palmer was not simply exploiting Richard Shaver and his deros to increase magazine circulation. Regardless, Palmer was a driving force in the paranormal community until the end of life; thanks to the Great Shaver Mystery, his work on UFO’s, his fascination with a Spiritualist publication called The Oahspe Bible, and similar pursuits, Palmer and his work foreshadowed the New Age of the 1970’s and 1980’s even though he didn’t live long enough to see Shirley MacLaine and J.Z. Knight hit the bestseller lists.

That’s not all. Raymond Palmer, tiny but brilliant, inspired comics writer Gardner Fox to create the world’s smallest superhero, The Atom (tn Ray Palmer, of course), and if you’re a fan of the Arrowverse you know exactly what I mean. And though Richard Shaver himself was not much of a writer, the Great Shaver Mystery has inspired plenty of science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers. Hello, Lemuria, Hello! may be the silliest, but any time you read about an underground civilization that attacks surface dwellers, or an elevator that whisks passengers below the subbasement of a skyscraper, or someone haunted by strange voices that turn out to be mechanically produced, there's a decent chance you’re dealing with someone who’s at least aware of the Great Shaver Mystery.

There’s even a Shaver reference in that old favorite Dungeon & Dragons; an underground race of evil dwarfs called “derros” that hunts humans for meat, sport, and slaves shows up in the Monster Manual II, and if you think that Gary Gygax came up with this on his own, well, there’s a nice subterranean elevator I can point you towards…..

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Have you ever heard of the Great Shaver Mystery? Read a book by Ron Goulart? Read an Atom comic book? It’s a gorgeous Saturday night here at the Last Homely Shack, so pull up a chair, crack open your beverage of choice, and share…..

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