The Shaver Mystery stories have largely been forgotten today.

Briefly, in the late 1940's, Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer started publishing stories and articles written by Richard Shaver (sometimes co-written by Palmer.)

These stories purported to be based in fact and described a fantastic history of a lost ancient civilization and evil survivors of that civilization who were still alive underground today and who were responsible for all the evil in the world.

Thousands of people (at least according to Palmer) believed the stories were true. Palmer would later publish numerous books about UFOs and these stories of bizarre creatures abducting people prefigure much of later UFO myths.

At the same time, the claims that these "deroes" tortured, raped and cannibalized their victims fall into a larger pattern that was preceded by antisemitic blood libels; the anti-Masonic and anti-Catholic conspiracy theories of the 19th century and succeeded by stuff like the Satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980's and most recently QANON.

So, anyway, I just read the first of the Shaver Mystery stories - "I Remember L:emuria".

A few thoughts:

- It's considerably better written than I expected. It's not GREAT but would have at home among the better pulp sf of the 1930's.

- It's notably old-fashioned even apart from the thin characterization and obsessive descriptions of imaginary technology. It harkens back to 19th century like Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race or John Newburgh's Oahpse (which Palmer later republished.)

- Later works apparently dwelled at length on the sexual sadism aspect of Shaver's belief system but they really aren't especially noticeable in this early work. There is a surprising amount of (extremely mild by current standards) sexual content which I imagine contributed to its popularity.

- The second DC Comics "Atom" was named after Ray Palmer by Palmer's friend Gardner Fox. Considering that as the result of a childhood accident Palmer was only around 4 foot tall, that seems a like a kind of double-edged compliment.

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