| Hi, this is Bill. I like to lose myself in arcane archives, looking for unexplained mysteries and secret histories. Enter Shavertron, a website created by Richard Toronto, and a major influence on my novel, Tamper. The following is quoted with permission from one of Mr. Toronto's many editorials: The original Shavertron was a fanzine devoted to the Shaver Mystery and the life and times of Richard Sharpe Shaver and his editor, Ray Palmer. This leaves the playing field wide open since the Shaver Mystery is rife with UFOs, conspiracies, evil weirdos living inside the earth, mind control, abductions, a high-tech elder race of aliens predating our history, and of course, the Sci-Fi pulp zine scene of the late 1940s. The mystery began in a 1945 issue of AMAZING STORIES magazine with an article titled Warning to Future Man. Editor Ray Palmer and writer Richard Shaver collaborated from there to bring Shaver's unusual cosmology into the world of Sci-Fi pulp magazine literature. Behind the scenes, a feverish correspondence ensued, wherein Palmer learned that Shaver had an even more bizarre tale to tell. As the story went, Shaver had lived among the denizens of an underground civilization that exists within the Earth's mantel. These underworld people have the ability to control earthly affairs via thought control ("tamper") using wondrous machinery left by aliens who visited our world long before the dawn of man. Sales climbed to incredible heights during the Shaver Mystery heyday. Letters of support and congratulations poured in. Palmer's hunch that Richard Shaver's tales would punch up sales did that and more. It was creating a new fan base for Amazing Stories. As sometimes happens when something seems to be going so well, a problem arose when Palmer informed his readers that the Shaver yarns, now being cranked out at white-hot speed each month, were based on factual events, just as Shaver said. Palmer began arguing, debating, and generally lobbying readers to seriously consider Shaver's claims. On the one hand, this lured occultists, mystics, and Forteans into the Amazing Stories fold. The way they saw it, there was truth to be mined in the pages of Amazing; some readers even became amateur explorers and spelunkers in the hope of finding cavern portals to Shaver's fabled underworld. But on the other hand, some readers thought the Shaver Mystery was giving science fiction a bad name. And so it came to pass that a vast chasm loomed within fandom. Those who read Amazing Stories and followed the Shaver series with interest were called Shaverites. Those who shunned the Shaver hoopla generally generaly preferred Astounding Science Fiction, edited by John W. Campbell, and called themselves "rational, science-based fans." Luminaries like Forrest J Ackerman sustained this ongoing feud, which continued unabated for nearly four years. The Shaver Mystery gasped its last breath when Shaver and Palmer died within two years of each other in the mid-1970s. We stopped publishing Shavertron in 1992 since most Shaver Mystery readers were gone (mostly dead) with few leftovers to take their place. Writers like Jim Pobst, Brian Tucker, Doug Skinner, Tal, Timothy Greene (Mr. UFO) Beckley , Mary Martin (The Hollow Earth Hassle), Branton, Bill Bliss and Gene Steinberg did what they could to keep the Mystery going. The scene eventually merged with water cooler chit-chat about UFOs, abductions and government conspiracies, all of which were a big part of the Shaver Mystery. Back in 1947, the Shaver Mystery was a bizarre topic of household conversation (probably at cocktail time). Today, however, its obscure Sci-Fi history is being rediscovered by a new circle of oddity seekers and outsider art buffs. ENTER SHAVERTRON Limited Supply: Shavertron Back Issues Tamper Home Page |
