HIDDEN WORLD Volume 8: THE SHAVER MYSTERY

I discovered Ray Palmer's science fiction magazine, Other Worlds, in 1954, when the science fiction field was collapsing around our ears and poor old Other Worlds was a weak-kneed shadow of its former self. I was a mere teen-ager but had been reading sf books for six or seven years -- but only now discovering the magazines because I'd labored under the delusion that all the good magazine stories got reprinted in anthologies.

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Excerpt:

.Of course I heard about Richard Shaver. Science fiction fans still berated him and Ray Palmer because of the controversy over the claims that the Shaver Mystery stories were based on truth. As far as that goes, science fiction fans still do that even today. But I had a friend named Jerry Burge who collected sf pulps and was a big fan of the Ray Palmer issues of Amazing, and of the fiction of Richard Shaver. He lent me a lot of classic science fiction magazines, including some issues of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures containing Shaver stories. Rather than just shaking my fist at them, I actually read a few. And I found out that Shaver was frequently a pretty good writer who told stories that were a lot of fun.

Palmer I had discovered more or less on my own. While Other Worlds wasn't as good as many of the other magazines in the sf field at that time, it carried a long editorial by Palmer in each issue, and Ray Palmer was one of the great editorial writers of all time. Someone needs to seriously compile a volume or several of his editorials. At his weakest he was more readable than anyone else in the science fiction field, and often as thought provoking as any writer the field ever produced. He was also more controversial than anyone else, although there were times when John W. Campbell, over at Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact) could play him a close second.

A few years before, in the early fifties, when Other Worlds was actually one of the best science fiction magazines around, Palmer suffered a fall off a ladder in his basement which left him paralyzed. His doctors said he would never recover, but Palmer was an old hand at fooling doctors. An accident when he was ten years old had left him crippled and stunted his growth, but had not prevented him from leading a full, productive and very interesting life. He announced the fall from the ladder in an editorial by saying that after years of "being paralyzed from the neck up," he'd taken care of the other direction. The medical costs seriously effected his ability to continue operating as a publisher but somehow he managed to stay in business though he had to turn Other Worlds into a magazine called Flying Saucers, and concentrate on Fortean and related materials. Perhaps that was what he really wanted to do at that time.

From about 1954 until almost the sixties, Shaver was virtually absent from the science fiction magazines. In 1957, Amazing ran a special flying saucer issue, with articles (but no fiction) by both Shaver and Palmer. Shaver was occasionally showing up in Palmer's magazines Search and Flying Saucers with articles, too. In 1958 Fantastic Science Fiction, the companion magazine to Amazing, ran a Shaver Mystery issue, featuring a novel by Shaver called "The Dream Makers," one of the finest pieces of fiction Shaver ever wrote. The issue also featured a few non-fiction pieces by both Shaver and Palmer. Shaver was occasionally showing up in Palmer's magazines Search and Flying Saucers with articles.